Meditations on Past Stupidity

It seems pretty obvious to me that, up until about four years ago, I was completely insane. Really. I look at the choices I made back then, and it’s clear that I was mentally impaired in some way. And I’d love to go back and beat some sense into myself.

I spent more than seven years living in New York, from about 1995 to the very beginning of 2004. My express purpose in moving to the quintessential Big City was to study acting, at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. What an incredibly original idea, no? But New York is the place to be for getting a start in the performing arts, in truth, second only to Los Angeles or London. So how much acting did I do? Not much. Almost none that wasn’t required for school or the classes I took after leaving school. Why? Because it was a lot more fun to hang out and smoke weed. I exemplified, and continue to exemplify, wasted potential. I could have spent seven years working hard and building some kind of career. I would like to go back to my 23-year-old self, and try to explain the enormous opportunity that ranged in front of my former self, and maybe smack the joint out of my hand.

I spent a year traveling with the Big Apple Circus around the northeast. It was a good year, filled with hard work and odd people, and more weed. In the second or third month, when the show was set up in Lincoln Center, a temp came to work on the Usher Crew. She and I hit it off incredibly well, started dating, and were pretty much inseparable for the three months of the Lincoln Center run. But she came from a very close knit Chinese family, and her mother would have none of her going off to travel the country with strangers. So I rolled out with the show, and she stayed in the city. And somewhere along the way, out on the road, I lost my fucking mind, and broke up with her. It’s been more than six years now, and I still have a sense of loss that feels like it’s here to stay. I don’t think I’m letting my imagination run away with me, as pretty much everyone who knew the both of us agrees that breaking up with her was the stupidest of a number of stupid things they’ve been privileged to see me do. Of course, my thinking at the time was that I’d end up breaking her heart, and that she could do better, which, observing the man I am now, still seems true.

But I’d still like to explain to my former self that I wasn’t gonna do any better.