bruised

So apparently the directors thought my song sounded "too thin" and want to add people to it. There's a girl who plays banjo back in town for the holidays who is going to see if she thinks she can do it and call me in the morning to figure out more stuff. I'm mad at the timing. Why did they let it go this long before "auditioning" me? Now it's 2.5 days before the show, and one of those days is Christmas and half of the other day I'll be working.

I won't deny that I am pretty heartbroken. I've been working hard for a while now on this one song and while I have had bouts of nervousness, I had gotten to a point that I felt good about it. Not fancy, brassy or loud, but sweet and heartfelt and honestly delivered. I wanted to be good enough the way I am, loved and appreciated for my uniqueness. I mean, the song was sung by a frog puppet fer crying out loud, it's not like his voice was all that full. He did have a string section backing him up, but where would I find something like that on short notice?

Tempting as it is to completely hand off the song to someone else, crawl into a hole and die, I'll keep trying till Saturday to work something out so they like it by adding more voices and stuff. If this is really what I want to do, I need to start putting myself out there and actually doing it. I guess if nothing else I'll find out faster if it's going to work or not and if not, the faster I can move on to something else.

This is where that line gets weird and blurry of "Be your creative self" that the books and teachers say who are trying to encourage artists. It's one thing to be yourself by yourself, it's quite another to have other people pay attention while you are being creative, and yet another thing to be in a situation where you don't get to call the shots, where someone else is in control and has the last word.

But part of being an artist IS sharing the things you do.

Am I too soft for this? Am I not good enough? Not ready? Delusional? Because eff - if I am embarrassing myself, don't play nice with me, don't mess with my head. That's not doing me any favors.

I'm exhausted. Two super late nights in a row trying to do cookies and stuff, and now I'm not even sure if I have it in me to finish off the effort to plate everything up. G likes the gingersnaps, he'd eat them all eventually...