Yet Another Tech Week Survived

I'm at the end of two days off. I needed the time so badly. I go through a tech week about every two months and they still rear up in front of me and knock me on my ass. Generally speaking, once we start the lighting sessions, I have about two or three days in there where I come into work before 9am and leave just before Midnight. By the third day, coffee does . . . well . . . pretty much nothing.

The other thing that always amazes me about Tech week is, no matter how much of a mess a production is on the first piano staging, it always seems to come together as a show by the time final dress rolls around. I left final dress on Wednesday night with weightless shoulders. There were a couple of off moments: props getting stuck in pockets, hats rolling down stairs, a drop off it's in-spike....silly things - easy fixes. But the show itself was there. People were laughing, the dancers were beautiful, the dialogue was on. It was a huge relief for me and I KNOW it was a huge relief for my director.

So yesterday, instead of stressing about notes, thinking about whether or not people would go on, wondering how something was going to come together, I did nothing that had to do with work. I went shopping. I bought a dress for the opening and had lunch at Neiman's with my stage manager. It was all very chic, ladies-who-lunch, holiday cheer etc, etc, and it felt great to be weightless.

My health is starting to return. I still feel my heart rate speeding up at night when my thoughts go wild, but I'm waking up feeling rested and looking ahead to home and Christmas with the fam, and all of the important things in life on the other side of my work...