Pace.

All of family, and my closest friends have told me , "Pace youself better Si, that's why you keep losing months at a time." People who've known me for years, know the pattern. I come in out of the fog, work as hard as I  can doing whatever has sparked my interest, regardless of the physical cost. Job done, I then return into the mist for a while and recover. 

Often, as is the way with performing, another opportunity will come up immediately. Depending on what it is, I  asses the risk, and often do it anyway. This was what made me stop performing as a stand up in England. I was doing well, being offered a lot of work, and took the risk over and over, until I realized iI couldn't do it any more.

Then I drank my way through the next three years. Its difficult to see the risk if you are drunk most of the time. In the end I realized that what I'd thought when I was diagnosed with MS years earlier was right, I was leaving. Didn't know where, or why, but I was going.

What I was doing, was running from the city where the worst thing that had ever happened to me lay. Not London's fault. I have nothing but love in my heart for her, but it took distance to see it.

I faced the same pacing mistakes I'd made in London here in Columbus. The acceptance fronm the acting community made me want to keep on pushing, beyond where I could physically go. I've dropped out of 4 plays bcause of it.

My assumption was, no one will ever trust me, they will never book me. Wrong, yet again.

Now I look at my risk level a lot more seriously., not perfectly, but better. I'll still screw up, hopefully, not as much.