Last Monday night, I sat down to blog. I spent a good hour or two selecting the perfect photos and choosing the words that expressed exactly what I wanted to say. When I thought everything looked perfect, I hit "publish" and then went to check my shiny new post out. And there and then realised that it was an utter disaster. Lines of text were layered on top of each other making my words a garbled mess that was impossible to read and the formatting of many of my pictures was just "off". And try as I might, I couldn't get it to look right. So finally, frustrated beyond belief, I gave up, saved my post as a draft and determined to come back to it the next day. But then life took over...
Last week was long, busy and stressful and definitely one that I was glad to see the back of come Sunday night. That isn't to say there weren't any good times, there always are, but last week was definitely dominated by the negative aspects; the major one being that last Thursday a member of my drama group, who I also considered to be a friend, lost her battle against cancer. This lady was one of the bravest, strongest and most inspiring women I had ever met and whilst we weren't especially close, I still feel her loss. It was an honour to have known her and I feel privileged to have shared a stage with such an amazing lady. I know that every performance of last week's show was for her.
Yes, that's right, we also performed our annual panto last week. With performances on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and two shows on Saturday, things were certainly busy and made all the more emotional by the events described above. So when our 'director' (I use the term lightly) decided to create a huge fuss over nothing during the interval of the Saturday matinee, which caused people to break down in tears, it was pretty much the final straw. Whilst I don't like to criticise; I have never directed anything myself after all, it seems to me that she isn't really much of a director at all. She ignores half of the work we do at rehearsals, and very rarely has a positive comment to make when she is paying attention. She doesn't take anyone else's ideas onboard when making decisions and uses her position as head of the committee as an excuse to do whatever she likes. Her bossy and highly strung nature have made what is meant to be a fun way of spending your free time a task which needs to be endured. She said she was leaving after the last show, and to be honest, I think we'll all be happier now she isn't directing anything again for a while.
But in the midst of all this sadness, negativity and weariness (I was absolutely wiped out by Sunday), there was some good. We pulled together as a group, supported each other through the hard times, the sadness and confrontations and showed that if we work together, we can make it through. As I've said before, we're more than just people with a common interest, we're friends and it's never been more evident than this past week. And I know that, because of this, our future as a group is bright and we can look ahead with optimism. Bring on the next show!
I also managed to find some happiness in the little things last week, which always helps, and this is something I'll be talking about in an upcoming post, so what I'd like to find out from you is what are the little things that make you smile? How do you pick yourself up when you're in a bad place? Let me know, as I'd love to hear from you! Also, if I get enough responses, I might share some of them so if you don't want this to happen, just make a note of this in your comment too.
'Til next time...
