Letting go

I wish that I could say that I am one of those people who put things behind them the minute they are over. Arguments, insults, praise, etc. My Dad is. But I'm not. I dwell in the past and I have some trouble letting go of things that bug me. Like the children Fran Leibowitz knows, I can go one and on about something long after your interest has waned.

As an example: I had a disagreement on Saturday with a fellow cast member. A bunch of us were at lunch and Jim brought up his belief that the peer review for community theater program in which I am very active is rigged. He believes - and states strongly - that when the votes are tallied, any show which isn't chosen by the powers that be won't win. Unfortunately for Jim (and for - sigh - everyone else at lunch) I hear over and over variations on that argument from folks who didn't win a particular award. Jim was the first to suggest intentional fraud rather than simple bias, but it's still a touchy subject with me, which he doesn't know me well enough to know.

(For the record, my company, Silver Spring Stage has, in the four years in which it has participated in WATCH, recieved 10 nominations and no awards. If anyone should be allowed to claim bias, it's me. And I don't.)

I won't go into the whole thing, but it's enough to say that a can of worms was opened. His arguments got more stident and my tone got frostier (and, most likely, more strident, too. I can do strident.) until we were the only ones talking and the others looked as though they wished they were somewhere else. So we agreed to disagree and let it go. We even did the "no hard feelings" hug/kiss.

But.

Sunday morning when I woke up, I was still marshalling arguments. In other words, even with no Jim present, I was still carrying on the discussion. I literally woke up framing rebuttals. And kept doing it randomly during the day. I think I'm done now. I'm pretty sure I am. But I wish I could be the sort of person who lets go right away instead of keeping my basket so full.