One Pill Makes You Smaller...

PART TWO:

Previously, on Mermaid Twang: 

Of course, the best fries in the Twin Cities are the one step back for my two steps forward, but they're SO "DAM" GOOD.  (See what I did there?)  Anyway, it's working.  

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The main reason I quit my day job was to act more.  Yep.  I did that thing they all say not to do.  Well, those people just don't want the competition, IMHO (they are the ones that don't realize there's room at the top.  And the top is wherever you want it to be).  I have opened up my days for auditions and gigs and limited my nights of performance.  Kind of.  But this is good.  I feel it is promoting focus and discipline.  I’ve lived many years without either of those, so this may take a while.  But the proverbial ball has begun to roll. 

The awesome thing is, I’ve had three auditions in the past month and a half.  It’s not a lot, but after being called for three things in the past year before, it’s a step in the right direction.  

I also realized the other day that I have virtually no time to see my Mon-Fri 9-5 friends now.  It’s bittersweet.  I love those friends, some are my besties, but as a creative who has to create and an extrovert that wants to... extrovate?  Well, my louder, more obnoxious side is a bully.  And often shows up in my creative side’s output anyway. My free nights are taken currently by voiceover class or rehearsal.* So, I don’t have a lot of time for those friends now.  That’s the bitter. 

*(Rehearsal for WHAT you ask?  Why, for this:)

click the pic for all the lovey dovey wovey details.  

The sweet is that I have time to see the other friends I have missed because of day job/night creativity.  And that there are less of those friends, so I have more creative time.  And I’m totally a daytime creative person; I can rehearse and perform at night, of course, but writing and crafting happen with sun.  I love my friends, but my soul fuel contains a slightly greater percentage of making art.  Luckily, I get both consistently. Not as frequently as I should, but leisure time is a close third anyway.  

So here’s the gross part (but possibly "scandalous" confessional part):  I am infinitely happier.  A light has switched on inside. The me of yore that loved life and performing and writing and sharing has ceased scratching at the surface and is now poking her beak through the egg.  This is in no small part related to my change in money-making strategy.  I know making the job transition was integral to this, pun intended, bitch-flip.  

But another big part of it?  

Pills.

to be continued...

I Don't Know

"I Don't Know" always reminds me of my former-crush, present-performance colleague and buddy, Ben San Del's myspace page. Now it says he's "drawing a blank," but it used to just say "I don't know." And it cracked me up because I can hear Ben say it, with the deadpan of a not-yet-seasoned stand-up comic (at the time), but with a slight exasperation like his mom was asking again for the umpteenth time.

Or maybe that's just how I would say "I don't know."

I finally finished the third level of improvisational comedy classes at the Brave New Institute. I was extremely fortunate to have the fabulous, talented, and wise-beyond-her-years Lauren Anderson as my instructor. Lauren embodies one of the reasons I chose to study at BNI (aside from the fact that it was one of the only and seemingly most reputable long-form improv schools): the white light.

The White Light is, as explained in the Student Manual you receive upon your first BNI class, that space we pass through now and then where there is no thought, no identity, just purity, blankness. As an improviser, one passes through this space more often and if you're really good at your craft, you can go there very easily and return every day. It's a meditative space. You get it.

So Lauren has been talking to us about "I don't know." Her theory - and I regard it as the truth - is that we *do* know. When we say "I don't know," we're avoiding the answer for one reason or another. Specifically on stage in improvisation, you *know.* You always know what the other person on stage is talking about because that's how the scene progresses. Asking questions puts too much on your scene partner because you're making them do all the work by giving you the answers. Simply, the answers are already there; they're anything you want them to be.

It hit me last night that the biggest "I don't know" in my life that I'm aware of is the answer to the question, "What do I want to do with my life?" And already, as I finished typing that sentence, I totally know what the answer is.

I want to make art.
I want to encourage everyone else to make art.
I want to spread love, creativity, hope, and laughter.

Mainstream American culture, the one that's hardest to escape, really wants me to define this in the form of a vocation, and that's where I get hung up.

Because

I want to act
I want to draw
I want to play music
I want to make jokes
I want to teach
I want to improvise
I want to administrate
I want to run
I want to stretch
I want to travel
I want to make money
I want to be healthy
I want to collaborate
I want to perform

And in writing that list, I thought I was going to end it with "SEE? there's TOO MUCH I want to do." But I can do all that. But how to do it simply and fit it all in without stress? How to do it all and not have to have a day job? How can I love my life every minute of the day?

I don't know.

Yeah, that's bullshit too.

Just re-reading my 3 simple objectives (the first ones) makes me feel so much better about my life and my endeavors and my future. Because I think I have been living those 3 objectives; I have already achieved them on some level. But they're not destinations, they're Being and Doing. It's nice to know I've been doing it all along.

I better get rich and famous soon.

I have a vaguely ominous feeling sometimes that I might never have children. But then I remember that fertility technology is most likely growing at such a rate that there may not be a time in my life when I can't have children. Shoot, I might be able to transfer my consciousness into another body by the end of my time on Earth and if that happens, I might have a child when "I'm" 147. But right now, it's like, I have too much other stuff to do first.

However, I see stuff like this and feel like I gotta have a child (and I don't necessarily mean biologically; I should rephrase and say "raise a child," as I would love to adopt a gaggle of little humans I can program).

But seriously, this is a lovely 8 minutes of possibility:

"What Adults Can Learn From Kids"