A Blush Gives It All Away

Some people think it's my talent that enables me to blush on cue. Others think it means I'm saying anything and everything but the truth. Lying. Badly. Some people think it means that whatever I'm saying is really genuine. Heartfelt. And some people see it as me being uncomfortable in their presence. Maybe. And in a way, I guess you could say that all of them ring just a little true. But if there was a moral, I'd say I simply blush a lot. I have a oversensitive blush reflex. Woop. And I can't hide it. If I even just think an embarrassing thought, I can instantly feel the squeeze in my core, the surge of blood rushing to my face and no matter what I try to do to stop it, there it goes. A full on, full faced, warm to the touch blush. It comes out at the best and worst of times. It has no preference or jurisdiction. Like when you unexpectedly catch the eye of a crush, or run into someone who definitely wishes you had died in a house fire. Last year. But it often gets misread. Sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the person I'm talking with or it comes from a completely separate thought about something or someone not even remotely in the conversation. And when it comes, the person I'm talking to has to figure out why on earth their perfectly tame conversation about un-sulfured dried fruit has made this poor soul across from them turn several shades of red within seconds. Then sometimes I'm caught off guard by someone who has just caught me really scantily clad for a scene for class, who at most times I'm wishing would be in the situation to see me oh so scantily clad, but not like this. And not with these damned extra 15 pounds. And the blush is so intense I have to turn away in hopes of hiding it. Unsuccessful. And then I'm left wondering how awkward that moment must have come across and what on earth they must have thought of me and the ridiculous color I turned when I realized who was walking down the hall. I've tried breathing deeper, hoping to slow down my racing heart, maybe lower my blood pressure or whatever blessed idea I get to try to keep the blood in my chest and out of my face. But no, it won't. It wants to go exploding up to my face, out to the very outer layers of skin as if to show the world what really beats inside me. Which deems the question. What AM I reacting to? It isn't nothing. It can't possibly be. Yet sometimes it takes someone pointing it out to me for me to realize that thanks a lot, it's happened again. And sometimes I can feel it brewing and I know that despite my many efforts it will only be a matter of seconds before it arrives. I used to think it was mostly embarrassment, but then realized I do it just as much when I teach as when I'm consciously embarrassed. I usually get more embarrassed by what people say about it than the actual blush. Then once whomever has kindly pointed it out, I start blushing harder in reaction to the news that I'm blushing. Convenient. Then I thought it was because I wasn't breathing deep enough. Nope. Not that either. Now I am of the opinion that I'm reacting to a vibe I get from something. From the person I'm talking to or the person imagined in my other train of thought. But whatever it is I don't know how much longer I can keep hating it. Maybe I can't. Maybe I would be better off embracing it and knowing that for whatever reason, it is simply an undeniable part of who I am. Maybe it means I'm more sensitive to what people are giving out, or maybe it means that deep down I simply love deeper and care more, or maybe it means nothing at all. But I'd like to think it does mean something because day after day, person after person, thought after thought, it's always my blush that ends up giving me away.

Saturday Night Jams

A half drunk, mostly abandoned bottle of beer sits forgotten on the bathroom counter. So while you pee you can wonder who first brought it in and how drunk they must have been to forget it too. The porch outside is stained with well trodden swedish fish generously tossed about with zealous good will by a jovial Mickey Rourke doppelganger. And still, the cigarettes continue to burn, the lighter gets passed from hand to hand to hand, and voices rise into the semi-clear night sky about bands and boys and sports and legends. Debates unfurl from a mention of best, now furiously countered with options A and B and C, which must mean that the first statement should be retracted, but won't. And offenses get welted and later aloed, first, by whiskey and later by the same method still. But all in all it is people connecting, finding the pieces of their soul that fit another's. And in the corner, I stand and watch, the designated driver for the evening. Not kept awake by the usual sugar alcohols and cocktail mixes, a yawn emits itself more than is comfortable for the people around me. "Don't Yawn!" a slurred voice reprimands, "Don't Worry, I'm Fine, I Just Don't Breathe Right Sometimes" comes my answer to their concerned queries. I am tired, yes, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be here. Meeting new faces and personalities and enjoying the company of loved friends and classmates. But what we all have gathered together for, is not just friends and faces and souls, but sound, and as we wait the anticipation sits inside us like breathing coals. And finally, stumbling and catching each other down the four now treacherous steps to the back house, the two heavy soundproofed doors are swung and into the lights and sounds we go. Only one chair sits in the corner in a square room filled with amps and guitars as numerous as the drugs, sweat, blood and tears, I'm sure can be found in the dingy carpets stapled to the ceiling and glued to the floor. So sitting on the concrete is fine with me. Refusing the same beer more times than my age. "I'm Driving" I say, to discourage the attempts "I'll Pay For Your Cab" he slurs with a lilty grin. " I Don't Like Beer." No avail. "I Can Get You A Whiskey" now with concern, "That's Okay, Thank You, But I'm Driving Tonight" and on and on intermittently this continued. But then the first string was strummed and the speakers came on with a spark and crackle, and soon the room was filled with sounds so loud you could feel your chest cavity vibrate just the same like the metal strings. And before you knew, the sounds were blasting and your entire body pulsing with the rhythm and vibrations of the musician's mind. And song after song, some new, some old, the music drove us to not sit still. And before you knew it, an hour had passed and I realized that I wasn't yawning anymore.

Changing Changes Changing Me

So once again, too much time has passed since I wrote anything about anything. But my life is considerably different now than last time I wrote. I moved into town. Miracle Mile. My address has a half in it, which is already making my year a better memory. In foresight. Ha. I have something of a job. I'm a personal assistant to three real estate agents. Three different ones. What else would they be? The same? And even though I'm earning a little and closer to the things I love like school and friends and the energy of bigger cities, I still have moments of panic that I'll starve and things won't work out and I'll have to go home. And at times, the most desperate ones, I think I'd rather be homeless. Not to say anything about home, but to say something about me and what I've been doing. When you haven't been doing something that lights your fire for too long, that hiatus can make you forget why you exist. Then once you get to do it again, the rush, the passion, the joy, the burden of wanting to do it right, the obsessiveness, the love, the anger at work not completed, the pain and frustration of being stuck, the exhilaration of getting something right, it reminds you of why you were ever put on this earth in the first place and suddenly you realize that there really is nothing else. You could physically do something else and be in another place going through the motions of another life. Maybe even working hard and putting in a lot of effort, but it will never be the same. There will never be another thing like the first to keep your clock ticking and the hands chiming. And that in itself becomes enough to take over, so all the panicky nights and tears over negative numbers and checks that came too small, are not really about the money anymore. They're about what you would be losing if the money ran out, which is so much bigger than dollars and cents. I guess I am both lucky and cursed that I have had the opportunity in my life to have experienced the gain and the loss of this reason to exist twice. I remember the days when the movement would never stop going in my head. And to this day, if there is music on, there is still movement. I don't think that will ever stop. But I remember missing questions in school because someone was making a rhythm with their pen on the desk that brought out a new shape in my head of a movement I hadn't gotten to try yet. I remember is my darkest days as a kid finding the comfort in the fact that anything I wanted to say appropriate or otherwise could be said in a movement without openly insulting or accusing anyone. And even though the movement may never leave, my mind has now shifted slightly to be obsessed with moments. I can't take my eyes off of people who are going through something. Whether it is happy or sad or somewhere on the whole gamut of everything in-between and beyond, the moments captured in every day life are like the tapping on the desk. Enormous possibilities, whole scripts, a good camera shot, all of it just comes up from a facial expression or a few seconds of perceived privacy in a dark corner. And this is what I'm realizing I can't give up. Dance was my life purpose until it couldn't be. Then I spent a few years grieving over it and trying to find closure. Which I now realize will never happen. And that's okay. Maybe I shouldn't really want closure, maybe it is just going to be a path that will always be there despite how overgrown the intruding forest around it becomes. And the when that grieving and loss eventually began to show colors of discontent, I turned to find a distraction to keep my mind off things. And acting became the new reason to be here on this planet. It still gave me the chance to have something to say. Which I believe at the end of the day is why we are all still here. To keep trying to say it.

Writing and other adventures

So, I finally put a scene down today from the script idea I've been wanting to work on for over a year now. It is so scary to try to translate a story you care so much about onto paper. It is scary because you don't want to ruin it. The story works so well in your head and the last thing you want to do is water it down and screw it up on paper. So, I've been putting it off for ages. But tonight, I did it. I started. I wrote one scene. I'll probably wake up in the morning and hate it, but hey, it's one scene no longer just in my head. Maybe I'll be able to use the extra mental space for something else now. ha, please.

comfort

So I've been musing for while on what my next entry would be about. For a hot second, I was convinced on going on a rant about why ballet does not belong in the Olympics as a sport, but decided that writing about dance isn't really moving to me at the moment. But tonight on my drive home, a lot of crazy things were going through my mind. That isn't the part worth writing about, but rather how I felt about the things I was thinking. Yes, I do realize that writing the musings of my thoughts about other thoughts I was thinking at the same time is nuts. What's new?

So what I was noticing is that certain ideas made me uncomfortable and certain ones comforted me greatly, but I wasn't siding with either opinion. If it makes it any clearer, conversations in my mind are rarely one voice, but most likely several, with multi-partisan points of view, making my cranial conversations much more what I would imagine a midnight jailhouse gathering to be like rather than a civilized chat over tea. But the domineering trait that I was picking up was that the uncomfortable ideas were becoming........ less irritating. Dare I say, comfortable?! Quite the oxymoron. But it wasn't that they weren't uncomfortable anymore, but the fact that they were uncomfortable bothered me less.

Which turned my mind to thinking about comfort in general and why I (or you, or people, or creatures in general) need it so much. I mean, what is comfort in reality? " It makes you feel better." Woop. So does caffeine, sugary foods, exercise, sex, good friends, various drugs, spirituality, faith, compliments, revenge, a good hair day, cute shoes, etc. I mean the list goes on for weeks. So what is comfort? What is its true appeal? Which made me think about why we decide we need it in the first place.

Well, for starters, you don't usually notice comfort unless you haven't had it in a while. I think it is the state BEFORE you get the comfort that makes the comfort so worthwhile. Think about it, a really hard bed doesn't really matter to you if you've never felt a soft one. But once the soft one has been tried and you realize how COMFORTABLE is it, boom. Addicted. Comfort junkie. Bed nazi. Now you will forever be cursed to trying to find a more comfortable bed.

And so I believe it is in life. I am almost never comfortable in social situations, I don't take compliments well, and I deal with people hitting on me about as well as the skin on your ass deals with poison ivy. (mental picture) So, a comfortable relationship, whether it be friends, romantic, co-worker, etc. is rare. But I have been lucky enough in my life thus far to have a few friends who I can decidedly place in the comfort zone. And even though I can count them on one hand and may not even employ all five fingers, they are golden to me. Because unlike the bed analogy, rather than be constantly searching for more comfort with people, I can TAKE comfort in the fact that it is indeed possible to have those types of friends. And that knowledge means that when I am driving home at the end of a long day filled with both comfortable and epically uncomfortable moments, I can simply think them out. Notice which thoughts give me the warm and fuzzy impulses of joy and which ones make me long for a dark cave on an island away from people and let it be. The fact that I have found a few places and people to provide the important amounts of comfort to keep me going day after day helps me to be less wary about the innumerable amounts of UNcomfortable moments I know I'm about to experience when I wake up each morning.

And this.

The realization that it is perfectly okay to feel uncomfortable, that in whatever that situation was, you can just sit back afterward and experience whatever that feeling was. Whether you made an awkward comment that came out wrong and didn't get the chance to set it right, or you realized a new friend you thought would become a really good friend isn't that excited about You being Their friend as they initially seemed(so awkward!), or someone said something to you and you sensed a vibe from it that they didn't really mean what they said and what you think they really meant by saying it is not at all what you thought they thought about you( did anyone actually follow that last one??? sorry...) that comfortable or not, it is your life and your day. However you felt about it then, and however you feel about it now is yours to keep. And if you take on this mentality, you may just start to notice the lines blurring a bit in your comfort zones. And after all, if it isn't comfortable, it will probably keep you active, up on your toes and to be good at whatever we do in life, isn't that ultimately what we need? What we want? To really be creative, we have to experience more discomfort than the ordinary person would ever willingly bring upon themselves. And to stay comfortable would be jeopardizing the massive efforts we have invested in trying to make a living in a creative profession to begin with---So embrace the uncomfortable, be bold, and go for it, it may surprise you what you find out there. Screw the princess and her damn pea, there is art to made in the world.

Monday Morning Musings

Yay Mondays. I had an appointment cancel on me today, so I find myself with that all too precious and rare commodity called a piece of free time! What? Really. So, I realize that I'm pretty terrible at keeping any sort of schedule when it comes to blogging. Bummer, but I'm working on it. But anyway, I think part of the reason I have trouble staying regular with blogging is not so much a lack of things to say but rather a feeling of needing to censor myself. I worry too much (in general, too) about what other people will think about the things I do and the things I have to say, and so even when I really have the urge to sit down, share, write it, post it, I don't. Because maybe they'll think I'm crazy or they will probably judge my opinions, etc. Which is ridiculous, by the way, because:

A. If you know me you probably know my level of crazy. It's not news anymore.

B. Who's "they" and why do I care what "their " opinion is?

C. And so what? People probably will judge me or disagree or complain, but honestly the majority probably won't care and neither should I.

So there's me talking myself back into blogging. Ha.

Now that all of that is over, here's somewhat of an update. Life is good. Which is really nice to say. I am LOVING acting school and all the fabulous people there. I am starting to audition more which is nice because even though I haven't booked anything yet, I have stuff to work on and look forward to and get excited about. I'm probably going to get my headshots redone. I like the ones I have (shout out to Brady!) but for some reason I'm getting called in more off of random ones I didn't originally plan to use as headshots and that is a little worrisome. So I will probably be getting some new ones done in the next couple of weeks. Here's to hoping they work! I've been doing lots of casting director workshops and meeting lots of new people which is always fascinating and sometimes a big reminder to be grateful for all the kindhearted, generous artist friends I have and have worked with. You meet a lot of different personalities!

Guy Dino is the clothing line concept have been working on with the fabulous Trujillo's for about a year now, and it has been slow and tedious and hard, but it seems to be finally coming together and about to launch which is super exciting! I have learned so much already and can pretty much guarantee I have LOADS more learning flying my way! But bank accounts are in place, pictures are taken, ebay is registered, it is getting really close people!!!!

The other day I was sitting in my room after a particularly stressful day and I kept having the recurring thought that despite how different people come across, at the end of the day, we are all JUST PEOPLE. Maybe people with varying levels of influence or power in various industries or walks of life, but all in all, we have hearts that beat red blood through our veins, lungs that breathe in the same air from the same planet, and brains that fire neurons and think various thoughts. And that's it. I'm not above or too good for any other thing than anyone else in the world and neither is any other person. So if I want to be great at something in the future and that means that I need to live humbly right now and work at unglamorous jobs with unglamorous people, I can love that about my life. There's nothing shameful in taking up something to survive so that you can continue to pursue something of great passion in your life for your future. There's no need to pretend to be more important than you really are, or more famous, or more successful, even though it is REALLY tempting. And to be honest, I know that I have fallen into that trap WAY more times than I would ever want to admit, but it isn't worth it. What good does imaginary glamour or fame do for you? Other than delude you to be more fake, more self absorbed, and more dispassionate. If all we live for is some sort of fabricated attention from other people, real or imagined, we've only dealt ourselves a loss. Each day spent caught up in it is simply a day wasted where you could have been investing in REAL people, REAL relationships, and REAL experiences. Even if those experiences are not all you had originally imagined they might be. But isn't real always better? REVEL IN REALITY.

So I've been in lala land now for three whole weeks! Ridiculous. But I'm finding that life feels very different than I expected. One I got over the whole moving and putting furniture and finding apartments section, my brain got a whopping jolt of JOB frenzy that I haven't ever had to really experience before. And now the dilemma of what kind of job? A job that I'll be happy to quit when my acting gets going better, or the kind of job you love, but pulls you away from your career and other passions. That dilemma. After contemplating taking the earliest possible morning shift at Jack In The Box on weekdays, and never actually going to get an application, I finally got off my ass and handed out dance teacher resumes to some small studios in the area. Then I got some interest, some calls and alas----an interview! disappointment. all around-salary-class type-class level-studio standards-you name it, my expectations fell drastically too high. The phone conversations were deceptively well put and worded and my mind was welcomed with an insane reality, so so so far from what I thought I was walking into. Bummer-bummerliciously so. So onward to the same road I was before. Keep handing out resumes? or drive to that Jack In The Box and get on with making rent. Decisions.