Life in July

Who knew my July would be this busy: 32hrs of work + 17hrs of rehearsal?! Oh, did I mention summer school on top of that? Don’t get me wrong, this is great. I’m kind of getting a taste of the life I thought I’d have if I am doing theatre on the side of a full-time job. But there are things I didn’t expect:

1) Getting so many shifts for work. I work as a part-time theatre technician at SFU Woodward’s. And being a part-time tech, we usually don’t get called into work unless there is a show for us to work on. The SFU School for the Contemporary Arts is moving to this new building in the fall. Technically the campus isn’t officially open yet, so I didn’t expect it to host many shows, if at all. Little did I know that we would be there for days, weeks in a row, inventory all equipment and getting stuff ready for the move in. And now there’s a secret show on the 27th, who knows what else is in store for us?!

BUT I really can’t complain… because the pay is double what I was working for at Subway a year ago. AND I’m getting trained as a board op! Just had a session on the ion last Thursday. Awesome!

2) Rehearsals seem to be taking away all my free time. Well, I knew it was going to be like this, but since I didn’t expect to be so busy with work, I didn’t foresee rehearsals being so tiresome. I have to head straight to the bus stop right after work and zip it cross town to be at rehearsal on time.

3) School being extraneous and stressful. I am currently taking ONE class, Linguistics 100: Language and Communication. This is easily the easiest of all university courses. I missed six classes (3 weeks of lecture) in a row after the first midterm, which means I had about 15 chapters to catch-up on for the 2nd midterm. Good thing the professor doesn’t really test things from the text book. It serves more like a reference than anything. And good thing she puts her lecture powerpoints online so I can miss classes and not worry about missing material. I finished the 2nd midterm in about 40mins. Getting the results back on Tuesday… I think I did pretty decently —and by that I mean I don’t expect to fail.

4) Friends wanting to hang out but can never find the time. Because work and rehearsal takes up the majority of my time, there are limited times that I can hang out with friends. But it seems like there’s already an unending list of people who I should catch-up with. Those who require an entire day of my time keeps getting pushed back just ‘cuz I can’t spare that much time for one person right now. I can only do little chunks without running short on time… Another thing that’s affecting this is I’d like to catch a show (or two) that I really want to see. For example Broadway’s The Lion King, and Glengarry Glen Ross by the Arts Club starring Eric McCormack. Or special events that I’d like to attend, like the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this past weekend, and Playland for $9.45 on Tuesday nights until mid-August.

5) No time to write. Inspiration for potentially great entries have cropped up here and there, but if I don’t write some key words down or something, my mind is soon consumed with other things (work + rehearsal, most likely). And the ingenious post gets lost in the sea of business… which is such a shame. Though I suppose if there’s any writing in my spare time, my script should probably be top priority.

I’m beat. Slept for 11hrs last night after filming a wedding, and I’m still exhausted. Hopefully my habit of staying up late will soon change and I can get my life back on track.