To Tell You.

The girl you didn't know you needed.
Mostly because she never updates her blog.

I need to tell you that less than 8 months after major knee surgery, I performed an aerial hammock act. I don't think I'd ever been so nervous. Take that Doctor Who Said I'd Be Starting To TRAIN Around One Year Out. (But seriously. Thanks for doing a good job on the knee.) I'm at 1 year and 2 months now. I'm doing jumping squats and deep lunges at the gym. Little tweeks and soreness sometimes. But it's getting better and better.

I'm not getting professional (i.e. paying) aerial work right now, which is really really frustrating. But hardly anyone is. It's been...hard...lately.

I need to tell you that I was invited to join a band today. In the past few weeks music has suddenly come roaring back into my life with the force of a thousand missiles. And it's awesome.

I hadn't sat down at a piano with any of the songs we were going to jam with today really at all...we were just going to improvise anyway... but i've been listening to them a lot. Well I just sat down and...all of my past music training...all of my confidence in my own ear...all of it just...worked. I guess being a musician for more than ten years (despite the breaks) stick in the far corners of your mind. I made up amazing phrases and chords on the spot, with the guitarist playing along. I even sang harmony at the same time. And I felt alive. Like the most wonderful form of therapy that there ever was. Orgasms mixed with dark chocolate and warm laundry. For a long time it was my therapy. And suddenly, when my life has felt the darkest it's felt in a very long time; with nights spent on the floor of my closet with the door closed wishing that I'd just have the courage to ask someone to come over or even just stay on the phone with me for a few minutes...music comes shooting back into the picture. It's scary the things that God actually hears you say.

I'm finally starting to feel like I have the potential to create a real community for myself here. Like, running into people at coffee shops and at plays and realizing that I know more people than I think I do. I've felt so incredibly free floating lately. And not in a No Cares In The World kind of way. More like in a Oh My God Someone Please Tell Me That You Can See Me I Think I'm Disappearing kind of way. I have a few wonderful friends, some who've just moved across the country (a'hem coughcough) before we had a chance to have a 2nd annual memorial day picnic...but there will be more in the future. Maybe in a different state or time...but somewhere.

I need to tell you that the performance I was yesterday afternoon went really well. I was funny and looked cute in my costume. And after it was over, I decided to take a 3 hour drive to surprise my little brother to see a play workshop he was putting on. He's an amazing kid, that one. And I love long drives. It helped my stress level. It lowered it a bit. Driving. In the car. Just with music. And a notebook perched on the steering wheel in case anything brilliant decided to float through my head.

I need to tell you that my cat is snoring a few feet away from me.

I need to tell you that I'm still sad a lot of the time. I miss people. People that are here and people that are far away. And I don't know if they're thinking about me. Maybe they are...if I try very carefully to feel it.

I wish I knew that I meant the world to someone.






photo by The One and Only.

Fall, Late.

I love fall. I felt so creative on Monday (the first day). I had one of the best aerial rehearsals that I've had probably since before Gnometenna Removal of 2008.

Speaking of the Little ACL That Could, it's been 7 months since surgery. And I'm getting ready for an aerial performance on November 1st. Cool huh?

Can't say that it's 100 percent, because it's not, but I'll wait until 1 year has passed until I start to get *really* annoyed. I'm not gigging as much as I want to [uh...strike that...] At All, but hopefully once I get this act together I'll be on the radar a little more. It's getting frustrating. Not going to lie.

I'm being overwhelmed with these huge feelings of self doubt in regards to 2 seperate classes/workshops coming up that I'm going to be participating in. One is an audition class and the other is a "masters" scene study. I'm being overwhelmed with huge feelings of self doubt in regards to these two things. Did I already say that? Springfield is a part of us all...a part of us all...a part of us all...

I wish the damn leaves would start their changin' already. I wish a lot of things. That's the one that is pretty likely will happen whether I do something about it or not.

Hmm. How hopeless of me.

8 Weeks.

Happy 8 Weeks ya'll. Hey new ACL, you've been in my body for 2 whole months. How do you like it in there? Can you hurry up and get all the way better so that I can do my normal stuff again? Like weighted squats and one knee hangs on trapeze? Mkaythnks.

I've been doing yoga every morning with Ana Forrest. It's fucking awesome.

And I've been too busy trying to "catch up" with life, working 4 or so jobs...not sure how I'm doing it, but I am. Somehow.

Fighting off a coldcoughowmythroati'msooverthesebugsgoingaroundthisyearUGH. Hopefully the zycam will help get it out of my system faster.

It's strange. A few days ago my knee was feeling really good (that side attachment thing still hurt but it's slowely healing, I think/hope.) and then for the past 2 days it was all stabby and "fat" feeling. I irritated it somehow (not at yoga, but I believe, at work...from standing up and squatting down a bunch of times every day in the presentations) and aparently that "fat" feeling is swelling/fluid in the joint. GREAT. I iced it last night and it's feeling a bit better today. The un-fucking-ending saga. I had a different PT yesterday because my normal one is on vacation. Seriously, would've been better off not seeing him. He was doing things all "wrong". The stretches didn't feel good, he didn't know my body, it was just...weird. Sigh.

It seems like forever ago. 2 months is a long time. It isn't a long time. Soon it'll be 10 weeks, then 15, then 6 months, then 3 years, then I'll read this blog one day before going out on stage or before performing my totally bad ass rope act in front of hundreds of people and think "wow. good thing I got that taken care of back then."

I hope that day is sooner.

One Twenty.

What's UP 120 degrees today!! Right on target (our goal this week, literally, was 120 degrees.)

Next week and a half I need to get to between 140-150. 145-150 would be total full range. Yikes. I guess it makes sense that every day feels like it goes to the "maximum". Because technically, it does. Just need to keep increasing the maximum, I guess.

I had an audition this morning for a military industrial film (think long commercial) where I had to play a clerk at a car place explaining the need for "extra focus while driving oversees". The script was so corney, but it was fun to do an on-camera. I don't get a lot of those.

I hate to admit it, but let's talk about America's Next Dance Crew for just a second. Uh, srsly? It's so good. I hate generally hate reality TV (like, I won't watch "Idol" or Big Bullshit...err...Brother or anything like that) but, as one of the hosts would say, "lyke, fa'reeel, ya'juss sick'n'fly. ya's haat." I'm rooting for Kaba Modern. I'm sure they're on YouTube. You should check them out.

Anyway. Knee Watch 2008 continues.

My Kinda Town.

I took an absolutely soul warming seminar about "the Biz" in this town. Yeah. You read that right. Soul Warming.
I had a lot of angst/worry/secondguessing/etc. about not picking up and moving to New York or LA after grad school. The school was on the east coast, so the "natural" move was to the Big Apple, or LA, since "you gotta do it before you're old and ugly". Or something.
But I didn't chose either. I decided to come back to here to work in the theatre market that I know and love. Of course there are amazing houses around the entire country and I want to work at all of them. But this is my home base. Everything happens here, and I don't need to be a celebrity to get noticed. If I want an acting gig in New York, I'm in competition with Puff Daddy (Yes. Really. He was in Raisin in the Sun) because he gets butts in the seats.
Anyway.
This workshop was exactly what I needed. A semi-toughlovebutmostlypeoplereallyexcitedabouttheirtownandbusiness day talking to everyone from casting directors to agents to people on the business side of the unions and how all that works and blah blah blah stuffishouldalearnedinschoolbutwasn'tpartofwhattheythoughtwasimportant type stuff.
The chinese pole act in the show is going really well and I'm suprised and thrilled that it's come together as well as it did.
This town is about working actors. I'm not going to be put into a box unless I put me there. I can wear a lot of different hats, and I'm expected to. You have no idea how fantastic it was to hear that. Especially after hearing, in similar Q&A sessions in LA showcases, that "theatre and training is a waste of time, will never make me money, or happy, so I might as well move to LA while I'm young." Yeah. Fuck you lady in LA who said that to my class. I'm doing this my way.