I Should Write A Book... But not right now.

I’ve decided to write a book.

Yup, a book. But it won’t be published until much later, of course. I have to be famous first.  J  But I can start it now and take out the irrelevant parts when I’ve decided what it’s exactly about. It will be a kind of self-discovery book, either women who struggle with being Christians in the entertainment industry, or just anyone like me needing that extra bit of confidence from someone who’s been through it all. And I’ve been through a lot already, so I have a lot to write about.

Until then, I will only blog about super memorable things in my life, and this blog will now serve as my “Positive Sentence Journal,” my “Observation Journal,” my “Thanksgiving Journal” and such.

So, for today, Wednesday, December 15, 2010:

I feel like I did nothing today. The majority of my day was sitting on the couch watching tv and eating, with a brief interruption to pick up Amy from the bus stop and to cut up some lettuce for dinner. To me, it was nothin', but my mom says it helped her so much that I did those two tiny things in the midst of all she had to do today. 

So, today, I'm going to acknowledge that I was "resting" today and appreciate that I'm even able to do that.

A Trip Home and A Trip to Deep-Think-Land

I wrote this Dec 3:

     (Sorry it's late.)

A two weekends ago, I came home to visit my mom and niece, to get my Orencia infusion… and to pick up my car. It was enjoyable and nice to be home and see some of my friends, even only for the weekend. Although, I have to confess I was pretty upset when I found out that I wasn’t allowed to get my Orencia, and no one had told me until the day before. That was the sole purpose of coming into town. Regardless, I had made plans with friends and I would keep those plans, so I came home anyway.

On Monday, in my own car, I drove my mom and Amy (my niece) and I down to Irvine, so they could see my room and house and stay with me for the Thanksgiving week. Most of my housemates would be out of town come Wednesday after classes, so I knew there would be space in my room and it would be a fun time to not travel to AG, and to enjoy the emptiness of my house but with two of my favourite people. We played Clue, ate food, watched TV, went to two movies at the Dollar Theatre! (I know! The DOLLAR THEATRE! It’s $2 for any movie - $5ish for a 3D – and $1 on Tuesdays! And $1 Hot Dogs! How can you go wrong!!) We did some errands that I needed to do since I would have the car that week, then at the end of the week (Sundayish), they took the car, a ton of my excess junk that I shouldn’t have brought in the first place, and journeyed home.

Come this week, it was a little difficult. I’m better now so it’s hard to remember why… which just goes to show you: “Will this matter to me as much in three years?” is not an entirely terrible thing to say to yourself when going through tough times.

I think it had something to do with people getting on my nerves. For the sake of decency, I will just say it is something I go through once a month. And usually these are the times that the stupid or rude things people do (that normally I just poo poo and say, that’s their loss they feel that way or are that way), they bug me. They get to me, actually. And for a good reason, I think, but then I have to remind myself that I am my own person and what they do or say cannot affect me in a negative way. Their negativity should not be my negativity. Actually, I am usually not the person who reminds me. It’s usually my beautiful momma. And I so appreciate her for that.

I was going to blog about it, but then I realized it sounds like complaining. And even if it’s not actually complaining and I’m just venting, a blog is not the outlet to do it, nor is it something I want to remember. My mom and I were talking the other day specifically about these things and people that get on my nerves, and she suggested I not write them down. Now, I am a journaling person; that’s just what I do. When I have something happen to me, good or bad, I write it down; so I can remember it later. But she asked why I would want to remember the bad stuff.

Sometimes the worst stuff in your life is what pushes you to success. It reminds you of who you are because of what you came out of. The crap in your life that pushed you down for so long. If I spent my whole life getting through the muckie muck and finally made it out, why wouldn’t I want to look back every now and then to say, “See, that’s how strong I am; I made it through that.”

But Mom is right. I shouldn’t need to remember all that crap. It’s important to acknowledge it, but when it gets down to it, there’s only one thing that’s important from that muckie muck… me.

If I didn’t have Christ in my life or a personally relationship with God, maybe looking back to the crap I’ve overcome would be a good game plan for getting me through the rest of crap life has to offer. Living life in college with the idea that I need to be independent from other people because of “what happened to me at PCPA.”

“I will never let that happen to me again,” I said. And that’s okay to say, but it’s not okay when I allow it to be my mantra.

Bottom line, when I graduated, I felt like I had made friends and contacts that would always be there for me if I needed somet, because I would be there for them. I was sorely mistaken. I learned very quickly that I couldn’t rely on most of them. I gave up emailing and texting people to see how they are because they never responded. Even on Facebook, where I could see everyone was answering everyone else, just not me. People forget other people can see your status and what you write on other people’s Profiles. It didn’t take me long to figure out that they would most likely never give me a second thought. It did, however, take me almost til a few months ago to be able to talk about PCPA or see one of their shows without becoming incredibly upset and to the point of tears. That’s how much it hurt me that these people I had put my trust and faith and energy into had disappointed me. Even instructors. I remember a specific incident when I emailed an instructor after we graduated to ask for some advice about somet. We had previously connected, so I know her email address was valid. I have yet to receive a response to any of my emails. Of course, I got the hint and I’m no long waiting, but that’s still incredibly lame, don’t you think. Needless to say, she’s now unreliable to me. I will probably never ask her for anything. And what’s really sad is she’s a UCI alumna. So, we have somet in common and she probably doesn’t even care.

I have two friends from my journey at PCPA that I can say I have seen and have made an effort to hang out with since then, but I’m 90% sure they haven’t even touched the link to this blog to find out what’s going on with me. I want to badly to say that number is lower, but deep down I don’t think it is.

It’s stuff like that that makes it difficult to say it’s “pointless” to write down to “remember.” A huge part of me wants to remember the hurt they caused me so I can “never let it happen again.” But what good will that really do but constantly open that wound. That’s no way to go through life. Even if I am using it as a means to fight to be better.

I was told a story about a girl who had always wanted to be an actress and it was just never happening for her. But she never gave up.

She was a large girl; never skinny enough and therefore never noticed. Throughout high school, she knew she wanted to act professionally. She went to college for Drama and was never cast in a show. For four years, she tried.

After college, she moved to New York and work for two more years trying to work towards that goal and was still never cast.

She decided to work as a janitor for a New York Conservatory and for two more years, she would clean up after the acting students and the instructors. But she never gave up that goal. After classes, students would throw away lecture notes, and she would take them out of the trash and memorize everything. Before she cleaned off the chalkboards, she wrote everything down first.

One day, as she was cleaning up the balcony of the main theatre, there was a group of people doing a first-read or somet for an Off-Broadway show. Actress Kathy Bates was supposed be reading for a serious part; very dramatic. But Bates was stuck in a storm and unable to make it to the audition. So, this girl volunteered to read for her until she arrived. At first they had no idea who this girl was. And that she was the custodian was even more mind-boggling. But she read the part for Kathy Bates and BLEW them AWAY!

All her hard work and determination paid off in the end. They ended up giving Kathy Bates’ part to her! And she even got some kind of award for her performance, although I can’t remember what it was, or who she is.

The man who told us this story told us that after the closing performance, he went backstage to congratulate her and saw in her dressing room about 20 cast lists posted on her wall. When he asked what it was, she said those are all the cast lists that have been posted since she started acting in college. Every list she wasn’t on. She would take it before anyone saw it and make a copy and now she posts them on her wall in her dressing room to remind herself from where she came and to show those people on the lists that she made it without all of that.

But the point is, she never gave up. Especially when no one thought she could EVER have been a professional actor.

Theatre and Dreams experience...

It's the last week of classes this week. Technically Finals Week.

I took Theatre and Dreams, History of the American Music Theatre, Development of Theatre, and worked in the costume shop.

In my Theatre and Dreams class last week, Professor Kubiak took us through a kind of meditation most common in other countries. It was prompted by an orchestra of maracas (they had actual names, but I can’t remember what they were actually called) operated by various students in the class and led by Kubiak at the head of the room. The lights were all out and the shades pulled so as to make it as relaxing and calming as possible. In fact, the way he pitched the exercise was that finals week is coming up and he knew everyone was probably tired (which we had told him), so he asked what kind of energy we would like: calm or upbeat energy.

The maraca exercise was nice, but then we took a quick bathroom break and did the same exercise with a drum operated by Kubiak. My experience was powerful and I had to write it down. So here is my account of that experience. It may not make sense, or it may, but it is what I went through and what I felt on the journey.

---------------

I envisioned the meadow from my Jesus Walk and was slowly walking through the tall knee-length brush, running my hands through it for a minute or so. The surrounding landscape was snowy mountains. It was cold and my usual meadow but I knew it was winter and the forest and mountains were covered in snow, but as soon as I started walking, it was spring again, and warm.

Then I saw the immediate start of the forest of tall trees. Forest creatures, forest plants, ferns, lizards, butterflies. As I walked, I started picking up the pace and a masked, caped man-ish thing rushed by in front of me. I kept going until I reached the cave and stood in front of it even though the path continued to the left. I almost decided to visit my creek first, but I stopped and wanted to focus on what was around the cave and it was incredibly dark inside but appeared more like a giant wreath surrounding the mouth. Squiggly dried leaf-like material all around it.

I decided to go in and the mouth was long it seemed because it was simply and utterly dark. Walking through the mouth of the cave, I could see the pulse of the drum’s beat and tried to see the color but accepted I couldn’t, so I just saw the pulsing, pulsing, pulsing.

As I walked through the dark cave, I reached a kind of shelf in the wall on my left that had water in it and a big fish (I think it was a gold fish) that was swimming in circles or figure eights until he saw me and came to the surface of the water and popped his head halfway out to look at me as if to talk with me but he just stared. I continued walking and saw something else on my right ( I don’t remember what) I continued and on my left again were to sets of legs (human) bound and hanging form the ceiling of the cave. They were dead; sacrificed for something, although I don’t know for what.

As I envisioned, I could feel my sitting body swaying with the sound of the drum.

I continued and there was a monk on my left, kneeling in prayer and directly in front of me, another monk standing stark in front of me with his hands high above his head in a funnel-like shape, gazing at the ceiling, but there was an enormous, bright light shining on him and his turned-up head and tightly-shut eyes.

I felt tearful at the sacrificed people… I felt for them.

I felt the drum pace speed and looked up and knew it was Jesus and as I ascended, the drum came closer and was right in front of me and the light became so bright, it turned into a dark blue, purple, fuchsia, gorgeous colors with the pulse of the beat. And because I know it was Jesus saying He is the reason and He is powerful that I wanted to weep and could feel my eyes tearing up. I stayed with Jesus, surrounded by His elegantly brilliant colours floating and flowing before me in every shade of purple from blue to fuchsia. Even as the drum moved, the colors changed.

I got really excited because I don’t think I’ve really ever seen consistent color in visions or dream without putting pressure on my actual eyes to encourage color. Usually any colors I “see” are only because I “know” them to be the certain color, but this time I literally SAW the colors.

I didn’t want it to end and almost considered staying there long after the drum stopped (which would signal the end of the exercise).

It was then time to go back, and the beat stopped suddenly and quickly picked up a rapid pace to let us know it was time to head back out the cave, to the field and back to the classroom. I was suddenly ripped from the light, and as I was pulled backwards, I saw the monks, the sacrificially hanged people, the fish, still watching me, the pulses from the mouth of the cave, the wreath of the cave, ferns, butterflies, trees, the edge of the forest, and finally the meadow and long, tall grass. I felt my eyelids pulsing with the drum beat as I was pulled back.

And as I was pulled back to my initial spot, my arms brushed past the grainy brush and I stopped about five beats before the drum stopped.

At the end I really felt such a poignant feeling that I wanted to just weep nonstop. Never to stop.