My sign is Cancer. Cancer the CRAB. I think, if I examine habits of various crabs, I’d have to assume that I am, in particular, a hermit crab.

The hermit crab does not actually grow a shell. Instead, they move into empty mollusk shells as they grow, the process that gives them their namesake. A hermit crab locates its prospective shell, inspects the opening with its antennae and, if it likes what it finds, it quickly moves in. When threatened, they withdraw into their shells, blocking the entrance with their thick claws. They maintain a grip inside the shell that is so tenacious that the crab cannot be extracted without breaking the shell.

Oh HELL yeah, that’s me.

Looks like me, no?

Okay, so why is this on my mind today? Well, I have been antsy lately to the extreme. I’ve got the whole “what to do with Casting Qs” issue as well as casting several projects, guest-speaking more than I ever have, writing my weekly columns, wondering if I’ve all but abandoned the actor showcase concept I’ve been working on, and looking into creating podcasts of various columns and chapters of my books for actors to download when they need info about any particular topic I’ve covered. I am all over the map. And it feels way weird. But not.

So, I did a lot of thinking (and talking with Keith — even though he really really really wanted to be sleeping, seeing as it was like 2am) and realized that I am a hermit crab whose current shell is too tight. And one of the (scary) things I have to do, as this creature of migration-to-bigger-shells, is explore those big, scary other shells before I feel safe leaving this too-tight one that will surely crack open, if I stay in it for far too long.

Once I gave myself that visual anchor, I got a LOT more relaxed about the whole thing. It stopped feeling like a trauma-filled concept to have so many balls in the air, so many decisions to make about what to do first (or at all), and so little excited and passionate energy toward any of it. It’s okay to not have passion about something as scary as “moving into a new shell.” But since the move is inevitable, how’s about I just embrace it and MOVE and then have passion about filling that new, larger shell with all of these glorious new opportunities.

Yay!

Oh, and thank you EVERYONE for the emails and comments about the next steps for Casting Qs.

Further, thank you CHIP for fixing comments! Woo hoo!