In fifteen minutes I will get into my car and drive to the beginning of another ending.
I haven't always been comfortable with endings. Anger and stopping 
are two challenges I continue to negotiate. Getting comfortable with endings that happen naturally is among the greatest gifts theater has given me. Theatre is its own form of playground beyond the script and scenery.
I requested to direct a one-act play at Bakersfield Community Theater because I knew I wanted to be involved again and I knew I wanted to specifically direct again, but I was somewhat aimless and tired of waiting for something to walk to me from nowhere and swoop my heart up and whisper “Create me!”
I was blessed with two scripts and two casts. 
I had few expectations beyond the act of collaborative creation and as always, my experiences were in excess of anything I could have planned. It is appropriate to be Dickensian, I suppose. It was both the best of times and the worst of times, right up to the disappearing M and M’s I bought for my cast for their final performance.
There were moments I felt completely deflated, like I wasn’t capable of doing anything right.
There were moments I felt nearly triumphant, like everything was just fine and I knew what I was doing.
Tonight even my pinkie toe is tired. It is as if all the stress in my life both in the theater and outside the theater was a balloon with a slow leak and all the energy from those moments is finding its way out of me, slowly.
Theater has given me the gift of timetables, beginnings, rehearsals 
and endings. When we tear down the set and put the props and costumes away we return the theater to neutral for the next beginning and rehearsal and ending to fill the space.
Joni Mitchell sang it like this:
“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.”
I’m blessed in this circle, in this playground, in this blank canvas of experience.
We all are.
What blessings have you counted today on your metaphorical playground, blank canvas, circle of life?
= = = =
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Coming soon - more creativity camps, playgrounds and workshops to grow yourself artistically (and hey, just for fun!)
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