YOu Just never know when.
Its Thursday 17th of September as well as World Childless Week 2020 and just happens to be Men Matter Too Day. I’m driving into town to get a haircut, which is nicely timed as I’ll be joining all the World Childless Week Champions early Sunday morning for a webinar and I need all the help I can get to look decent.
I’m listening to David Tennant’s podcast and he is chatting with Cush Jumbo, I’ve just turned off Five Island Road onto Spring Hill Road and they are discussing Shakespeare.
As if like magic I’m transported back a quite a few years, I’m sitting on a chair, on stage at what was once called Theatre South.
Different motivators have made me dip my toes into the water of many things over my 50 odd years. The Theatre South acting classes episode was me trying to overcome the intense shyness I’d felt all the way into my 30’s. Nothing brings you out of your shell more than mimicking the movements of a woman you have just met with your noses touching.
Or pretending you are a tree, in front of 12 others whom you have never met. As nerve racking as it was, I enjoyed this part of my life, it was fun, exciting and enriching.
Although I had played Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, it wasn’t Bill’s work that had me sitting on the chair. It was Christmas, we were performing A Christmas Carol and I was playing Bob Cratchit, sitting there at the table with my pretend family and sitting on my knee was Tiny Tim.
Acting gigs are a strange surreal experience, you know it’s not real, but you force yourself to make it real, it’s what performers do.
As I straighten the car after the tight corner that is this intersection, my breath is taken away even though the experience was so many years ago it was visceral. For a fleeting moment I felt like a father and it hurt.
We talk in the CNBC community of triggers and how they can come at the most unexpected times. I believe it’s important to acknowledge them, process them and talk about them, something we guys aren’t that good at. As I reflect on this experience along with today being Men Matter Too Day, I’m sharing this with you. I’m sharing to show you that there will always be triggers, I want to show that, yes, we guys get effected too, but I also want to show that they get easier to manage overtime.
