end scene.

Every book has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Inside you find chapters that start and finish and those chapters are made up of paragraphs with opening sentences and closing sentences. Each word is necessary. After all is done, a story is told.

Sometimes there are sequels to the book and sometimes when you finish the page you know that you are saying goodbye to the characters for good. Sometimes you are the writer of that book and saying goodbye to the characters is as painful for you as it is for the readers.

I have decided to stop blogging. What I don't understand is why letting go of my blog is so painful. When I named this blog Live Out Loud - Blogging For My Sanity I wasn't being overly dramatic. My blog has been my best friend and my link to so many people. It has gotten me into trouble and it has introduced me to wonderful souls that I am sure I would not have met otherwise. It has been the place I go to relate, to understand, to mourn and to celebrate. It has never been a chore. It has been a gift.

But certain circumstances have challenged me to stop living my private life in front of a public arena. If it was only myself and my own privacy I had to worry about, it would not be a problem, because frankly the only secrets I need to keep are other people's, not my own. If I was unconcerned with earning the trust of those closest to me, or if I was unconcerned with even having anyone around to be close with, then this decision might have gone a different direction. But If I have to chose between being someone people can trust to bear their soul with or being someone with a great blog, I choose the former.

I know people have told me that I don't need to quit blogging all together as long as I make sure not to a, b, c and d. What those people don't understand about me is that I would rather leave a party than hang around making small talk all night, editing everything that comes out of my mouth. I know people have explained that blogging is fine as long as I don't involve other people, but that is proving to be impossible. Much of what I want to talk about involves other people...being that I live in the world and not as a strange hermit person. If I can't talk about my boyfriend, for example, then how do I discuss relationship topics? I suppose I could write in the third person, composing essay style answers to life's pressing questions. Make your blog more like a Sex in the City column type thing, It's been suggested. But that isn't me. That's Sex in the City. I want to talk about real stuff and I want to use real examples. If I can't, then I shant.

So, I shant. I will miss the sharing, but I suppose I won't miss all the criticism. I won't miss having to own up to the world when I repeat a pattern for the millionth time. I won't miss using it as a way to keep the door open to my past. Or maybe I will miss that...

Mostly, I will miss knowing that sometimes, in some ways, my words make one or two people out there laugh or cry or feel less alone. It was funny, just the other day, the same day actually that I came to the conclusion that I was going to stop blogging, I got an email from a reader. It was like she knew what I was deciding and wanted to give her two cents. Like an angel sent to remind me that all these years of blogging my heart's journey into cyberspace have not been in vain, she wrote these words:

"You have such passion... and mixed with that passion is so much doubt. But, unlike so many of us, you push past that doubt and lay it all on the line - daring the world to spit in your face. And it does. And then you doubt. But I wonder if you realize how many of us read your words and gain strength - how many read what you write and say "damn straight"! You echo what so many of us hide inside and are afraid to put into words."

Thank you to everyone and anyone who has tuned into my blog to follow my journey. Wether you are someone who knows me in real life and will continue to know me, someone who used to know me and just wants to get all caught up or someone who has never and may never actually know me beyond this website, I thank you. I will continue at Finding Me and silently blog to y'all in my head when I discover in the fall if I like teaching or when I have my next meltdown-about-the-ex moment or when I move back into my place or when I get stuck inside an inevitable Venus/Mars conflict or when I have yet another spiritual penny drop.

Perhaps this will force me to write a book. Or a screenplay. Or a Broadway hit.

Or maybe in about ten weeks I will explode from Living In Quiet and I'll blog once more.

Only time will tell.

[Krista holds her finger above the Enter button, waits, and then strikes it quickly, getting it over with. Sighing, she tips her head back against the wall behind the bed and listens to her MacBook purr quietly on her lap. One single tear escapes. Krista lets it fall before snapping the lid of the MacBook shut. She places the computer beside her in bed and leans over to turn off her lamp]

[Lights Out]

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The Afternoon That Smelled Like Celery

After all my bluster about how heinous this industry is and how this contract has just confirmed for me how this is not how I want to live my life or Who I Want To Be...I get handed a script and an audition time for the show here in January.

Like an automoton, I took the script and thanked them for the audition time. It didn't even occur to me in that moment to hand the script back and say 'no thank you, I would rather inject hot sand into my eyeballs than to do another contract'. In that moment it just felt so good to be wanted and, overcome with the 'they like me! they like me!' Ego, I simply smiled from ear to ear and felt all warm and gooey inside.

But then things started happening. I went to a party filled with theatre gossip and felt sick to my stomache. I found out a piece of information that made me question if I had been used and definitely made me question if my current employers think much of me at all. Etc, etc, etc. All the crappy crap that I fled from in Toronto, all the icky pooey stuff that my Anything Goes rehearsals reminded me of, allllllll of it, started rushing back and It made me stop and think. If I am unhappy doing theatre contracts then why am I auditioning for another one? Especially when it would take me from my Vancouver nest for another four months? Why am I doing the opposite of what I say?

My answers are sketchy at best. I am terrified of January 2008 coming around and becoming unemployed again with not only a hard go at finding a job, but not even knowing what KIND of job I am looking to do. I also want to do everything and anythnig possible to stay near to my boyfriend, who, too, is auditioning for the show. And because I want to be offered the role, to compete for it and GET IT because getting a role over another person gives my EGO such an instant feed that it makes me feel instantly, if only temporarily, worthy. All three of these excuses are pretty powerful motivators in and of themselves. Together they are flat out blinding.

Tonight Leon and I read over the scenes and had so much fun. THIS IS THE REASON TO DO THE AUDITION, I suddenly realized. For fun. For the joy of it. Without attachment to the outcome, without the fear that it I won't know what else to do, without panic about staying close to Leon, without a need to prove myself. If I audition, which I am not sure I will do, I must only do it for the fun and then if I get the show, I must only take it if it feels 100% wonderful. Otherwise, I really would rather be working retail or filing conveyancing files at a Real Estate office.

Not sure what I will decide. Either way, I will land on my feet.

Pretty sure I still got a few of those nine lives left.

To Edit Or Not To Edit

So, there are things I want to blog about, but can't. Not really. Or shouldn't. Or won't. It seems that having been criticized time and time again about the grey area of privacy has finally worn me down and now, faced with controversy in my own life, I am reticent to speak about it.

What I can say is that I am being challenged to stand up for what I need. Not an easy task. Damn hard actually. As women I think we often 'suggest strongly' what we need, backed up by empty threats and eventually, murmured apologies. Either that or we find our selves NEGOTIATING. We don't much like to just STATE what we need, follow through with what we say will happen if we don't get what we need and not apologize at any step of the way. I am trying to break my gender's patterns. I am trying to stay strong.

When Leanne and I spoke yesterday we talked about embracing a life that might not ever fit into the template of which we are told sucessful lives fit. What if we never have one partner that we meet, love, marry and grow old with? What if we don't ever know motherhood or what if we end up having a baby on our own or in some other unconventional manner? What if our whole lives are filled with career change and contract work and exploration? Whtat if we don't find that one geographical location that we deem as Home and instead hop from city to city, town to town, country to country? Sure, if we live this way there will some experiences that we will miss out on, but on the other hand, those people that don't live this way will be missing out on alot of experiences and adventures and people and passions that our lives will be filled with. Ultimately, it is about being happy with what shows up and if what shows up doesn't fit into a template then so be it.

I wonder what I will be doing next year in 2008? Will I settle back into #206 and find work in Vancouver that is of a full time, permanant nature? Will I be in my place for only a moment and then find myself whisked away to another location where some new and fantastic door opens up? Will I be molding my moves around my relationship, trying to factor in Leon and the places that his career will take him? Are there actual people out there that know where and what and with whom they will be a year from now?

Will I still be blogging or will I eventually edit myself into a state of total silence?