I'm human.

Okay, so I take myself and what I do WAY too seriously sometimes. It's an easy thing for dramatic people to do. As I've talked about before, it stems from a lot of things. As an artist, I care so much about what I do that sometimes I lose perspective, and thereby I lose my cool. Today I had one of those moments.

By this point, I don't need to go into another long entry explaining how much I love the dramatic role of Drosselmeyer. Today, I had my first full costume rehearsal, and overall, it went well. Many times when I have gotten upset during my career, it has been about small things that seem big at the time. I'm sure most humans can identify. Since I've been doing this role for so long, I like not having to think about anything new. Well, the new guys that are doing the part are quite a bit taller than I am, and so the cape that Dross wears had to be extended. Even though it was tacked up, as I exited the stage, my foot got caught in it, and I heard it rip. I was extremely upset.

I lost my temper as I exited the stage, and I headed straight to the wardrobe area to give the cape to the costumer. I plopped it on the chair and angrily expressed something to the effect that I had severely damaged the costume piece. Suddenly, as I was ranting, I realized what a jerk I sounded like, and whether it was too late or not for me to pedal backwards, I tried to flip the situation around by saying, "But the good news is that I saved money by switching to Geico, and I lowered my cholesterol...."

I think I back tracked well enough, but I still felt like a jerk. To say that I don't always roll with the punches easily would be an understatement. I was upset that things hadn't gone perfectly and I had damaged my favorite costume. It has become a security blanket of sorts to me over the years. I was even more upset for not handling the situation in the best way.

Fortunately, I work with patient, understanding and forgiving people, but I hate it when I do things like that. I scared myself today because I realized that I am going to be pretty darned careful over these next two performance weeks because I think my emotions are riding a bit higher than I was aware. I'll figure it out, but I may have to find a better way to control my temper than simply quoting television commercials.