In the Mood

Yesterday I spent 13 hours at the theatre helping set up for a little musical called "In the Mood." It was a 1940's themed thing. They had a band come and it was all song and dance but 1940's style. It was adorable. I loved every minute of it! A big Penske truck came and we unloaded tons of wheeled crates and then set up everything: lighting, sound, set etc. I learned so so much and I was really grateful for Megan Ingalls and everything she taught me. I never really realized all that goes into a little production like that. Each and every light has to be focused, all the coloring and angles and diffusion and sharpness. Then for the sound: a million cables had to be labeled and hidden and then they had to calibrate all the speakers and make sure everything sounded perfect.

I thought that it was awesome that people came together with their specific talents to make this thing work. It was wonderful to see people all doing their thing and working together and how nice everyone was to each other.

Things are starting to be different soon though. Now people are finding out that I am mormon and I'm not sure that the theatre kids have had such a great experience with mormon kids. It's not that I was trying to hide it nor proclaim it, it's more of that I was trying to stay... neutral? Just be me, be a good example. I'm not sure how to handle this to tell you the truth. There are two sides of the spectrum and there is a very fine line in between. On one side there is the over zealous, crazy mormon child who tries to convert everyone and is a stickler about her beliefs and standards. Then on the other side there is the girl who wants to fit so she throws out her standards and is a mormon only around moron kids, who doesn't CTR and is only a mormon by title. I want to still be a good person and keep my standards, but I also don't want to get the "Preachy little goody-two-shoes" reputation because that doesn't help anybody. So here is the philosophy I came up with and I used swearing because that is the first problem I have encountered. I have been thinking about it a lot:

I don't swear. I don't ever plan on making that a habit. This is high school and other people do swear and there is no way around that. I ignore it the rest of the day, I can ignore it in the theatre. Yes, if it someone has an extremely bad swearing problem then I can ask them to stop but I am not going to go around looking for swear words so I can ask people to cut it out. People swear but I will not and what others say says a lot about who they are as a person and I will always remember that. "Be in the world but not of it" and that is my plan.