the elusive idea of success

When do you know if you're a success?
I've stopped to take a look around at my colleagues from undergrad - noting their accomplishments and life passages: marriages launched; plays written; babies birthed; initial career dreams dashed, put away, and picked up again; reconciliations; breakups; breakdowns; even deaths. I recognize more and more people I know on television, in movies, on commercials, in American Theatre magazine. People I remember as short, awkward eighth graders are now Ivy League professors, East Texas politicians, and NYC Soho artists. I was thinking last night about how 40 seemed some sort of far off shore, too distant to see or even consider when I was in my early twenties. There was too much to do and see and bargain and threaten and love and loathe and yearn for. At some point however; perhaps it was in Milwaukee, I ceased to appreciate the now and started dissecting and analyzing Everything That Had Come Thus Far. Growth was stilted; one cannot grow when one is stuck repeating the past over and over again.
I made it to the Here and Now, and now my problem is the polar opposite: rather than being stuck in the past or repeating the mistakes of the present, I seem to be spinning toward the future; like an object in the vortex of a black hole - being stretched toward the center and the beyond against my will. I've been dreading 35 now for a good 3 years or so; hopefully it will cease to frighten me once it is over. But I am reminded again of 40; only this time it is not a distant shore but an island I can see clearly. I am very aware of all the rocks I need to circumnavigate before I reach that island and I don't know if I can.
What defines success? I'll have my MFA soon, of which I am proud. Is this the definition of success, or is the job it will eventually attain? For every achievement I earn, I find myself wishing it was more. I find myself comparing myself to others and their achievements and wondering if I have been using my time as wisely as I ought.
Someone once said that the secret to true happiness is wanting what you have. I have much to be thankful for. I muse on this axiom, wondering when it will manifest itself in my life, and allow me to once again live beautifully, happily in the Now.

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This is my theatre blog. For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm a professional actress and theatre teacher. I worked in the Milwaukee-Madison-Chicago area for 15 years, and recently moved back to Texas to be near my family. After a successful career up north, I'm starting over again.

I've had this blog for three years and written about various ideas and topics, but have recently re-vamped it to be about how theatre figures into my life now that I've had a baby. I still talk about my career in the theatre world, film and commercial work, stage acting, my graduate and undergraduate school experiences, my thoughts on fame, celebrities, critics, plays, arts in different cities, my experiences as a teacher; but most significantly: the travails and joys of simultaneously being a mother and a theatre professional.

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