I can haz crisis?

I think now might be the best time to start scheduling my midlife crisis.

I always hear about men and women with stable and established lives who seem to decide one random morning that everything must change. Careers, relationships, locations, even the clothes they wear and the cars they drive.

The thing is... I don't really have what most would call a 'stable and established' life. I mean, I've always lived in the same state and I have two children who keep me fairly grounded, but I'm a gypsy at heart. And an actor's life is far from what most people would call stable. After a fair amount of drama in my early adulthood, I've managed to relegate it (mostly) to the stage and reform myself from a demanding, cocky diva into an ever-evolving artist with a great appreciation for 'the little things'. Life hands me melons because I've become emotionally dyslexic.

But here's the mastery behind my plan: You see, if I expedite my midlife crisis, I'm not putting it off to those menopausal days where my actions are dictated by hormone-induced psychosis or flights of fancy. I can plan it out methodically and allow my midlife crisis to be fun for everyone! I could sell all of my earthly possessions (and put the sentimental ones in storage - or mom's garage) and take the kids backpacking across Europe to celebrate their High School graduation.

I could take the kids on a cruise and then return to randomly pick a city on a map to relocate to.

I could return to my roots and visit family in Barbados and maybe fall in love with working the plantations. I'm still young enough for manual labor!

I could buy an RV and get a grant to tour the U.S. doing socio-economic and cultural studies of the effects of arts programs (and lack thereof) on inner-city communities.

I could retreat into the jungle and play my own game of 'Lost' meets 'Survivor' meets 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!'

Or... I could just pack another box, move into the next rental house and hope that I can drum up enough work to pay my bills and fund a few audition excursions within the next year...

I'll probably opt for the latter... since it seems that a crisis would indeed take much more planning than I'm willing to put into it right now. But it sounds like so much fun to just go completely 'whack-a-loon' for a while and live absolutely spontaneously.

This is where a little voice in the back of my head says that it's time to start living vicariously through my children. (Oh God, could you imagine me as a full-blown psycho stagemom? Terrifying!) But I really can't bear the thought for long, since my kids are just starting to get a taste of the freedom and independence that adulthood brings (yet without the responsibility) and to impose myself on their lives in this stage of the game would just be cruel.

(Though if they DO want mom tagging along on a backpacking trip across Europe, I'm SO in!!)
Better that I keep them sheltered from the whack-a-loon for just a while longer... though one could argue that they've already been far too exposed to take it back now.

I suppose the mid-life crisis will have to wait until I grow up a little bit more. And there's no telling how long that's actually going to take.

I must close for now so I can don my pencil skirt, twist up my hair, and dust off my German dialect for a callback. Playing 'pretend' for a living. Yeah... growing up is a long way off.

Fingers and toes crossed, kiddos!