busy bee

I have been doing too much and still not getting enough done. Money stuff is finally sorting itself out. I have started substitute teaching at private schools which is pretty easy and fun. I really only have time to do it one day a week though and I haven't been able to tell my new boss that yet. I don't want her to think I'm not interested, that is just really all the time I have for it. I am coaching my first official improv team this Tuesday. I am excited and nervous. I feel bad that people are paying me to coach but I need to get over that. I know I am a good teacher and coach I just need to allow myself to be confident and take ownership over my abilities. It has been a really difficult couple of months, with lots of self-questioning when it comes to improv. I shrink and hide when I feel criticized or judged. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. When I allow other people to dictate how good I am at something I love, I am in essence giving up.
I have so much positive stuff to look forward to when it comes to improv. Tender Nightmare is shaping up to be a really fun troupe. I love working with everyone on it and think adding new people can only help. I am also excited to do two-person shows with Valerie and Rachel and work with Lisa on something. There are so many talented and kind people to work with. It is overwhelming and exhilarating. I feel like I am being more proactive about my improv than I have been in a long time. I know what I want and I am going for it. I love playing and want to keep doing it no matter where or how.

oh no

I don't want to go back to Crush City. It has been a nice reprieve. Maybe I will just change the way I deal with it? I will allow myself to enjoy this crush and make it fun. That is all.

Summer Babe

I saw Pavement last night. That is part of the reason I am awake at 6 am with a sore throat. Standing outside next to a tree for three hours let me inhale way too much pollen. Or I have strep throat. Illness aside. I had a great time. It made me nostalgic. My sister introduced me to Pavement when I was probably 15 or 16. I liked them but it wasn't until college that they really grew on me. I think my friend Eric had an influence on me liking them so much. We had a complicated (to say the least) relationship and I used to torture myself in the times when we weren't talking by listening to the music he loved. The music he introduced me to that I also really really loved. I used to feel like an impostor when it came to my music taste because so much of what I listen to was introduced to me by my sister or a boy. Eric and I are still sort-of friends but he certainly doesn't have the pull over my life that he used to have. But I still love the music.

I have always had, in my opinion, very good taste in music. (With the exception of a brief disco phase although I will still stand by that if I have to.) But if a guy liked a band that was great, it made me like them even more. I think I gravitated toward music that made feel and if music was associated with someone who also made me feel it was even more important to me. That or Eric had really great taste in music. Maybe both.
Standing under the pollen tree last night. It was inevitable that I would think of Eric. I thought at the time that I memorized the words to Gold Soundz over a week of listening to it on repeat because it reminded me of him. We had talked about the lyrics one day and I will forever associate "So drunk in the August sun" with him. I think now that I burned these songs into my memory to comfort myself. Eric and I did not have healthy communication patterns. This was a way I could feel like I was communicating with him, that we were connected even when I wasn't really speaking to him.

I learned some very valuable lessons about myself and relationships because or Eric but one of the biggest gifts he gave me was music. I'm sure I introduced him to some bands as well, but it was the feelings we had at the time combined with the music, that makes me stand under a tree, ignoring the allergies, with hundreds of other people standing there with me and still feel a personal connection with the people on stage, because unknowingly they played a huge role in this formative part of my life.

I like to think I like music for its merit alone, but I think some of its merit can certainly be how it makes you feel or what it makes you think. I definitely pay more attention to lyrics than the music itself which I know makes me a bad music fan in some people's eyes but I disagree. With every art form we need an access point. I am much more experienced and adept with words than music. It makes sense that words are how I access music. It doesn't mean they are the only thing that matters to me. If David Berman's lyrics were sung in auto-tune with boring beats I would probably not like Silver Jews. Eric was my access point for a lot of music but years later, the music is still here and so am I.

on repeat

I just realized my last two posts were almost identical. whoops. My brain is stuck on a stress loop. Money money money. I am not a very financially responsible person. I am not the worst but I am honestly accustomed to a lifestyle that is not within my budget. I should not be buying organic foods or eating out nearly as much as I do. I have taken some good steps in the right direction. I eat in way more than I used to. I am working really hard on finding more work and better(cheaper)health insurance. I've been pretty good about not clothes shopping. (I did make a goodwill exception the other day though.)
I am so grateful for everything my parents have given me financially. The amount of traveling I have gotten to do because of them is really extraordinary and they paid for every cent of my education. There is a little part of me that thinks they may be too giving. (This is not in any way to put blame on them, but rather to make myself feel guilty.) I am very grateful that they continue to help me when I need it. Even though I hate it and it makes me cry and freak out and feel incredibly guilty, I do appreciate it and know I would probably be homeless without their help. Maybe not homeless, but working a job I hate. Maybe that is what I need to do at this point. I am still hopeful that I can make this acting/dance/writing teacher and sales person thing work but I think I need to put a time line on it so I know when to give up. I realized recently that my parents are never going to say no when I need to ask them for money so at some point I have to figure out a way to do it myself. Not let them be an option. I've been pretty good about that this year. Only asking when I can't eat or pay a bill but I would love to not have to ask any more. This all sounds so horrible and snobby. I am incredibly embarrassed and even shameful when I think about how much my parents have helped me. That is kind of the worst part though. I should just let myself be grateful and lucky and appreciative and loved and leave it at that. Me feeling guilty about it doesn't help anyone else get money. It doesn't make my parents feel better about my financial failure it just makes me feel horrible. I think in some ways I'm actually making more strides towards real financial independence then I ever have before. By pursuing these different business ideas, I'm definitely taking risks and trying a lot of new things and something will work out. When I was working with Elana, I was making more money than I am now, but there was no way to make more money. In the situation I am in now. It is all just about how hard I work and how much I hustle.
I still need to make a real-life grown up plan but I feel like I'm getting closer to that.

plans are stupid

So my grand plan to only teach acting and writing classes has blown up in my face. It has been a frustrating week accepting that but I think I have taken enough deep breaths and am ready to figure things out again. I am still teaching 6 acting classes which is pretty great. I might still get to teach a creative writing class but I'm not too hopeful after they scheduled me for a class that doesn't fit with my schedule. I want it to work out because it would be a really great job, but I'm not sure that it will. I'm continuing to apply for other part-time jobs and hopefully at least one more thing will work out. It has taken so much work to put these jobs together and I am still so short, but I do still believe it will have its benefits in the end. I love what I'm doing. I love my actors and how excited they are. I have more time to write and improvise and act. This is what I wanted. I just need to take advantage of it even when I'm stressed about money.

I am excited about the possibility of teaching a comedy dance class. I think it will be a really fun and different way to explore my acting and improv skills and it will be a good work out. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it so I think I am going to pursue it somewhat seriously. Make a few lesson plans/routines and see what happens from there.

I am also going to keep trying to make corporate workshop sales happen. It scares me to pursue something so contrary to my skill set (I am not a natural sales person) but it helps that the product is something I really believe in (Improv!) and I honestly do think improv is a valuable skill for anyone to develop.

I know I will figure things out but I just want this stressful part to be over. I have been living in schedule flux (will classes make? will Badgerdog find a teaching placement for me? etc.) for over a month now. I had this moment of calm when I got all of these jobs and it has been slowly eroding away with schedule and budget problems to reveal the fear that I will not have enough money to live. I am being dramatic. I will figure it out.

This is such a boring entry. sorry. Oh wait no one reads this. secret blog!

thank you Mr. Sheen

When I feel this anxious and out of it and sleep deprived I look up at my ceiling fan and think about Martin Sheen in that hotel room scene in Apocalypse Now. Comparing myself to a character in the middle of a nervous breakdown because of much more extreme conditions than I have ever known, calms me down. I carry that scene around with me as a talisman. It is okay that I freak out and have panic attacks because it makes you like this great moment in film. I am not alone because someone wrote this and another someone acted this and an audience embraced this. I am not alone because this fictional moment is full of basic human truth.

I am not full blown Martin Sheen right now. I have been, many times, but right now i am mostly just exhausted and ready to have my schedule and life more settled. I have so many jobs that are up in the air right now due to scheduling conflicts and lack of student registration. If I get them all and can work them into my schedule, I will be way too busy and overwhelmed but will be comfortable financially. If I can only fit one or two more classes into my schedule, I am going to have lots of free time and no money. I just need to find the balance.This limbo has been going on for a month. I want to figure stuff out so I can focus on the fun projects. I am doing this though. I am creating a job for myself out of lots of little tiny jobs that I love.
This has been a Martin Sheen heavy summer, but I am pretty sure I will make it out of the jungle soon.

ten forevers

It has been almost a year since I've posted but I haven't been having any luck writing sketches recently so I need to do something to get my brain moving. I just heard a neighbor have a very loud orgasm in the middle of a thunderstorm. I am confused because it seems like a bad time to have your windows open but I really can't see how I would hear them otherwise. Our house is at least ten feet from all of the other houses and I've never heard them before. Maybe this is a new thing I now have to look forward to. We are talking really loud here. For a second I thought maybe someone was hurt and Baxter started barking twice because it freaked him out. I really hope this is a one-night stand.

Out of Bounds just finished up. I have so much fun during the festival and see so much great improv, it is hard to come back to reality. I got to take a workshop with Craig Cackowsky and he gave us all personal notes afterward. His notes to me were not shocking, I have gotten most of them before, but they were definitely on-target and gave me a clear focus for my improv. Some of the notes were new from a coach but stuff I have thought about my improv for a long time. I just have never been able to put it into words. I have been told by at least four or five coaches that I always play low status characters and that I should explore playing high status characters. I feel like no matter how hard I work on this, even when I actively push myself, nine out of ten characters I create are going to be low-status. What is funny is as an actor, I played a lot of higher status roles and loved it, but when I am creating the role myself I go to the place where I feel more comfortable.
My challenge to myself is to play only high-status characters in my next three shows. It will be really hard but I am going to try! Two of those shows are this weekend so I will soon see how it feels. Another thing Craig told me was to work on endowing my partners with more specifics. This is something I definitely don't do enough of, probably out of meekness. I don't want to tell my scene partner what their character needs or does or looks like or more importantly I don't trust the ideas I have for them and don't let myself take risks. I'm excited and scared to work on this stuff. It makes me sad that Northshore is no longer rehearsing. I think it was the right decision for us, but I really want to figure out some sort of weekly improv rehearsal to keep me working and growing as an improviser. I am going to try to figure this out as soon as I can. I am excited about improv again. I am hungry for it in a way I haven't been in months. Thank you out of bounds, specifically, Cackowski, and the Reckoning, for making me realize what I want to be able to do with this art that I love.