Hi there,

A little while back I wrote a complaint letter regarding a ticketing issue. I just wanted to say that the situation was rectified in a timely and professional manner. [manager dude] was extremely helpful and attentive, which I’m very grateful for.

I’m also grateful that I didn’t end up missing out on the excellent cabaret shows playing at the Opera House. Hugh Sheridan’s show Newley Discovered was an interesting and entertaining look at a composer I knew nothing about, yet whose work was all too familiar. Elana Stone and Friends was a real treat of mixed genres and moods – a good time all round. And Trevor Ashley was astonishing and hilarious as Every Woman.

And the mulled wine in the foyer bar was a nice wintery touch!

Thank you for stepping up and kicking proverbial.

Kind regards,
Keira Daley

…Humble pie

1. Sydney Opera House. I called you a jerk when you are, in fact, awesome. I called you to task and you stepped up. I’m going to write you a nicey nice feedback letter of thanks. And maybe make you a mix-tape. You have two ears and a heart, right?

2. Time is never time at all. So I thought I’d be able to do all sorts of other things with my time before and during the run of [title of show]. In reality, outside theatre time, I’ve been able to eat, sleep and occasionally wash things.

3. Promises, promises. I pledged not to whinge about the cold this winter. Yeah, about that…

…Bloody sticky situations

1. Bloody hell.  It was the dress rehearsal for an amateur theatre show of my favourite age-inappropriate role.  Mid-scene, I was bellowing at my stage husband, “Why don’t you love me?” and charged towards him.  I felt my bare foot slip.  The scene continued towards its tender ending, when I noticed my foot was sticking to the old, splintery floorboards on the stage.  At blackout, I went off stage and into the fluro-lit kitchen of the hall – drip, drip, drip went my blood onto the off-white lino.  I didn’t even feel pain until that moment.  Just stickiness.

2. ‘Reel Blood’.  I was playing a psycho in a short horror film.  I had to beat someone up.  The ‘blood’ we used was corn syrup-based.  Someone may have got it on the antiques in the old Victorian mansion we were filming in.  I’m just saying.

3. A thing about blood.  Be warned, some things stick and won’t leave – in this case, it’s the title song from Into the Woods.  Mthrfckr.

…Why I’m back

1. Guilt.  “So Daley, you haven’t updated your blog in a while.  No pressure or anything.  I only check it every day when I’m bored at work and every day I leave it feeling disappointed.  I thought we were friends…”

2. Olympic-level thumb-twiddling.  There’s nothing else to do right now.

3. I miss #yourface.  I’ve realised Twitter is my main reason for not blogging, even though blogging was my main reason for joining Twitter in the first place.  There’s an irony in there somewhere.  Anyway, Twitter forces me to condense my thoughts into 140 characters.  This is no mean feat for me, so when I accomplish it, I feel extremely satisified – as satisfied as I used to feel after a blog post.  But I realise that, while a writer can make a good 140 characters, a good 140 characters does not a writer make (oh, how very droll).

The thing I like about getting older is seeing the patterns in things.  There’s a comfort in having experienced ups and downs before and knowing that, while what goes up must come down, what goes down most of the time eventually drifts upward again.

What may be le suck one week can be awesome the next.  What can be amazing can fade to blerg.

The exciting and terrifying part is, you never know where the peaks and troughs are – how far up  you can climb or how long you’ll ascend for, or how fast or imperceptibly you can fall.  It’s not like you have no choice in the matter, but it’s not all in your hands.  There are too many variables, which can be hard to swallow if you’re a bit control freakish.  Like me.

Many things for me right now are on an upward curve.  Work is pleasant and plentiful.  Friends warm my heart.  My hard slog creatively is getting rewarded.  All the sweat and talking to myself and bizarre exercises and wishing and hoping and dreaming has been diverging into yeses.  But part of it is, I’m getting better at knowing which jetstreams to jump into and spend time in – and when.  It’s as much about quitting as it is persistence.

The entanglement of sine curves in a life adds up to a plate of spaghetti.  Sure, it doesn’t make much sense, but it is edible.