A Year of Action

My mind needs limits. I need to tape over my bookshelves. I need to shutter my windows. I need blinders or I will go mad.

I’m limiting myself to one thing for one year. I’ve said no to death and hell, so I can choose this.

I like it because I was already doing it. I thought of this project, then realized it was already happening. I only need more work to cover the last four months. I don’t think that will be hard.

So what is it? I’m committing to acting for a year. The art, the skill, the discipline of acting. Everything about it: doing it, its history, its implications, everything. But mostly doing it.

This is a year of acting, and it begins now. That is to say, it began in January, but I just figured out what was happening.

What are the parameters?

The year is 2010, the Gregorian calendar year. It is already 90 days completed, but from December 19th, 2009 until March 19th, 2010, I was engaged in a production with three friends, so it has been what I’ve been doing since the new year. The subject is practice of stage acting, the study of its history, its key theories, but the goal is to act. To study by doing.

What am I saying no to?

Poetry, music, philosophy, travel, and ministry. Also, laziness, procrastination, indecision, more indecision, and fear. Of course I’m not really giving up some of these (or any of them, really), and some I am more glad to be saying goodbye to than others (I’m looking at you, philosophy), but the idea is that I can’t do everything, or certainly not all these at once. So while each of these items is a passion of mine, they have to temporarily be unfocused from my attention while I attempt to do one thing well, or, at least, at all. 

What are the measures of success?

Continual focus, discovery, and engagement with this one thing for the entire year. Success is in the constancy, in the dedication, not in the revelations, increase of skill, or any external rewards or affirmation. The goal is to reap the benefits of focus, limitation, and resistance for a year. If I experience the peace and excitement I feel right now, over having just one thing to focus on, if I experience it even several more times this year, I will have won a great victory for myself.

What can you do to be involved?

Help me! Comment, push back, start a blog or project of your own, join me on my adventures, or have coffee with me and discuss what’s going on. I’d like any of those things.

Day one is day 100. Thank you to those who read and take note.