Right, Wrong or Different.
Another day in a hotel, another night on the bus, another cup of weak hotel coffee in my own mug. But today is the first show. This morning I woke up in a different hotel room—my second in two days. I am certainly out of practice with working, with touring, and I feel like I could sleep for days. I have so many mixed emotions about this tour. I have missed my tour family like you miss your favorite cousins you haven’t seen for years. I have missed the returning cast that I have known for years, like you would miss your kids who moved across the country and finally come home. I have missed having a purpose every day, a checklist of things to do before and after the show. I have missed my job, a job I am really good at, and it feels like putting on your favorite pair of shoes.
This tour is a little different, and instead of being the Tour Manager, I am training someone to take my place, and I am apprehensive. I am very possessive of my job, my crew, and my cast. I love taking care of them all, I mean, really love it. I also hate change, I mean, really hate it. So, needless to say, I have more emotions rolling around my head than usual. If the last 16 months have taught me anything, it has taught me that the universe has a way of changing things in ways you would never see coming, in ways you would never expect, but in ways that might just be okay. For the last two and a half weeks of being back at work, I have had a phrase on repeat in my head “right, wrong, or different”. Things are always one of those three things, and I find it is often hard to distinguish between the last two, wrong and different.
When you are training your replacement, the most important lesson for yourself is to learn the difference between wrong and different. Well, that and being okay with walking away. It seems the universe is trying really hard to teach me how to walk away, and true to every fiber in my soul, I am fighting that lesson HARD! So I am going to finish up the last three days of training, traveling to three different cities in Texas, and then do just that. I am going to walk away (well, really climb in my car and drive away, but you get it). I am going to walk away knowing I did my best. I am going to walk away knowing different isn’t wrong. I am going to walk away knowing that I have new opportunities on the horizon. But I will never walk away from my cast or crew, they are my true family, and if there is one thing about me that my blood family knows, I will drop everything to fly to where they are when they need help.
These last 16 months have been weird, hard, and scary, but life is slowly coming back, and things are settling into a new kind of normal. So when I get back home next week, after I catch up on all the sleep I have lost, I am going to reintroduce myself to my bike that I have not ridden in three weeks. A few months ago, a fellow writer asked me if I was still writing, and when I said not really, he said, “well, get at it, girl” I have been trying really hard since then, but now, when I get home, I am going to start writing again with some consistency. I am going to try and finish both books that are half-written. But, most of all, I am going to embrace “right, wrong, or different” and start living again, focusing mainly on those things and people who bring me joy.