It’s a long time since I wrote on here – nearly two years! That’s because I’ve been so busy. In my last post, I’d had a term of acting lessons, a singing showcase and was looking forward to appearing on stage in my first panto. I was also beginning to accept that I’m almost certainly autistic, with possibly a touch of ADHD.

Since then, all research and experience has reinforced my belief that the AuDHD label fits me, and that has helped me understand my life so far – it’s like at the opticians, where he puts a lens in front of your eyes and suddenly all the letters spring into sharp focus and you can see. It’s given me a confidence boost, strangely – understanding the reason for problems I’ve had throughout my life helps me feel more sympathetic towards myself and various strategies that I’ve read about help me to negotiate issues.

I’ve sung in three showcases, I think – none of them has been a perfect performance, but I’ve grown a lot more confident about singing in front of others. I’m still having singing lessons, and I’m about to try out a choir, as I love singing in harmonies.

I’ve completed five terms of acting class, performing in a showcase at the end of each one, performing something I wrote myself, something from Shakespeare, something in an American accent, and rehearsing and performing in class or in showcase a variety of other scenes. The only reason I didn’t do classes over the summer term this year was that I was too busy acting…

Talking of which, since that first panto ensemble experience, I’ve been busy! I auditioned for – but failed to get in – Sister Act last year. The audition itself was scary but fun. Unfortunately, the casting for that particular show ended up being a little controversial and upsetting several people. But it all worked out in the end, as I’d unexpectedly taken on the leadership of a Guide unit in the February and it would have been stressful to deal with rushing down to rehearsals every week after the meeting. And instead, I contacted Canterbury Shakespeare Festival and ended up taking on the part of Albany, one of the sons-in-law of King Lear. That was a great experience, rehearsing and performing Shakespeare in the open air, and I’ve kept in touch with the group since, having seen some of their other shows and joining them again this summer to perform in a medieval pageant performance in the middle of Canterbury and not one but two shows – taking the part of a maid in an Aphra Behn play, City Heiress, and then taking the part of Camillo in Winter’s Tale.

I’ve still kept in touch with my home theatre group as well. Although I wasn’t involved in any way with Sister Act, I joined them again for their next panto, Dick Whittington, then auditioned for – and was cast in – the spring play, a fun farce called Out of Order. It was a very small part, but a great experience. And then their summer musical was All Shook Up, for which I was involved as ensemble. That was fantastic, very different from panto, but with a great bunch of people.

All in all, I was kept busy over summer with rehearsals for three different shows, then All Shook Up performances at a local outdoor theatre, followed by two further weeks of rehearsals, followed by show week for City Heiress in a church and then show week for Winter’s Tale in a hotel garden!

I’m still at the stage where I’m learning a lot from every performance and every different show I see, so yesterday I watched a performance from a local theatre group, Tales of Gods and Heroes, and in a couple of weeks I’ll see another local group perform Pirates of Penzance…? – although theatre being theatre, each group tends to have some overlap with others.

Panto auditions are in about three weeks, so hopefully that will then keep me busy again. In the meantime, I’ve signed up for a weekend hillwalking in Wales with Guide Leaders next weekend. And at the end of the month we’re going on holiday in France. And following our first ever cruise in April this year, we’ve signed up for another cruise next year – which will be our first ever two-week holiday!

I need to sort out what Guides are doing over this coming term, which is complicated by the fact that all the other leaders I had have dropped out, due to university or other demands, leaving me doing everything by myself. This is tough, limits me in what I can do with them, and since I also need to dash off straight afterwards to get down to rehearsals (still missing the first hour), it’s a little stressful. I’m hoping to get another leader or two to share the load. Otherwise I might have to reconsider my involvement.

But for now, I’ll continue to push myself to try new things. And I feel the biggest challenge to myself at the moment is that I need to learn to get louder and more passionate – in performance and in life in general. I’ve started pushing myself to practise singing drills etc even with others in the house, but I’m waiting for the opportunity to be alone in the house so that I can try out scenes that have me shouting and reacting strongly. Because that’s something that I really struggle with, even in real life.

I’m still running regularly, with a 10k booked for mid-October, and have just started attending the gym a lot more, as well as aiming to swim once or twice a week. All this has got to have some effect sometime, right? I’ve been doing dance classes as well, although these are focused on fitness rather than the actual dance and I’ve realised that I struggle to remember dance routines unless I can work on them at home from videos and really focus on remembering the different steps. I’ve contemplated looking for actual dance lessons, but adult lessons seem to be ballroom dancing type, which I don’t want, or for people who are young and supple and used to memorizing dance routines. Still, fingers crossed that the panto offers plenty of opportunity for dancing and singing!

And on top of everything else, I’m still writing chapters for novels group. I need to get serious with my writing, rather than fiddling around. Work has reduced massively – I’m blaming AI – but I’m hoping to get more tutoring booked for the next couple of terms so I have at least some income, and with the spare time I’m getting I should be able to focus more on writing and art and other creativity.

And is it worth trying to get paid work acting or as an extra? Something I’m still considering exploring. Any other suggestions?