WHY I DO SO MUCH LAUNDRY by Connor Hadley
I do a lot of laundry. I don’t wear more clothes than the average person, and I own plenty of pairs of socks and underwear, but I nearly always start big “to do” lists with emptying my hamper.
This was pointed out to me by a friend a few weeks ago when I was rattling off things I had to do on a Saturday. I think his exact words were “Girl, why are you always at the laundromat?” And I thought about it for a second, and realized he was right.
Connor outside his local laundromat in Astoria.
I’m fairly (read: very) Type A. I like lists, I’m not *great* with free time, and I enjoy concrete tasks that I can start and complete in one sitting. Laundry is EASY in that way. I know exactly how it will go every time.
I don’t love the process; I know the process. There isn’t a lot of guessing, it doesn’t take any skill or amount of vulnerability, and at the end of the day, if nothing else, I can say I got that done.
A bit of background on me before I continue:
From the ages of 16-25, I told myself I didn’t want to be an actor. The career path was too uncertain, I didn’t think I was good enough, I was closeted and wanted to shed my “gay theater kid” persona… the list goes on. So, I didn’t pursue it! I got a degree in public relations and business management and went on to do external communications for the largest hospital system in New York.
Connor (bottom right) in his high school production of Once Upon a Mattress, before giving up the theatre to pursue a muggle job.
And guess what reader? I was fuckin’ good at it. I led projects well above my paygrade and was respected amongst colleagues and leadership. I’ll spare you all of the details about my re-discovering why I needed to do theater, but the Cliff Notes version (related to that job) is that I didn’t love the WORK I was doing at the hospital. I loved how the tasks were concrete and direct, and I got supreme satisfaction by doing them WELL. But in the end, my heart won out, and that’s how I ended up here.
So now I find myself in “The BizTM” and I need to do things like “work on this song” and “answer questions about this character” and while the tasks themselves are not overly difficult they’re… well… difficult.
In some ways, it’s because you don’t know if you’re doing them right. But then again, is there even a “right”? And if you get to an audition and they’re only asking for 8 bars, who really cares about all of the character work you’ve done? How are they possibly going to see that from the other side of the table?
But I think underneath all of these reasons (and excuses we make for ourselves), there is an underlying thought: what if we do put in all of the work, and we do spend the time, and we have absolutely given the best of ourselves to a project… and it still isn’t enough? And people still don’t like us? We still don’t get the job?
So, we avoid those things on our lists. For example, by doing laundry.
Well, friends, here’s the thing. As someone who’s spent some crucial years avoiding that level of vulnerability, I can tell you that the alternative isn’t satisfying. Without big risk, there is no big reward. Doing laundry over and over again will make you feel good about doing something— but it won’t push you to grow as a person.
It is only through the small, detailed, often confusing (and admittedly difficult) tasks that we inch ourselves toward success. I had absolutely no idea where to start the first time I tried to answer “questions about a character”! But I set aside the time, I committed to it, and I did it. And each time since then has gotten exponentially easier.
The raw and vulnerable version of ourselves that comes out as we do this work is the exact person that others want to see. It’s ok to be afraid of the complex tasks on your to-do list, but do them anyway. Break them up, little by little, task by task, until they are somewhere higher on your list than washing your dirty clothes.
Connor is an NYC-based actor, singer, and dancer, who did experience and survive the Hairspray open call of 2020. Born and raised at the Jersey Shore, he moved to the city to do communications for a major hospital and needless to say, that isn't a thing anymore! He's learning that he has the type of face that makes people stop him in the grocery store to tell him their life story. @connorhadley