2017

Produced & performed my solo show.
Disney World with Alice Sr.
Two protests.
LA: peeking, dates with Puhg, goofing with A Jar, friends & beaches.
Got rejected big time from four auditions.
Got accepted from two.
Made a new real friend.
Started my first book (3/4 done as of today).
Visited my dad & survived a tornado.
Taught third graders to improvise all spring.
A teen improv workshop for underserved girls.
Published three times.
Saw Andrew McMahon & Arcade Fire in concert.
Graduated i_.
Cast on my first Harold team.
Coached two indie teams.
Directed three sketch shows.
Visited my alma matter for spring break.
The Goodman six times.
Steppenwolf twice.
Two women's coven retreats.
Climbed Machu Picchu, explored the Amazon, best ceviche ever.
Wrote & starred in a kids comedy show at SC.
Hosted five friends on the couch.
Dallas Improv Festival: godmommin', pie, Dizz's pool, a great set.
Taught musical theatre & song parody at two summer camps.
Cried on Fourth of July.
Screamed Moana around the apartment.
Submitted three writing packets.
Made it to the final round of one for Comedy Central.
Re-learned Hiragana & Katakana.
Almost a month of improv in Maine.
The total eclipse.
Taught two sections of Theatre History & four of English.
Revised my pilot into something I'm proud of.
Took a meeting.
My first comedy class at The A.
My first playwriting class since grad school.
Workshop reading at GH.
Threw a small but intellectually stimulating film viewing.
New tattoo.
First commissioned play.
Tutored 300 hours.
156 improv shows.
After three years, found my neighborhood coffee shop.
Told my co-worker casually I am living my dream. She laughed, and I said, "No actually I am. This is the dream I had and I am doing it. Like, everyday."

The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

It's a Rambling Old House with a Big Apple Tree

This is my favorite selfie of 2017. I woke up in Maine, a sunny cool morning, felt the old curl of my hair and crusty eye lids from previous night's show. I snapped this. I went on a run. I likely bought a donut.

In 2018 I want to begin each day phoneless (quiet bathroom, journaling session, readings.)
I will try to spend a little more time with family and finish my book.
I'd like to eat less dairy and keep a more cohesive to-do list.
There is a plan for bi-weekly meetings on a large project with so and so. I am sure enough to ask for eyes on my things and to charge for my eyes on other things.
I have the most incredible life, and I spend it rushed. I'd like to not...somehow.

The year is laid out before me. I am booked and planned from January - December. I see it all--perhaps for the first time since I was 16 or so. That said, I welcome a curveball. In my ideal life, curveballs. And suddenly what I see so clearly now will be washed away and I will be somewhere completely new on soft baby feet. It's not impossible. It's very possible. So possible I can actually envision at least three alternate realities. I have been close.

There is allegedly something to be said for announcing this type of thing. "This year I WILL xxx." I have done it before. I WILL run a marathon and I WILL finish my screenplay and I WILL go swimming in Wisconsin." I was successful in these endeavors. But now I'm at a point in my life where I can't will the things I hope for ("hope for" even? I'm unsure).

And I wonder how to be the kind of confident that gets one unquestionably hired while also being kind enough to myself to know I will not be a failure if I don't. I believe the answer is in fulfilling motives, not goals. I do think motive-based living can accidentally set my sights too low, but who says a low sight is a bad sight if I really go all in? Again, for the millionth time this year, I feel like I'm learning I was not born to do anything but be alive--if that.

I Just Want It To Be Great

I've never felt as sick walking into a theatre for rehearsal as I did today. I've been revising my solo show all week--posting up in the donut shop, running out to the grocery store for bear claws to consume at the kitchen table, tittering away in the morning before Puhg woke up on his birthday, pushing all my notes around the table in the gym foyer, sunk into the couch. It is not fun. I am not enjoying this. My director tells me if I just do what I did last time/last year, it will be good. But I want it to be great. I want to nit-pick and fill in gaps and waste no one's time or eight dollars. I suffocate inside the context of this script. I want every word to weave and stick like a perfect spider web. Instead, I have sloppy glue traps in the middle of monologues and concepts I don't know how to implement and a pressing fear that everything is boring.

As a "break" I went to VG alone last night. It's closing weekend of a play that had an intriguing email blast, and I had a show tonight, two tomorrow. I stopped at Walgreens for a bag of Riesens. I sat in the theatre alone chewing the caramels one seat away from an old lesbian couple and next to three college kids. The lights seemed to go down early. Was there pre-show music? Was it just very quiet? I suddenly heard so much. "I'm so happy I'm seeing this with you," someone whispered next to me. Another voice: "Did you get here okay?" Settling bags, phones turning off, leg pats, and settled butts. For the first time in a long time, a bitty proscenium felt like home.

It's hard for me to enjoy theatre anymore. Certainly not making it. And often not even seeing it. I'm too involved in the ingredients and gaging what I can learn. I remember seeing and doing my first improv shows. I wished they were endless. Shark said in the green room last month that he never goes to shows anymore. "I have ruined improv for myself," he said, "I'm glad I ruined it. I was destined to, but I ruined it." Too real.

I put myself through this torture. I'm the one who wrote the thing. I'm the one who applied for the space. I'm the one who cares so much. I could phone it in. I could eat the deposit. I could move. I've considered all of it. I'm sitting in my favorite diner with buffalo tofu in my tum. People have told me this show changed them, inspired them, was a joy. Today, I can't comprehend it. I do not feel like "YEAH, I CAN DO IT" even though I desperately wish I did.

Post-Crying in the Writing Center

I grumpily helped some students with commas. At home Puhg saw I was in a mood, so while he was swiffering the kitchen, he impersonated Winston Churchill with a little cane. He made me kale power bowls for dinner, and when I hopped out to the store for a lime, I came back with my extra treats. Puhg glanced in the shopping back, so I said, "Don't @ me." (The Santa's Favorite that taste like licorice!!) We watched Survivor! I worked on revisions for my solo show for half an hour before grabbing a cab to coach an improv rehearsal. I made a cool $45 (sunglasses emoji). I felt scared about opening night--3.5 weeks away. I ate fifteen cookies before bed. Final grades have been submitted. My backpack is full of popcorn and candy for a Star Wars viewing in 54 minutes.

Crying in the Writing Center

Welp, I'm crying in the corner of the Writing Center. There are no walk-in appointments, so I am at the reports computer grading extra credit that I marshmallowed into giving some theatre history students. I'm weak.

My Thursday commute has been overlapping with a young, foreign father. He gets in the train car, passes out Kleenex packets with a photo of him and his baby on it, and a note that asks for a donation in return for the tissue. I think this is a good business plan because no one is bothered, there is a service given, and he's respectful. Today I decided to give him money, but when I reached in my purse, with him waiting expectantly, no dollar. I felt v bad. He was getting off the train at my stop, so I offered to buy him something at 7/11. He mentioned needing diapers. We walked over together. There were no diapers. I suggested formula. Nope. No formula. I asked if he wanted something else. Now I'd really strung this guy along, and I had to punch in in seven minutes or less. My building, just across the street. He asked for a hot dog.

My whole body got itchy. I looked around, eager to offer a substitution. But it was just candy bars and chips. I didn't think I was gonna sell him on a bag of nuts. It was our turn in line. The cashier asked what we wanted. I told her a hot dog. Guy interrupted, "a cheese hot dog," I put my card in while the attendant prepared the meat. My fingers tingled. I clenched my jaw. I pulled my card when the machine told me to and I said "Have a nice day," to the guy. I ran outside into the cold, just making it to work in time. And now I've helped a dad and killed a pig.

It's Finals Week, So I Am Entitled to Troll Just A Tad

No matter how many times I announce, "When you're done with your final, leave it on the stack at the corner of my desk," and how evidently the pile grows taller, there are always the students who walk right up to me as I am grading behind the computer and shove the stapled papers into my face with a "Here." I'm trying to be the kind of person who never misses a pile, you know?

Happy, leaving class at the end of September.