I’ve never felt that life was too long. If anything, I’ve overdone it on the other side. I can remember saying to the boss of a theatre I worked for (and was agitating for change in): “I don’t have time to waste. I’m going to die. Don’t you realize that? I can’t waste my time in the box office when you contracted me to perform big juicy roles.”
He laughed at me and told me I should take up meditating. I don’t feel that same sense of urgency anymore, or rather, I don’t think, “I can’t do that. I’m going to die someday. I can’t waste that time.” But I do retain a sense of that ticking clock.
Back when I quit that job in which I was being taken advantage of, I was only a few years out of college. I had a sense that I only had a few years to do what I wanted. I think I knew, somewhere deep down, that as a woman who wanted to act, I didn’t have any time to waste. I needed to get all the jobs while I was young. I’d internalized a sense of acting being a bit like gymnastics, that once the bloom was off the rose, there would be no more work. And I wasn’t wrong.
Now, nearly two decades later, I can feel how long my life is and how long it yet still will be. But not so long. Not calamitously long. Just as long as it will be.
The Hamlet Project 