Invention vs Discovery

"This is a great idea for a book," I thought, lying in bed in the dark. I ran the characters through my mind again and could see the book on shelves in elementary schools everywhere. It would be the next big thing for kids my age, a rite of passage like the Magic Tree House series or the ever-fading Boxcar Children. It was fourth grade, and I was going to write this book. And I was going to be famous.

I waited and waited for a fiction writing assignment to come up in class, and when it did I would write the novel and turn it in and the student teacher would be so blown away that she'd sweep me and my novel off to get published.

I never wrote the novel, though I narrated it (and three additional books in the series) to myself in bed at night or on road trips to distant family gatherings in the far-off city of Ogden. But it never left my head.


I knew I had a good singing voice, though it wasn't as fabulous as my friend's. I knew one day I'd walk into an audition and shock the casting table with my hidden talent.

"Who is this girl and where did she get that voice?!" They'd say and cast me on the spot.

I waited until my junior high musical production class, in which we did a musical review of sorts, to reveal my secret singing ability in my first on-stage solo. My friend had a duet with another girl in the same production. We put up the show. I sang. She sang. My parents came up to me afterwards and told me how amazing and professional she sounded.

I decided musical theatre would never be my forte.


When I'd started taking piano lessons I realized I was naturally relatively decent at it. This skill surpassed any my mother or grandmother had in the area, and exceeded that of my non-lesson taking friends. Satisfied in my ability, I stopped practicing. This nudge toward talent would suit me well enough.


The friend with the incredible singing voice has been in my life for years. She's very driven, very motivated, very confident. She always said she would do everything she could to be as good at theatre as she possibly could--knowing if she became as proficient as possible, she would, in comparison, exceed the ability of her peers in the field by miles. She believed being her personal best would equate to her being the overall best. And she was determined to reach that goal.

Meanwhile, I constantly resigned myself to not being in the same league as these people who shared my interests, or that I was so substantially better that I didn't need to constantly tune and tone my skills. Where I was was where I was meant to be.

And then I started doing improv.

For the first time in my life I had that desire to try, to actively work on this inkling of talent crumbled up with lint in my pocket, and to build it into a castle I could inhabit and from which reign and rule. I wanted to learn and grow and excel and become more advanced like the more seasoned players in the troupe.

For the first time in my life I wanted to work for something.


There's a quote the internet attributes to John Lennon which has started to rub me wrong: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

I understand why it is continually super-imposed onto images of sunsets and forest glades. I understand that the world takes it to mean that "Life happens when you least expect it," or "You can't control a lot of things that creep up in life," or, the every popular, "You'll find the right guy when you stop looking." I get that.

But I disagree.

To me this implies a passive, almost existential quality to life: that life is a river and we're in a little boat with no oars or paddles and we just...float. If you hit a rock, hey. You were meant to hit that rock. If you drift down the left fork when you'd hoped for the right, hey. You needed that tributary more.

I've lived my life that way, relying on fate and happenstance and circumstance and serendipity, I've lived with that mentality of life just happening to you--I've shelved my dreams of novel writing from a young age because it was not required for me to attempt it for a grade. I've given up on learning musical theatre because my voice, as an adolescent, was not naturally Broadway ready. I've quit musical instruments because it would take effort to become the kind of person who could sit down and play anything. It was enough to be able to play something, however basic that something be.

I wanted life to happen to me. As perfectly imperfect as I was naturally. I expected it would. I expected people would notice me in a quiet solitude and sense my potential and ability. They would find me out and bring my skill to light and life would be a landslide of good-fortune and fame and prestige.

And then I started doing improv.

There's a principle in improvisational theatre referred to as "invention vs discovery." The essence of this is that a good, strong scene is one that develops naturally between the actors and their relationship with each other through their characters. If each player focuses on the realities of their character and their relationship to the other players upon the stage, humor and a thematic direction for the scene will naturally crop up into being out of that action--discovery.

Invention, on the other hand, kills a scene. Invention is an actor running into a scene with an arsenal of jokes in his pocket he is determined to deliver, regardless of the dynamic of the relationship with his partner. Invention is best summarized by the "Michael Scarn" construct, which (for anyone who has scene a few seasons of The Office) is the improv actor who pulls out a gun in every scene when he runs out of ideas--because the actor focusing on invention focuses on ideas and what he can do to be a humorous aspect, what he can do to impact the scene for his own end, rather than supporting and building up his teammates even if that means taking a "fall" and setting others up for jokes and possibly not getting to deliver your own. Pulling a "gun" out in a scene is invention. It kills the relationship between characters and leaves the scene in shambles but, hey, at least they got a couple short-lived laughs and a smidge more attention.

Invention comes from being self-focused. How can I be funny to the audience? How can I get a huge laugh/applause? How can I make an impact?

Discovery is about participation. That's it. Discovery is about actively working with your fellow actors and doing something to build them and, in turn, the scene.

A life well lived is a life lived in discovery, a life in which you work everyday to build others and their situations to a higher point than where you found them, where you actively strive to contribute something that doesn't reflect directly back to you. A life of invention is a life of pompous pride, a life of knowing you're as good--the scene is as good-- as you/it will ever be, and you just have to stand there and spew things out and it will work to your advantage.


If there's anything I've learned in the last two years, it's that there is no pearl without the oyster. There is no glory without work. Pearls don't roll around the ocean floor waiting to be scooped up in droves. They have to be pried from a sealed shell--there has to be pressure and work and time.

I want a castle full of pearls. I want a life that I've built and worked for. I want to be recognized as someone who did her best, not as someone who was the best. I don't want to go back to a life spent leaving doors closed because my key didn't open the lock on the first try. I want a life I've actively participated in, a life of discovery and creation where my input builds the outcome, rather than a life on a cardboard throne spent expressing lamentations that no one has noticed how great I am at sitting yet.

Life happens when you make it happen, and I think that's what Lennon intended if/when he said that. I want to act and not be acted upon. I want a life of beauty and fulfillment, a life of discovery.

I want pearls.

Throw Away Genius

Improv is teaching me a lot about life. For instance, the things I do or say don't matter after I've done or said them. It's become past action; it is of no benefit to beat myself up over how I could have done that better or responded differently to my fellow actor. I cannot fix it. The best I can do is acknowledge things could have been different and make a mental note for next time. To succeed in improv, to succeed in life, you have to pay attention to what's happening around you, you have to listen to your surroundings, and react as best you can in the minimal time you're allotted. No two situations will ever be the same. You can never fix what happens. The thing with scripted theatre is if I screw something up I can say "Next time," knowing that next time I have the ability to execute things in the effective way. Life and improv are unscripted. I can only count my losses and hope "next time" I'm more focused on what I need to do.

The Sky Can Become Our Possibility

The other day I posted on Facebook that I'm once again suffering from a severe case of My-Life-is-Excellent-itus, because frankly, it'd been a good day.

And things keep getting better.

Anne Frank, and sadly I'm paraphrased because I haven't read her diary in some six years, said she would lay in bed and think about what had happened that day and how she'd responded and how she could fix mistakes or react better next time. She'd review her life.

I often review my life. And for a long while it's been the whole scope of things--how that one day playing with my grandma's neighbors in their backyard with their puppy affected me as a child and transferred into who I am as an *cough* adult. I write with metaphor and often it's based on those moments as a kid that seemed utterly insignificant but now stand out as something utterly important, even if it's just for the fact I remember them.

I was on a date, ironically shortly before the optimistic life realization. They may or may not be related. You can twist/interpret my words as you may. I was on a date and we, as happens on introductory dates, were divulging information about ourselves.

And I kept running out of things to say. I made it through Jason Mraz and Back to the Future and suddenly I was drawing blanks. I'm not interested in things. I don't have hobbies. I felt very much insufficient and pointless. And my lack of sharing, of taking advantage of this guy genuinely wanting to hear me brag about myself, has nagged me for the past few days. To the point that today when I was at work and suddenly remembered a moment in my grandma's neighbors backyard where we were playing house in their little shed and a bee swarmed us and we had to abandon the little red bowl in our haste to safety.

I realized that I have a life behind me. I have memories and interests and experiences that are uniquely mine and mean absolutely nothing to anyone I cross paths with. But that someday I'll have shared those things. Someday someone will know my pointless stories. And how can I give up a few hours into a date, believing I've got nothing more to disclose.


I wasn't going to talk about that. What I sat down to blog (or rather stayed awake to blog/delayed watching Arrested Development to blog) is that I'm not so much looking at the long-range scheme of things, such as those memories from a childhood at grandma's, but the more recent things.

I auditioned for Pickleville Playhouse (in Bear Lake) in March, I think, and had I made a show it would have entailed rehearsing in Logan and living in Bear Lake for the summer for performances, which I would get paid for. It was an interesting and very much desirable idea.

But it would mean going seasonal at work and holding off on any Bountiful/Centerville life I would possibly have had that summer.

So I started to make ultimatums.

-If I don't make Pickleville I'll get red highlights in my hair.
-If I don't make Pickleville I'll buy a pet rat.
-If I don't make Pickleville I'll go on a mission.

That's the truth. I'm not exaggerating.

I didn't make Pickleville. I made Improvables. I didn't make Pickleville. I made 12 Angry Jurors.

Today at work I ran into the previous PTA president at West Bountiful Elementary, the lady who hooked me up with the directing gig. She told me she wasn't next year's PTA president, but that I was coming back next year for the musical, that the producer-mom would contact me in the summer about picking a show.

I got an email with the Improvables June schedule and I'm playing a show at Playbills'.

My director for 12 Angry Jurors told me she thought I'd be a great theatre teacher and then gave me tips/suggestions/offered advice for when I get closer to finishing up.

Things are right. I'm not going on a mission, and that's alright. I'm majoring in theatre, and that's alright. That guy I worried soooo much about didn't want to date me but found someone else, and that's alright. I'm so at peace right now that I can't even describe it. I just...I know I'm where I need to be. I know I'm who I need to be. I know these things are falling in place and I'm welcoming them with open arms. I love that I can look back and see how I just needed time for the mission question to make sense, I just needed time to grow acclimated to the theatre department, I just needed time for the river of life to wash my concerns downstream and for the irrigation gate to drop, sparing me from wasting water on a relationship that wasn't a relationship and wasn't going anywhere. I needed to get my head past the clouds.

And now that I'm there I love looking down and seeing how perfectly logical the path was the whole time, and I can scoff at myself, whom I now perceive to be an ignorant elementary school girl, and my impatience to just press on. I love seeing what I couldn't, and the peace that comes from knowing no matter how horribly lost I felt at those moments, no matter how much it nauseated me at times, regardless of those nights I cried, I was never truly lost. I was never truly wandering aimlessly. I hate to be cliche, but there were footprints in the sand, carrying me. All things are calculated for learning.

I'm just doing what I'm here to do. I'm pressing on, unable to understand what's lurking in the clouds, but hoping with all my faith it's for my good.

And that's life. It's a sunny day that's slightly overcast, and some moments you find yourself bathed in shade, but you get past the cloud and the sun's still shining.

Even if I don't see it, the sun's still shining.

This is the Life

I keep wanting to post something but I'm not sure what I want it to be about exactly...

Often times I don't really plan what I say, it just stems from some place in my mind or my heart and somehow works its way into a vague poem that cohesively makes sense, or a short story that somehow has a moral.

That's kind of how I live my life. What happens happens; I don't really....try.

Take the piano for instance: I had a natural knack for it. My fingers were crafted to tickle the ivories, and they generally were good at it. My mind's connection to the muscle memory of playing a piece was very strong, and once I nailed it down I could whip it out at any moment at any speed.

I was good.

So I didn't practice.

Take my GPA for instance: I was kicked out of Honors English my ninth grade year because, being naturally gifted with words, I focused my energies on my weaknesses like science and math. So I didn't maintain the B grade level to stay in the class.

So they kicked me out. And other than one terrible science grade my ninth grade year, my lowest grades--college included--are in English courses.

Because I don't try.

I fell for the system of blogging because when it comes to writing I'm not one for revision. With few exceptions, when I write something I consider it completed and publishable in that exact moment. With a blog I can do that. I can write something and send it into the world seconds later. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to try.

Even now I don't know what exactly it is I'm getting at. I'm just writing.

That's why I hated literary criticism and analyzing poetry and what not. Because to me, people wrote the way they read, people wrote the way I wrote, which was the way I read. It's late so let me repeat that sentence in another way: I always imagined the author took as much thought to write as it took me to read. I don't know what's coming, I discover it the farther down the page I go. So, obviously, must the writer upon penning it.

I viewed writing as more of an archaeological work, slowly dusting off evidence by degrees, never truly aware of what was being uncovered until at last there lay a skeleton of sorts. And in that moment every little aspect prior to would make ultimate sense. The work would be completed, understood, and beautiful.

And for me, quite often, it works that way. Spoiler alert, the prose piece that was published in Weber's undergraduate literary book Metaphor was one of those instances where I sat and wrote, and as the end came I realized all the symbolism with the cold hands and a reserved, almost cold life, and the bright vivacious man warming my hands both metaphorically and literally.

That's one reason it's one of my favorite things I've written lately. Because it somehow resulted in so much meaning.

I don't plan my writing. Which is why it hurt when the words went away last year. For so long the one thing that had always been near effortless was suddenly a barren wasteland I couldn't cross. And I kept wanting to talk about it, write about it, but the words weren't there. There were never enough words, and they wouldn't file into place the way they used to, gathering together at the close to mean something more than the stammerings of a young adult.




I'm tired and sick of this post.

I keep coming back to the diner. I guess I'll write it. maybe the words know something I don't.



I watched her from my seat at the bar, feet dangling, one hand holding my chin up in the way I keep assuming is sexy; I don't know how I'd fare if someone told me it was otherwise. She didn't seem to notice me, and I didn't seem to mind. Not everyone you recognize needs to be verbally acknowledged. Sometimes it's enough to stare from a distance for a moment or so and then calmly return to the life you developed in their absence, knowing full well they would do the same. Some bridges don't burn, they just get overgrown, and you wonder what the trouble would be in moving the foliage and crossing once more. Sometimes you think to take the risk.

And sometimes you make it halfway and change your mind, allowing the underbrush to envelop the faded wood boards again, sucking that piece of your past back into the recesses of the forest of your mind where you now fail to tread.

But I didn't need that with her. I didn't need to contemplate the bridge. I knew her well enough, remembered her well enough, even with a bridge left dilapidated and forgone. I hadn't even realized I'd crossed the bridge, really. It had taken until seeing her to realize how far we'd come, my feet and I, how much distance lay between us and that once field of green. I had an image of myself, back then. A vision of perfection, what "adult" me would entail, and it took seeing her, across the greasy diner in the booth that should be hosed down, to realize I'd reached that moment. I'd become that vision, else why would I see myself as such a distant figure? Else why would I see what used to be me sitting in an awkward solitude by the window?


It hit me this weekend, and today, but so expediently on Friday, when suddenly every thread was cut. Suddenly all the safety nets that tethered me to that frightened chubby girl hiding in a Jason Mraz tee shirt were broken and dangling as memories from the four gray walls that suspended me. Suddenly my limitations were nothing. Suddenly the expanse before me was more vast and beautiful than it had ever been.

Suddenly I...was alive.

I forgot until this moment: there's a scene in Home Alone where Kevin yells out "I'm not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I'm not afraid anymore!" (and then he sees the creepy shovel dragging neighbor and runs away screaming).

But my life has reached that moment. The Macaulay Culkin in my mind keeps yelling "I'm not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I'm not afraid anymore!" and I can't help but feel it with each breath. It's invigorating, this concept of being alive. This ability to share what's on my mind with anyone nearby, not questioning how they'll interpret what I'm saying, but simply saying it as though they've known me for ages. It's not caring if my odd dancing scares boys away, but embracing that this is how I'm happy in a movement setting. It's not chickening out when the attractive mid-twenties man from corporate talks to you briefly and not shying away from asking if he's single. It's taking the moment you have and making the best of it. It's not waiting for the "next time" that won't happen or won't happen the same way. It's being grateful for all my big mistakes as much as I am for all the little blessings, because each makes me what I am. It's knowing there's someone out there who will accept all of me, and that hiding it won't keep hurt from happening. It's understanding that hurt happens, that love isn't right the first time, that people can say things they possibly mean and everything can look good on paper, but when it comes down to it it just doesn't work.

It's believing that something will work. It's hoping that I can have all I want and deserve in this lifetime, that God won't let me be the crazy rat lady because I think varmints are adorable and I'm allergic to cats. It's throwing caution to the wind. It's living the way he does, maybe not exactly, but enough to feel the breeze. It's accepting what I am and embracing what I want, and greeting the universe with this understanding, and paying it forward and keeping from bottling it up. It's about being present and in the now and ready for destiny, even if it's just so I can make another mistake.

It's making mistakes and taking truths from the ashes of my expectations. It's moving forward, living up, making mountains.





Sometimes songs don't directly apply unless you're me. But I love this song so I'm embedding it anyway.

A Sermon of Sorts

It was my senior year of high school. I was seated next to my friend Rachael in our dreaded AP Lit class. We'd been reading Albert Camus' The Stranger (I think it was one of the few assigned books I actually read in its entirety).

In essence, the book is taken from an existentialist perspective; Meursault (it's French, ps) sees life as meaningless--he does not mourn his mother's death, he does not feel anything toward the woman he "loves", and he kills a man in cold blood without so much as batting an eye.

I consider myself a religious person. To the extent that when I watch movies of heightened stress/anxiety/suspense, having placed myself in full empathy with the characters as my actor instinct privies me to do, I find myself willing them to pray for help or protection or whatever it may be. One example that always stands out also took place my senior year in my US Government class when we watched the movie World Trade Center, which follows a few cops the day of 9/11 who were buried in the rubble of the crash. One of them is particularly wedged under concrete, and I remember the entire time watching it I had my fingers pressed to my mouth inwardly screaming "Somebody say a prayer already! Why aren't you praying?!"

Because that's my gut reaction.

So it's interesting that when Rachael said how stupid of a concept existentialism seemed, for me to respond that if I didn't have my religious believes, I'd be behind it.

For some reason, if I didn't have a sure thing to hope on, hoping on an absence of hope would almost be just as...comforting.



I was talking with a friend yesterday who's been surrounded by Mormon culture all her life, but she expressed to me that she's only ever fully felt comfortable in her friend's non-denominational Christian church. She went on to explain that's why she doesn't believe there's only one true religion, because you can feel that spirit anywhere.

I fumbled for a moment; I've been perfectly fine sharing every detail of my life with this friend, and she happened to become more present in my life at the same time I started focusing more specifically on my religion--but something has always held me tentative from sharing fully religious statements, though she knows more of my mission serving dilemma than most. I suppose it's because I respect her so much and she's so studious and smarter than me and I'm worried....I guess I'm worried of being logicked out of it.

But I did respond, saying I agree you can feel that spirit anywhere, and that I have felt it in places not specifically Mormon, and then referenced how a few months back the movie Valentines Day actually increased my testimony of God's wisdom, understanding, and plan (in essence because the movie shows how everyone's stories effect everyone else's in just that one small day, and how God orchestrates things like that both with people and books and music on an hourly level). But I closed sheepishly that I do believe there is only one true religion.

And as the conversation was interrupted there and I was left to myself for a moment, I realized...

One true religion is always how they say it. We are the one true religion. But that sounds the way my friend has been taking it: that all others are wrong. And I thought of things I could have said or would have gone on to say had conversation continued, and my next thought was that teaching of Christ brings the spirit. There is truth in Christ and the spirit manifests truth. I believe you can feel that truth, that spirit, in thousands of places. But it's with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I feel it the most.

It's not so much one true religion as it is one complete religion.



I know this post is really scatter-brained, but I just felt like saying it.

Life is meaningless without knowing where we're going. Logically, existentialism makes sense to me. But I know where I'm going, I know where I want to be, and I have a way to get there, a hope to find it.

If this makes any sense.

Maybe I should have just stuck with cleaning my room.

Don't Ya Dare Fell

It's a good thing I was the most proficient at treading water in the community pool;
it's smart to develop skill in something you think you'll never use.

***

I know what you mean,
At least I keep saying I do.
It hurts more to misinterpret.
I've allowed us to continue
Because it feel so good with you,
But I forget how much it hurts
When you're gone.

I told myself no,
I started bolting the locks
And shutting down shop
And hunkering in for the storm.

Stop doing this to me.
Stop taking 90 and leaving 10,
I go to meet you and you're gone
Again.

***

She remembered it like a painting,
Art crafted out of time
And laced upon a canvas
Sprouting truth and bliss
And unfathomable reason to continue.

***

You keep me from sleeping.
I pushed my chair back from the desk.
It's done. I said it. It's out there.

***

Have enough faith to fall.
I never climbed a rock wall,
I didn't go the extra mile
On that hike in Zions,
I kept both ice skates on the ice.

I've constantly been plagued
By the idea of injury
Induced from falling from some height.
That's how bones are broken,
That's how structure is shattered,
Destruction descends from high up.
I stayed planted to the earth,
Arms and legs in at all times,
Trying to enjoy the ride
That took me nowhere.

I've lived a linear life.
I've gone the mundane route;
I haven't climbed,
Haven't felled,
Haven't experienced the suspense
Of pain
Or the revival of vitals and life.

Life.

I haven't lived life.

But that's more than can be said for you.
As fond you are of painting
These pictures and how-to's
For my inexperienced naive mind,
As thrilled you are at zig-zagging
Through the maze,
You refuse to climb
More often than I do.
Or even worse,
You climb, but not far enough.

I'm tired of all the nothing
The wind blows in my face,
Tired of the specks of frayed leaves
Scattering about my eyes
At the close of their journey from
Up above.
I'm tired of the remnants of
An altitude I refuse to know.

So I started to climb.

I'm ready to fall.
I'm ready to let go and fall.
I've stumbled for this, but
Kept carrying on
Because the bruises and
Scars are better than the unknown;
Better than knowing I could have had
But refrained.
Of knowing it was coming
But I abstained.

Have enough faith to fall.
Have the strength to look at me
And see beyond
What you can't decide;
Stop making mountains
Out of mole-holes
And take your own advice.
Stop telling me I'll scare you off,
I already have.
You're terrified.
Forget it.
Forsake it.

Have enough faith to fall.

I'm trying to catch you
-I'm waiting to catch you-
The way I expected you to catch me.

Wherever I'm Going I'm Already Home

I once read Jason Mraz's blog, before he took all his posts offline, and found something that really stood out to me. It was at a moment in my life where I couldn't comprehend why people were consistently being false about who they were. I am of the opinion and practice that if you generally do not care for someone, don't play to their face as though you're their best friend. Merely limit the exposure you have to them. It has worked relatively well for me, but I couldn't grasp why everyone else just pranced about falsely adoring people they later grumbled about in private.

But for a statement that meant so much to me, I don't remember it. Off the top of my head. Luckily it hit me with such impact and internal, personal meaning, that I placed it on my facebook, where it thankfully has remained.

"Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can't work for you if you don't show up as you. ...Your thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions and attitudes create the picture of your life. Draw it well."

But it wasn't until about a month ago when I was going through the very girlish anxiety of what to wear and how to have my hair when I meet this man that it occurred to me not to go to extremes to guarantee I'll look good. I need to do what I would do any day; to be myself. This seemed so suddenly important and integrated in me that it took quite some time to realize I was paraphrasing that unforgettable statement that I could never quite memorize.

And as I searched it out and found it again, I realized this has been swirling in paraphrase in my mind for years now; congealing in the drain of my brain, leaving a sort of residue determined to stay for all time. The motto of my life, the way I regulate my days. A source of comfort. It was beautiful to me that I hadn't elected for this to be what carried me along, that it wasn't my teen-aged obsession forcing me to make meaning out of a well-worded thought an idol of mine happened to post online. I tried this last year with the Happy Now Year, which was a very good philosophy, but I never really lived up to it. Despite my fan-driven desire to live by this law, I kept living in maybe's, my tongue tied on someday and my heart draped on the past. But it isn't the fact that I am led to think of Jason Mraz when I think of my personal motto that inspires me; it's the message behind it. This statement has accumulated purposefully in my mind because it rings true to me specifically and entirely, not just my glutinous fandom. It means something because it means something. I can think about it and feel better, inspired, invigorated, ready. Innumerable times this week I have muttered or thought to myself "Life can't work for you if you don't show up as you."

It's not just about presenting myself to Jason Mraz with my hair straight and around my face, my CityStreet jeans gripping the contours of my legs, eggplant eyeliner around my blue eyes, and a Mraz t-shirt as if it's just another day in my life, not the greatest day. It's about being all of that with my attitude and personality every day I breathe. It's about boxing up the doubt and concern that I'm wrong and setting it up in flame. It's about taking the power and confidence I'm moved by when living in theatre and bringing that into practice when I'm living in the moment.

And a large part of my hindrance at "show[ing] up as [me]" is that I'm tied so rigidly to the person I was when that statement first graced my eyes. The admirable thing about Jason Mraz is that he hasn't let success be an excuse for being found drunk and high on street corners by the Po-Po. Life has worked for him because he has, and daily continues to, show up as him. He doesn't sing Wordplay in concert anymore because he's not that same cocky attention seeking guy (his words, not mine), he doesn't smoke anymore because it's derogatory to his health and career. In fine, he's changed. I'd like to think I have grown along with him, maybe not in the same direction, but I've been close enough that I don't dispute who he is now compared to the young kid who first set out for music. And even if I did have my qualms with his slightly gaunt face or almost homeless hair, what right do I have to question him? Whatever he's become is what is right for him. Whatever he does with his life works. Because he keeps showing up as him.

I didn't think this post would come back to Virginia, but it has. Whoever I am is so hidden by the clutter I'm sure Virginia would clear away that I'm unable to fully get life to work for me. I'm struggling and failing because I can't show up as me; whoever I am is concealed in an unreachable place. I'm still so tethered to this part of me that worries and daydreams and lives in the past or the future. But my core wants to live now. My soul wants to show up as me. I want life to work.

So I'm going to break my animism this summer; I am going to tear myself from all the things I don't need that keep tying me down because I may need them or miss them someday.

My thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions and attitudes create the picture of my life.

I can't take up the pen until I've purged enough clutter to see what those thoughts, speech, beliefs, actions and attitudes are.

Life can't work for me unless I show up as me. And I can't be me until I find me.

Life Sized

Ten years ago I didn't think past age twelve. I played with Barbies, making a new movie everyday; of Barbie falling in love and having kids. Of Barbie working at McDonald's and falling in love and having kids. Of Barbie's daughter growing up to look like Barbie and falling in love and having kids.

Eight years ago I didn't think past being a "teen". I dreamed of lockers and new friends, and Barbie started co-staring in movies about her daughter going to school. And growing up and falling in love.

Six years ago I imagined high school. I imagined a red convertible and a more skinny brunette version of me. I imagined falling in love. I got caught up in adolescents, in a fantastic musician, and in learning that writing wasn't just a desire. The Barbies found themselves in a box, their house sold to a girl blocks away, and my room suddenly low on a third of its past shelving capabilities .

Four years ago I didn't think ahead. I put less effort into school than I'd ever in my life. I tried last minute to bring my grade up in an honors course, and nearly failed another. I was kicked out I'd the honors course anyway. I didn't imagine high school, I was making movies in my head, saying they'd be books soon; movies after.

Two years ago I denied I was aging. I denied the end was coming. I let these delusions keep my mind at ease, making movies and daydreams while school lessons slipped aside. I saw myself as I once had Barbie, and couldn't comprehend why I hadn't fallen in love; or at least why he didn't love me.

Four months ago I realized making movies and future ideals with Barbie had not given me the means to accomplish them. Four months ago I realized it wasn't enough to want to go to college; college costs money. Four months ago I was forced to accept I don't have money. No benefactor would step in and escourt me to my potential out of state. No miracle would come and pay my way in state away from home. Four months ago I realized I wasn't playing with Barbies, and I didn't have the power to make things come to pass as smoothly or promsingly as they had in toy form.

One week ago I realized it's over. One week ago being a citizen of the USA became more than saying a pledge each morning. The things I'd ignore my parents say about money, the things Barbie and the movies never had to comprehend, became real. Last night I realized life isn't like Barbies. I can't change the story every day. I can't morph the outcome to pacify me.

Four days from now I enter adulthood. Four days from now I'm out of excuses, and Barbie has to cease being a way of life, and become--for good-- a memory.