Apologies for no free post last week. I kept telling myself I’d get around to it and then when I’d try, absolutely nothing came out. I didn’t admit to myself that last week’s newsletter just wasn’t happening until, well, this week.
It was more than writer’s block. I was a little sick of talking about myself, especially after the previews of my show (which went amazing, by the way!!!!!). Weeks of self promotion had me a little sick of my own voice, which is rare for me. I LOVE my own voice. I have perfect, amazing opinions and I love sharing them with everyone (this is literally a weekly newsletter about myself). But after telling person after person that “it’s a one-woman rom-com where I’m obsessed with being in a will-they-won’t-they relationship with a man but then spoiler, I’m gay! You should totally come! There’s a Monday show! Do you want a flyer?” I kinda wanted to just hear what everyone else had going on. So staring down an empty pages doc searching for things to say about myself, I blanked.
But that was then, this is now! Time to get back to me, me, me! [The people cheer.] Tell us Shea, what ARE you thinking about this week?
The answer is basically the same things I’ve been thinking about for months. Leaving London, taking my show to Edinburgh, how I never quite learned how to defend my hair from the cocaine-filled water of London plumbing. I wrote about leaving London in my newsletter over a month ago, which was a little rude because now that I’m 13 days from leaving London, I, of course, want to write about leaving again. If anything, I want to write about it so I can convince myself that it’s really happening. It hasn’t really hit. I thought it would after the previews, but the only reality I faced was the height of the laundry pile. Maybe it will feel real when I sell my Monstera plant that I’ve been meaning to re-pot since Liz Truss was PM (a little british politics humour for you - note the u there).
Whether or not the leaving ever feels real, I am entering another season of Talking About Myself. I have another little spiel to give over and over, this time about my exit plan that I’ve memorized like an audition monologue: My visa’s actually up in the fall but it was just easier to give up my flat in London before I went to Fringe. So I’ll be in Edinburgh for all of August, and then my friend is actually getting married in Ireland in October so it didn’t make sense to go all the way back to the US, so I’m going to spend September in Brighton! Yeah I know it’s so cute! I’ve always wanted to live there. Be by the sea, you know? And it’s gay! Yeah so then I’ll go to Ireland for the wedding and then back to North Carolina! It’s a pretty tight script. It’s got logistic information, it’s got intention, it’s got beginning, middle, and end — what more could you want?
The ending’s a little like the beginning in that way, the script has just changed. I just moved here actually! South Carolina, have you heard of it? It’s two states above Florida. My mom’s Canadian, so I’m here on a Commonwealth visa. I don’t know, I just thought it would be cool to live somewhere new! Yes, the weather is very bad. Hey, what do you do about the water?
Over and over I’d say this to strangers, desperate to talk to someone who wasn’t in a time zone 5 hours behind. These scripts are my little lifelines throughout big transitions, conveying the basic facts that hopefully contextualize the huge life changes I’m undergoing. But I worry sometimes that I’ll be caught. That someone will notice I present this information the exact same way every time, editorialize in the same way, make the same jokes. It feels inauthentic, like I’m playing a part on a stage, pretending to you that it’s the first time I’ve ever had to tell someone that I’ve lived here for “A little over 2 years! It’s gone by so quickly but it also feels like forever!” As if anyone would care. As if everyone doesn’t have to do the exact same thing, have their same little jokes about their jobs and where they’re from. Who’s to say that’s insincere? We’ve all found cute little ways to present the facts of our lives. We know what beats to hit, what context to include. Why change it?
So I’m gearing up for my season of Talking About Myself, not just with the leaving but with the month of self-promotion at Fringe. I’ll pack my clothes and my toothbrush and my little spiels about how “it’s actually more of a play than a standup show!” and I guess I’ll be on my way! I’ll hit the same beats and make the same jokes over and over, until months from now when I‘ll be saying “I just moved back from London actually! Did you know the water has cocaine sediment in it?”
listened to this week: the rain outside (the weather is bad here)
I have one more fundraiser coming up, a brat pub quiz, July 25 8:30 at the Glitch (ghost tix available if you wanna support but can’t come!)
buy tix for the Ed Fringe run of Will Shea, Won’t Shea? here