An Update

Well, folks, it has been a while. So sorry.

My cast got changed on me. For my play. Not cool. See, when I had the guys read, I was pretty ho-hum on some of them, three stood out as quality leads, but one and only one stood out as the secondary male character; John Richter. And so we cast him as the secondary male lead.

My director, though, has been not returning my phone calls/facebook messages/e-mails/smoke signals/frantic pleas of help, so I had no idea how my play was going until last Thursday when she (finally) made it to our Thursday night class, and told me "Things are going well, but I need you to rewrite the ending. Beth is not eating spaghetti off of Ben's head."

Total bullshit, that's what I wrote in my play, but I see her point...ultimately, the spaghetti would spill onto the stage, and somebody would have to then clean it up before the next play went on, which could take a while. It is, after all, spaghetti.

So last night, I ran into Beth (the secondary female lead) and asked her how it was going. She also said it was going well, and that the cast was really great, that Ben's characterization of the lead is awesome, that Sherry's moments shine, etc, so I was enheartened. Then, I saw John Richter and asked him how he thought it was going. And he had no idea what I was talking about. No clue. Hmm...

He had been cast in two plays, as a very minor character in one and a relatively minor character but with a major prescence in mine. And he's only doing the other play. My director hadn't even approached him! What the crap?

So, today, I ran into Beth again, and she said that the guy (I already forgot his name) who is playing the second male lead is...okay, but that Richter would have been perfect. I agree. He would have been.

Ugh.

But school, other than that, is going...um...crappy. Listen, all you hangers-on and faithful fews, I gotta tell you; title abstracting ain't glamorous, but it pays the bills a lot better than any dewey-eyed fantasies I may have about writing idiotic stories for the rest of my life. I'm definitely going through a quarter-life crisis, but I'm definitely coming out the other end of it realizing that I've made some good choices and some bad, and amongst those bad choices are the return to school. Well, no, but to return to school and invest so much time and effort (not to mention the cash) into a degree that will let me do what? Nothing! Continue my job title abstracting, apply to grad schools and rekindle that dying hope for another two measley years at great financial cost? And at the end? Another degree, another sixty-thousand dollars in debt, and a stack of Works by Elliot Rauscher that aren't fit to wipe snot with. Because let's face it, I am not a writer.

Alright. I'm done. My point is that after this semester, I'm dropping out of school forever. There's nothing there for me anymore. And there's no reason to stay on. I've had my fun...I got a story published at one school and I'm getting a play produced at this one, so I figured I should go out when there's nowhere to go but up. I couldn't stand falling back down after that. So no more school. No more Webster University, no more sitting in a class filled with people who every year look younger and younger (think of it...next year's freshman were born in 1990/91. I've wrecked cars older than that!), no more silly stories, no more plays. No more Tuesday Excerpts or Free Write Fridays. None of that. After this semester, I graciously hang up my quill and focus on just breathing and living life. Setting attainable goals.

So this shall be my last blog post. Fare well, readers. I will leave the blog up for a few days, to give the stragglers a chance to read these, my last words to the masses. Goodbye. And remember; in years hence, when people ask you about me, your response should be, "Elliot? Elliot is not a writer."