Haley Haskin
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- May 18, 2023
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- Haley Haskin
Life Update: The Time I Moved to Branson to Work on a Showboat
I have officially lived in Branson, Missouri for two weeks and three days. As most people who read my blog know, it was really hard for me to leave Louisville at the time I did. By the time I had gotten a job offer from Branson, I had already thrown in the towel on audition season and made plans to stay in Louisville through the spring. I was going to do some community theatre and then go down to Disney to get some seasonal hours and just have fun in the parks again. It wasn’t the most monumental plan to ever exist. But since that was the plan I had, I began to marry myself to it with positive thinking, so much so that I became a tad resentful when opportunity unexpectedly knocked sometime in mid-April.
I antagonized myself for days on whether I should take this new contract in Branson. Every time I thought about abandoning all of my students early and not getting to see their shows and recitals, I teared up. When I thought about not getting to go to Disney I was sad. When I thought about how far I would be from my family, boyfriend, and best friend, I was torn. The whole situation was proving difficult to accept. I kept wondering why God would present me with this opportunity if the decision to take it was proving so difficult. Was it a test? Was it a perspective shift? It was alarming to me that I felt like I was kicking and screaming going into something I had been training and waiting for my whole life (to perform professionally).
But through a series of God-given blessings, God-given solutions to difficult problems, and God-given answers to tedious questions, I finally jumped in, still hoping and praying that I made the right choice.
The getting here was rough. It really was. I said hundreds of goodbyes in the days leading up to my departure. To my students, my co-workers, my dance teacher, my best friend, my dog. I remember sitting in my room the night before I left, hearing the unnerving echoes bouncing off my barren walls. I laid in my bed staring at my empty room, stripped of the self-expression that was caged up in cardboard boxes. I felt so sad about what I was leaving behind, as it is easy to do when you don’t know what it feels like to live the life that is to come. It felt like saying goodbye without understanding hello. I was boldly stepping into a black void of unknown, hoping a surface would appear as my foot fell through the air. I was going on utter faith.
On the day I left, I literally drove away from my students standing down the sidewalk, and my boyfriend standing at my car door. It was so much to process that I finally burst into tears fifteen minutes into my trip to Branson. Luckily my fidget cube, Tom Bilyeu podcasts, and chocolate covered almonds (from my dear friend Sabs) got me through the rest of the seven hours.
When I was an hour out of Branson, the flat yellow fields and vast blue sky began to turn into glassy lakes and stunningly green slopes that went on for miles, uninterrupted by a shred of anything man made. The skies were a watery cotton candy, dazzling with the setting sun that peeped over those eternal rolling hills. The ups and downs and twists and turns of the road felt adventurous, as the golden hour turned to dusk. And inside I felt the bubbling excitement you feel as a high schooler on a night out with your friends or a college student exploring the freedom of adulthood. Maybe this was going to be an amazing adventure after all.
The weeks that followed wanted to prove me wrong once again. Saying goodbye to my family sucked. I felt stressed and disorganized with little time to move into my apartment amidst my work schedule. Rehearsals were the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had never done such complicated rhythm tap in my life, and we learned the entire show in two days! I was fearful from day one that they picked the wrong person for this job. I went home after every long day of rehearsal so exhausted that I couldn’t move. But I forced myself to stand up and practice for another three hours, so I could catch up and be dependable. When I was lying in my bed, I was practicing mentally. When I was in my car, I was listening to rehearsal music. I didn’t get more than five or six hours of sleep a night for at least two weeks.
My pre-existing anxiety flared up like gasoline poured on a bonfire. I was an absolute nervous-wreck; consistently terrified that I would never get the choreography in time for opening night and I would get fired. I cried every day. I was nauseous all the time. I couldn’t eat full meals. My mom mailed me a bunch of anxiety medication. One time I had to drink a glass of wine in the middle of the day to calm the heck down, which is something I never do.
I also got a painful bunion on my heel bone and blisters all over my feet, which made rehearsal mildly excruciating, and had me doing nothing but sitting in epsom salt soaks and ice baths when I was off the clock. I was totally beat up physically, mentally, and emotionally. As a type-A, independent, perfectionist, this was terribly embarrassing and defeating to admit.
But here’s the thing. God can do amazing things when He gets you in a humble enough place. My feelings of deep inadequacy and acknowledgement of my weakness were fertile grounds for God to break my pride and plant emotional recovery in its place.
You can only keep so much to yourself as you go through emotional and physical hardships that alter your well-being. As the days went by, I reached out to my teachers back home and my fellow dancers with full disclosure about how much I was struggling. And they didn’t laugh at me or look down on me. They helped me with patience and encouragement. I told my directors about my injuries, and they didn’t get mad at me. They took care of me and let me know it was okay to take a break. I was continually shocked at how kind and supportive every single person I met was proving to be. It was wild!
This happened over and over – the exchange of my pride for the seed of a new relationship that surprised and surpassed any happiness I had felt before. When the self-built monuments of my pride toppled to the ground, it left space for other people to come in and contribute to the team rebuilding of a person who accepts her dependency on not only God, but on the fellowship of his other children. Being in this new place of healthy reliance on other people, increased my personal awareness and care towards others. My uncharacteristic yet inevitable neediness in the last two weeks ripped me out of my stubbornness, and placed me into this wonderful sweet spot of realization that it is a joyful thing to entrust others to play a meaningful part in your life.
I am thrilled at how surrounded I am by beautiful people – people who are happy and funny and true and kind and cool and supportive and caring. People who create such a genuinely positive environment and don’t give drama and gossip a shred of a foothold. People who are mature enough to be themselves, and therefore let you be yourself without judging what you like or who you are. For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have to put on a show. I feel 100% comfortable being me, and around these people I met only two weeks ago!
During the hardships I seemed to face time after time in the last two weeks, I was sure that I had made the wrong choice. I thought I had somehow accidentally gone against God’s plan for my life and as a result everything was falling apart. But now I know that God was saving it! He was teaching me perseverance so He could bless me unequivocally with all of this!
The atmosphere of my new workplace is extraordinary! Every single person I’ve met here is incredibly, genuinely nice. Life is not annoying. There is no negativity. I am not made to feel like an inconvenience. I’ve never experienced performing professionally quite like this before! Branson is absolutely gorgeous. I get to spend my workdays on a beautiful lake, on the top deck of our showboat gazing out to where the lake meets the mountains, or in the dressing room with all my new friends, or onstage dancing for a living! (How many aspiring performers get to say that?) It has been two weeks, and I already feel so welcomed, so warm, and so at home. I have a feeling these next six months are going to be some of the coolest most memorable months of my life! I am continually blown away by the gifts God allows his children to have, and I am so, so thankful.
