rehearsal is life itself

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

A sketch for nothing is not quite right either. Life is a story without a plot, a Bildungsroman in which we were once children, and the change out of that form of existence is subtle yet constant, a plant unnoticed to be growing day by day but unrecognizable from seedling to tree. We grow unrecognizable from infant to teenager, and the leap from teenager to adult is so insecure it leaves many young adults reeling in denial. Not me, not yet! I’m not ready!

And yet can the same not be said for all life? An eggtooth cracking a baby bird out of its embryo is unaware it will fall from the beak after being used for the first and only time. An actor going on cold is an actor engaged in improv, yes and, yes and. Yes, and what else could life possibly be?

Repetition simply can only occur after one has first lived through the first time. The train ride only seems like an act on autopilot because of the times spent anxious at every stop I rode past first.

The first rehearsal only occurs once the lead actor has obtained knowledge of the plot, whether scripted or not. Background characters can be placed clueless on stage, bit parts can be played without dialogue, accurate accents, time period true costuming. Nobody knows how long the runtime will be, if they will see Acts Two or Three, if the audience will ever appear, will sleep or be left on the edge of their seats.

And some people live their lives convinced they are background characters in the show of life, unimportant, unseen, unloved, and their efforts entirely unacknowledged until they start putting the bare minimum in.

Life in the form of work would be less scary if it weren't always the first run through, if we were given scripts and scenes beforehand. I hadn't known until my third full week on the job what I had thought was an internship involved me doing paralegal work. So instead I sit here typing this as I am entirely unsure what specifically a paralegal even is, nevermind if I can do the work when my boss regularly leaves me alone, adrift in the deep end.

But life is not drowning, it's living - the work will either get done or get me fired. Writing is not work, is far from my first run through, is a skill grown through repetition and practice, albeit one that rarely ever results in profit. If I was a better employee, I would cease writing on company time, and yet I have no willpower, no desire to stop typing, moving my thumbs through this and then feel accomplished despite being far from successful in what I will be ideally maybe paid for if I'm lucky.

But life continued, the day ended, the work did indeed find itself completed, and now I write again from the comfort of my bedroom floor. A vantage point wherein life continues to feel repetitive, though each experience ought to be new. One new experience in my future will be a class in which sketching will take a different meaning - digital art, complete with layers, a more accurate metaphor for life than traditional sketching would be.