Maybe Someday

In the basement of a community theater, two set designers are given the same simple instruction: build a doorframe that can stand on its own in the middle of a bare stage. The first designer, a veteran with decades of experience, meticulously measures, cuts, and joins his lumber. Within a few hours, he has a perfectly square, sturdy frame. It is precise, stable, and exactly what was asked for. The second designer, younger and new to the craft, hesitates. She spends the first hour just watching the actors rehearse, sketching the way they walk, the way they slump their shoulders, the way they pause before an entrance. Then, she begins to build. Her frame is not perfectly square. It leans, just slightly, as if tired. The wood is nicked and softened. One side is noticeably more worn, as if from a thousand hands pushing it open. When the two frames are placed on stage, the director walks past the perfect one without a glance. He stops at the second one. He runs a hand over the worn wood. He looks through the slightly crooked opening and says, ‘This one. This is the one that has a story.’ The first frame was a door. The second was a possibility.

That subtle difference—between technical perfection and emotional truth, between building an object and creating a space for a story to happen—is the territory Zulfi Sayyed has explored his entire career. As a poet and playwright who spent years ghostwriting memoirs for ordinary people with extraordinary inner lives, he became fascinated by the gap between the life we live and the story we tell ourselves about it. He saw how we often build perfect, stable frames for our lives, hoping to find meaning, only to discover that meaning lives in the imperfections, the worn-down edges, and the hesitant lean toward an uncertain future. Frustrated by the polished narratives that left no room for doubt or longing, Sayyed wrote Maybe Someday as a collection of imperfect doorframes—an invitation to see the profound story waiting in the quiet, unfinished parts of our own lives.

Module 1: The Internal Battlefield of Ambition

At the heart of the story is Franny Banks, an aspiring actress in 1990s New York. Her biggest obstacle is the relentless battle inside her own head. This struggle is defined by a few key realities.

First, anxiety is a constant, unwelcome collaborator. Franny’s anxiety isn't just pre-audition jitters. It’s a force that shapes her reality. She has nightmares of disastrous auditions where she can’t control her voice and gets pelted with tomatoes. This symbolizes her deep fear of public failure. When she’s awake, this anxiety latches onto her appearance. She obsesses over her "unruly, impossibly curly hair," seeing it as a physical manifestation of her unsuitability for the profession. This internal critic is so powerful it even sabotages her imagined conversations. She fantasizes about asking a successful classmate for advice, only for the daydream to spiral into a full-blown panic attack. Her anxiety isolates her. It makes every professional step feel like a potential catastrophe.

This leads to a crucial coping mechanism. Humor and self-deprecation are armor against disappointment. Franny constantly uses wit to deflect from her deep-seated fears. When her roommate wakes her by throwing a shoe, she doesn’t get angry. She fires back with a sarcastic pitch for his new "personal wake-up service." This humor masks her embarrassment. She uses it on herself, too. When trying to find the motivation for a run, she dryly observes, "I don’t think I’ve ever heard Meryl Streep attribute her success as an actor to her stellar cardiovascular health." It's a way of acknowledging the absurdity of her own efforts while gently mocking her anxieties. This armor is most visible when she thinks about her backup plan. She could become a teacher and marry her college boyfriend, Clark. She describes this with a resigned, humorous vagueness. She'd be living in the suburbs, doing "well, something all day." That little phrase powerfully understates her lack of passion for this "normal life." It's how she copes with the terrifying possibility of failing at her dream.

But here’s the thing. This humor is a shield against a very real threat. Self-imposed deadlines transform ambition into a source of panic. Franny made a deal with herself. She has three years in New York to make it as an actress. The book opens when she has only six months left. This deadline hangs over everything. It turns every day into a frantic progress report. She fears the "slippery slope" of extending her goal. A three-year plan becomes five. Then, before she knows it, she’s serving "lukewarm lasagna to a bunch of businessmen who call you 'Excuse me.'" This vivid nightmare of mediocrity is her ultimate fear. Her fear is of becoming invisible. She has made some progress. She has a good waitressing job, a commercial agent, and a spot in a respected acting class. But she dismisses these achievements. One accomplishment a year isn't what she envisioned. The gap between her tangible progress and her idealized dream creates a constant, crushing pressure.

Module 2: The Architecture of a Dream

So how do you survive that pressure? Franny’s journey shows that you need more than just talent. You need a structure, both internal and external, to navigate the uncertainty.

A key part of this structure is that you must define your own version of success. For many actors, the dream is an Oscar or a Tony Award. But Franny’s ultimate goal is more personal. She dreams of hosting "An Evening with Frances Banks at the 92nd Street Y." Why? Because the venue is deeply connected to her father and her childhood. It feels authentic to her. This specific, emotionally resonant milestone gives her a tangible vision to hold on to. She thinks of her current struggles and this future achievement as "bookends." The books on the shelf between them aren't written yet, but having the bookends in place gives her a sense of narrative control. It helps her fight the feeling of being lost.

From this foundation, you have to build a system. Rituals and routines create stability in an unstable world. Franny’s life is marked by financial precarity. She measures her life in "twenty-dollar cash withdrawal increments." Her career is a series of auditions and rejections. To manage this, she develops small rituals. On the D train, she always looks up as it crosses the Manhattan Bridge. This simple act connects her to the long history of dreamers who came to the city before her. It’s a moment of perspective that helps her feel less alone. She also meticulously organizes her wardrobe into "uniforms" for different commercial auditions. She has outfits for "Upscale Casual," "Mom Casual," and even "Slutty." This is partly a professional necessity. But it's also a way to exert control over a process that is largely out of her control.

But here's the reality. No one builds a dream alone. Support systems provide the scaffolding for your ambition. Franny’s support network is a mix of encouragement, tough love, and complicated history. Her roommate, Jane, is a constant source of both practical and emotional support. She brings home food from her film set. She offers blunt but loving critiques of Franny’s audition outfits. And she’s the first to celebrate Franny’s small wins. In contrast, Franny’s father is loving but out of touch. He tries to help by giving her a Filofax, a personal organizer, to track her appointments. He suggests she try out for the show "Friends," demonstrating a well-meaning but naive understanding of her world. Then there’s her ex-boyfriend, Clark. He represents a stable, conventional life she left behind. The "agreement" they have to take a break is a source of both comfort and conflict. He is her safety net, but also a symbol of the life she’s terrified of settling for. These relationships ground her, challenge her, and remind her of what’s at stake.

Module 3: The Unwritten Rules of the Game

Once you step into the professional arena, you quickly learn that talent isn't enough. You have to learn the unwritten rules of the industry. Franny’s experiences on sets and in auditions reveal a world that is often surreal, impersonal, and deeply confusing.

The first lesson is a hard one. Your performance is often misinterpreted, blurring the line between success and failure. Franny auditions for a commercial where she plays a mom. She delivers the lines with earnest sincerity, aiming for a heartwarming performance. To her surprise, the casting directors burst out laughing. They praise her for being "funny" and "quirky." Later, she reads the full script and realizes the ad was meant to be ironic. Her serious delivery was seen as a brilliant comedic choice. She’s left completely baffled. Was she good, or did she just fail in a way they happened to like? This experience highlights the subjective nature of creative work. You can’t always control how your efforts are perceived.

This leads to another realization. The professional world is a performance itself. When Franny books her second commercial, she enters the alien world of a professional set. The entire experience is a lesson in constructed reality. Her hair is styled against its nature. Her makeup is designed to erase her freckles. Her wardrobe is literally held together with clamps in the back, creating a "one-sided image of perfection." During the shoot, she repeats the same lines over and over. When the director finally declares a perfect take, she has no idea why that one was better than the others. She’s too shy to ask, afraid of revealing her inexperience. She learns that a huge part of being a professional is projecting an image of competence, even when you feel completely lost.

And here’s the thing. This performance extends beyond the set. You must learn to navigate a world of gatekeepers and ambiguous social codes. Before she gets the commercial, Franny has a meeting with a powerful agent, Barney Sparks. His office is filled with nostalgic theater memorabilia, but his advice is brutally pragmatic. He tells her the theater is "NOT wonderful, IF you want to eat." He offers to represent her, a huge opportunity. Yet, Franny hesitates. It feels "almost too easy," and she’s suspicious. This instinct to question good fortune is a survival mechanism in a world of false promises. Later, at a different agency, she meets Joe Melville. He gives her "the creeps," but his agency is prestigious. She signs with him, telling herself, "It’s show business." This decision to prioritize professional advantage over personal comfort is a classic compromise many aspiring professionals make. It’s a gamble, and it doesn't always pay off.