Questions (part 2).

I'm an idiot (perhaps that would have been a better title for this post)! So, yeah, I am an idiot who doesn't seem to know how to take her own advice, or apparently learn from her own mistakes, I guess, until I do? My last post was all about how it doesn't matter how many people read my blogs, or listen to my music, or if they like it or not. Ideally, that it only matters that I put myself, and my work out there, and that I'm happy with what I'm doing. And then I spent the majority of the next two weeks getting really angry while comparing myself to everyone under the sun. So I took a breath, and I realized that I'm so busy looking at where everyone else is, and what they have, and whining about what I'm lacking and me, me, me, me that I'm MISSING THE POINT...I'm missing out on my life!!! Living this way has taken the love and joy out of my experiences. So how many blog posts do I need to write about the same damn thing until I make a real change? Can we say someone's a slow learner???

I've decided that I need to stop whatever I'm doing, and to start bringing the love and joy back into my life.  I've wanted to be a performer since I was a kid, because I LOVED it.  Nothing made me happier than singing, and listening to music and being on stage, but somewhere, at some point something changed. I think everyday (as I tried to turn this joy, into my career) a little joy left, until all that remained are doubts, and questions, and never feeling that my gifts are good enough.  When I record something and listen back to it, do you know what I hear?  Mistakes.  Once in a blue moon, I think "Oh that note was nice" but mostly I hear what's wrong. I think, you're not up to the same standard as so and so. You can't hit that note like what's her name. Well, that's bullshit. I'm here for a reason.  I've always believed, and still do, it's to entertain people.  All I want to do is to lift up others, but how in the hell can I do that when I cannot lift up myself?

So here's the deal.  No more. Yeah, I've said it before, but I don't see how much more I can continue traveling down the same road with the same attitude without going crazy, so I need to make this change for my own happiness. I can no longer be obsessed with every little move and decision I make.  I want to enjoy my life, because Lord knows, we don't know how long we've got.  I want to sing because I LOVE TO SING.  I want to do it and NOT judge every single note. And I don't want to do anything, if it doesn't bring me joy!! You know, it's funny, when you ask questions, sometimes you find the answers. Crazy, I know!! I started writing this blog on Wednesday night (I texted myself the opening paragraph) and then this morning on Facebook I read a post by Danielle LaPorte. She's starting her own magazine and she wrote this to her team, "We're going to grow this our way. In a way that feels good, healthy, fun. Joyful. Freedom-based".  And there it is, JOY! Why didn't I realize this before? I'm gonna do this my way, and it's going to be joyful. Why shouldn't it be?

I also went to see Sara Bareilles sing at the Highline Ballroom on Thursday night, and not only was she fucking amazing, it was the greatest thing I could have done for myself.  This was the last stop on her solo tour, called Brave.  And by solo, I mean solo (she was up there by herself with only a piano and a few guitars).  She owned that room, not only because she's insanely talented, but because she bared her soul up there and you could tell she loved every single second of it. She also was funny and self-deprecating...she fucked up, and called herself out on it, and it only made every one love her more.  She said a few of her friends told her to do this tour, and she didn't want to, it scared her, but because she was telling everyone else to be "Brave", she decided to put her money where her mouth was. So she risked and did it, and she said it was one of the best experiences of her life.   I was inspired.  I left there with more purpose than ever.  Life isn't supposed to be perfect.  You're supposed to make mistakes.  And as my teacher, the incomparable (Tony and Emmy winner) Helen Gallagher says, mistakes are the only thing you learn from.  You don't learn from success.  I'm tired of trying to do everything right; like if I don't do it this way, the right way, I'll never move forward.  I'm finally realizing that I'm going nowhere with that mentality.

Sure, I write this blog, and started it mainly, because I really do hope people like it, and get something from it.  That maybe my 'issues' might help someone else with their own.  But at this moment, I'm writing it for myself, in the hopes that I will learn from what I'm putting out there.  That when those gremlins creep into my ear, shouting doubts and filling me with fear, I will reread this and know that I cannot listen to them. To live for the love and the joy. Cause what else are we doing, if we don't?

One last thought...I really start to take notice of things, like someone is trying to tell me something, when I see things multiple times.  And I've seen this quote twice, two days in a row, on different sites, so I think it's a lesson I should learn and it feels right to share:

     "If you see your path laid out in front of you --Step one, Step two, Step three-- you only know one thing...it's not your path.  Your path is created in the moment of action.  If you can see it laid out in front of you, you can be sure it is someone else's path.  That is why you see it so clearly"

                                                                                                                 -Joseph Campbell

Questions...

So I made this promise to myself that I'd publish a new post every other week and I started to have a bit of a panic when I headed into the second week and I had no idea what to write about. That's not entirely true, I had a few 'ideas', none of which seemed to be organic but rather just something to say. I could have rambled on about the audition I went on last week but I don't know that I have anything inspirational to say about it. Well, I showed up, that's good, right?

It wasn't until I was meditating on Wednesday night (Yes, I meditate. I think I do, anyway. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure if what I do is meditating. If so, I'm probably doing it wrong. And no, that doesn't give me any anxiety at all during the one thing that is supposed to clear my mind and calm me down. And yes, my sarcasm seems to still be in tact). Anyway, during this "meditation" a thought popped in to my head (isn't a thought a so called "no, no" in meditation?); so this thought was about my goal, writing and recording these songs, and then immediately, this string of overwhelmingly negative thoughts flooded in. They sounded something like this, "Go ahead and do it, but no one will care, because the things you put out into the world do not get noticed in the ways other people's do. You do not affect people in the way you hope to. You will be disappointed yet again".

I tried to stop these thoughts, but did you ever try to NOT think about something? Let's try it now, do not think about orange...yep, all you can do is think about oranges, or the color orange, or an oompa loompa, right? And if you successfully did not think of orange, I want to know your secret. So I started to let those thoughts go, and they were replaced by many questions. Why am I doing this? Really, what is my motivation for all of this? This blog? This music? This career? What am I doing it for? Am I doing it so that I can look on my blog's main page and see how many hits I've gotten (don't think I don't do it, because I do, and readership has declined last post), or how many people listen to my clips on SoundCloud (yep, check that too), or what about how many comments I get on my statuses? Do we just do things now for a like on Facebook? Does it validate who we are if we have a few more 'friends' than our neighbor? Will I still be happy with myself if those thoughts come true and what I put out into the world, though it may make me feel proud, and productive, and of some service to the world, go unnoticed? Will I truly be okay with that? And if not, what am I doing it for? I told you, questions have come up, and I'm now struggling to find those answers.

Sure I think it's human to want to be accepted and liked. We want to matter. We want to be heard. But does it make you less of a gift if some one hates on your YouTube clip? And on that note, what's worse: a negative comment, or being completely ignored? I've dealt with both and I don't know. I'm trying to not hold onto the outcomes. I hope that what I share finds the people that might benefit from it, and I think I need to accept that it's okay if it's only a handful of people. I need to let go of thinking that my work is less important if only a hundred people hear it. Do I hope that thousands or hey, might as well dream big here, millions of people stumble upon my work one day and enjoy it, heck even love it? Of course. But if that is not the case, I hope I can look inside and know that I am the same worthwhile person I was before. And I will not let the fear of disappointment get the best of me. I may create something that people dislike, or have no opinion about, or completely ignore, but I will have done what I dreamt of doing. Maybe that's why I do it, because I have to.

In the end, I believe there's a plan. And when you follow your passions and dreams wholeheartedly, they'll lead you to your best life (maybe that's singing in front of 13,000 people, or maybe it's 13, you just won't know until you go out and sing). And if we're happy with who we are, with what we are contributing to the world, and the life we are living, we might just be okay.

THESE FOOLISH THINGS...

Sometimes I doubt, and loudly. Sometimes the doubts get so loud, and scary, that it hurts. A few months ago they hit me so hard, I felt like I hit a wall. I really questioned if I should still be pursuing this career. I got up on a Saturday morning, took a shower and wept...for a long time. Thankfully, no one saw me because I'm one ugly crier. I mean like U-G-L-Y. Anyway, after I stopped, I realized I'm not ready to give up. BUT I could no longer continue on the same road I was on. Something had to change. Then I sat down to write (I'm not a big journaler, this blog is as journal-ly as I get. I've had a few diaries as a kid with entries like "I hate so and so, so much, everybody loves her blah, blah, blah". I filled in like three pages, and never wrote in them again. But something told me to write down what it felt like at that moment. Well, it felt like rock-bottom, and here it is, in all it's unedited, depressed gory glory:

     This is what rock-bottom looks like, well what it looks like to me. It’s a Saturday, early afternoon in February. Lying on the kitchen floor using a knife to pry the box of Benadryl that had fallen underneath the oven…Benadryl is expensive, when you are broke, not just broke but severely in debt. Rock-bottom is not knowing if you’ll have enough money to pay your health insurance this month or the next, but rock-bottom is knowing that you can no longer live in the state you are in. So there is a choice to be made, whether to continue on your path, albeit in a new direction, to give it up and try something new, or to end it. A brief dialogue goes on in your mind, and you then know in your heart that the option to end it is no option at all. So what to do? Get serious, because none of us have an infinite amount of time, and I’ve wasted enough minutes, and hours, and days, and months that have added up to years of, I can’t say complete failure because I’ve had some successes, and I’ve had some fun, and I’ve held on to my dreams, but holding on, and doing everything I possibly could do to move them forward...are different things, and I know I haven’t. I’m lazy and I get mad that things haven’t happened for me like other people but how can I? Yes, we may have the same dreams and I may even have more talent but they got up, and fell down and got right back up again the next day, and I got up, went to work and went back to sleep again. It’s not enough.

     I’ve spend my entire life afraid of making a fool of myself. God forbid I make a mistake, or even worse? I make a mistake in front of someone else, some one that I admire, or love, or someone I will never ever see again. I am so afraid to make a mistake, I don’t do a damn thing. You can’t get hurt, or embarrassed, or feel like a fool if you don’t do anything, but you can’t grow, and can’t succeed without a risk, a failure, having someone think that you suck, you’re an ass, you’re not good enough. Someone said if you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried hard enough. I haven’t failed enough. I haven’t done ENOUGH. 

     In my some odd thirty years of life, I have never taken a NYC bus ride by myself, why? Oh, right, because I was afraid that I would do the wrong thing and someone might think I was an idiot, or get annoyed that I didn’t know what I was doing, or shake their head at me. I might make a fool of myself, on the bus, in front of strangers. Holy shit, how bad would that be? (Side note: the me right now writing this blog and re-reading this realizes that this is a ridiculous fear, but it was my fear and I'm putting it out there and owning it. Okay, continuing on.) Well, I took a trip on the bus Friday night and I didn’t know I was supposed to use my metro to purchase a receipt for the bus outside of the bus. So I waited for the bus in the cold, got on the bus expecting to use my metro card and Ouch, I was wrong. Off the bus. So I had to wait for another bus...you know what the worst thing was? Waiting in the fucking cold for another bus. I made a mistake in public, and I didn’t die. 

     And so this is my project, my goal for the next 365 days. I do at least one thing a day for my career (write a line to a song, rewrite a line in a script, write a new line, submit for a project, record a song and put it on my website, go on an EPA audition/open call etc) and then document it here. Maybe it’s a small step one day, or maybe it’ll be a leap, but I can no longer play small, or I will HAVE to give this up. I will pick songs that I feel uncomfortable performing or singing. I’m not only here to perform greatly, but I’m here to learn all I can. I will try to make a fool of myself as much as I can, I will risk, because then I will deserve my just rewards. The time to be a fool in now! 

Reading that back now reminds me of what one of my college professors said of my short stories: Melodramatic! I used to watch a lot of soaps as a kid (yep, digressing again). But it's 100% how I felt at that moment, after questioning giving up my dreams, and then firmly believing, and saying NO, I CANNOT DO THAT TO MYSELF! But reading it now also feels like a wake up call once again, because can I honestly say that I've done one thing every single day since February 2nd, the day of my breakdown breakthrough, nope.  That's partly because the "documenting" I mentioned above lasted all of three days, so I don't know what I did, and when I did what (hmm, could consistency be an issue for me?) And, dear friends, it's also because I'm a lazy broad, probably not entirely sloth-like but who's to judge. However, I've written, and I've put myself out there a little more, and I've been embarrassed, and I've stumbled still, and I try to look people in the eye everyday, hold my head up high, and show up for myself...and I haven't felt like quitting, because I don't want to get off this road, because it's where I'm supposed to be. I AM A FOOL, and I'm kinda okay with it (so far)*.


*Looking forward to sharing the result of a little risk I embarked on today (let's say next blog post shall we?)!

I'm a LIAR!!

I’m a LIAR!!!! I’ll explain in a bit, but its true!

What a crazy week! It started off not too good (grammar?) when Sunday night I waited by my computer refreshing my mail, oh, every few seconds to see if my play made the finals (by the way, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this and there I was doing it) until around 12:30am Monday morning rolled around when I found out we didn’t make them. Sigh. So yeah I thought I’d be completely be fine with this news and boy was I completely WRONG!! I started to cry (I know, I know...DRAMA). But see not making the finals made me feel like a loser, because if I can't even advance in this festival, how can I get something really big to happen in my career? And then the big moment hit (a moment I’ve had a few times before), I wondered if it was time to pack it all in. That’s when the waterworks really kicked in because the thought of giving up or losing my dreams was almost unbearable.

Now here is why I call myself a liar, because if you read last weeks blog post I stated (yes, I’m actually going to quote myself here), I stated: “As much as it would be amazing to hear tonight that I made the Finals, I don’t have to make them to feel like I’ve accomplished something…that’s enough!” Wow, it appears I’m full of crap. So after I cried & cried & cried some more, I finally stopped & said to myself, "f#*k it". Because I realized just how much I still want this!! So now is the time to get it together & work your ass off like never before. So that is what I promised myself I would do.

I won’t lie to you again, Monday SUCKED!!! I sulked like a little baby. I was a complete brat!! And Tuesday rolled around and I decided the time was now. So I called to set up two seminars with two different agents. I went to my singing class so I could do what I love probably almost more than anything which is to sing (cause that’s what you do in a singing class, in case you didn’t know)! Then I headed to the Network to pick out sides for the upcoming seminars and then I did probably my second favorite thing in the world to do: SHOP!! Got two cute dresses at H&M and I didn’t use my credit card, yay!

Wednesday night I checked my “professional” email and saw that I got an email from a casting director for a commercial the next day but here it was like 9:30pm and I didn’t know the time or what I needed to do and it was so last minute and I’ll have to take off from work. What should I do? (yes, this is actually what goes through my head). I emailed him back for info…didn’t find out until 8:00am when I woke up, that the audition is at 11:30 and I need to wear a sexy dress. Oh dear God. Now comes the real true me (and its very difficult for me to admit that this is what runs through my mind, but I promised that this blog would be as honest as it could be so I’ll admit it to you). I started writing him an email that I couldn’t make it. You may be asking yourself, what the hell is wrong with this girl. That’s a freaking excellent question and if you know the answer, please email me pronto!!! I was thinking all kinds of crazy thoughts. What should I wear? Do I want to wear a sexy dress? I'm not sexy! What time will I get back to work? What do I have to do there? What if I’m horrible and he never calls me in again? What if this is an April Fools joke?(no kidding, that thought ran through my head as well as a few more that I won't mention). So before I hit send, I took a shower and remembered the promise I made to myself. So I picked out a dress, got my headshot, I deleted the email that I wrote before, I got on that train and tried to do the best impression of sexy I could muster (well, not on the train but you know). And while I was there I couldn’t believe I actually thought about not going. What an idiot!!!! I’d love to tell you that I got a call back, but being that the call backs are tomorrow and this being pretty late Sunday night and since I didn’t hear from them yet I think it’s a safe bet that I didn’t get one, but that’s okay. It’s okay because I pushed myself. Maybe "normal" people don’t have these thoughts going through their heads and the palpable fear in their stomachs, but this "nut" does. So when I push through that fear, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

On the way back to the train, I got an email from an old director/writer friend who cast me in the first professional play I ever did in NY after I graduated college. He needed my number. I later got a call from him asking if I would be in his workshop for the new play he’s writing. It’s a 3-4 week workshop and I will be paid (I'm sorry, what did you say?? Money? Yes, money…clearly I don’t do this just for the money, but man when you get real money on top of it, its AMAZING!). So I immediately said yes. Crazy thoughts came into my head again, but I won’t bore you with them as I refuse to entertain them. I’m learning that when you (well, me) open yourself (well, myself) up to new experiences and push through your (well, my) fears, good things start to happen. It’s a lesson well learned. And its one that I hope I continue to learn! God knows my fears aren’t going anywhere, but I will not let them have the power to control me anymore!

The time is now people. Make things happen!! Because you (well, I guess me too) ROCK!

-The R Stragster