"There’s no lemon so sour that you can’t make something resembling lemonade."         
                                                                                                                                                   ~This is Us, Season 1, Episode 1

There is so much pressure around New Year's: pressure to look back saying good riddance to the past year, pressure to have a grand vision going forward, to have figured out the bungles of the last 12 months, even pressure to feel and openly express gratitude. It can be overwhelming for someone that is feeling strong and healthy and focused, but what if you are in a rough patch? What if you've hit a bump (or two or twelve) in the road? What if you're in bed with the flu?

What if we just let ourselves BE this New Year's Eve? Hear me out. Whether we are hustling to win the game of who's most exhausted or who is more motivated for the months ahead, the fact still remains that if we are hustling on either side of this coin, we are still competing, still trying to live according to someone else's standards and not our own. What could living feel like if we were free to feel and rest and explore and BE, on our own time table? To accept that we are where we are on this New Year's Eve, and any way you slice it, that's ok? That it's even ok not to be ok.

Tara Brach, in her book Radical Acceptance, talks about the power of accepting where we are right now, not as a means of denying reality or stagnating, but as the first step in loving ourselves and having the courage to face the reality of where we are at this moment so that we can walk forward with faith and grace. "Yes, this too", she suggests saying when we find ourselves dealing with that expected car repair payment, a rude cashier, or a head cold that has you in bed. It's not about resigning yourself, but be bravely willing to see the reality of a situation, whatever it might be and letting yourself feel whatever feelings it might bring. Once we accept where we are, we can plan for where we need and want to go--but we can't skip the step of accepting where we are starting. We can try, but life doesn't let us move forward without at first letting ourselves see and feel and accept.

I think of a firefighter as a wonderful example of someone practicing radical acceptance: a firefighter does not deny or ignore the reality of being in the middle of a burning building. Rather, they accept that this is their reality at the moment, and this acceptance allows them the ground zero from which to take steps to rescue any people or animals inside, put out the flames, and bring themselves to safety. Acceptance is not denial.

So where are you today? Maybe you're dressed up in fancy clothes for a night on the town with your partner or your friends. All good. Maybe you are in your pajamas with your pet, watching a favorite childhood movie. All good. Maybe you are dreading 2018. Maybe you are little-kid-on-Christmas-morning-excited about the whole New Year thing. All good, all good.

Start where you are. Don't feel pressured to jump with joy or get motivated right this moment. Sometimes the next step forward is rest. Take the pressure off yourself to be whoever it you are supposed to be, or feel whatever it is that you are supposed to feel. If I've got a New Year's resolution this year, it's to be a bit more FREE. Free from the shoulds, the coulds, and the supposed to's. And to try to take whatever lemons I've got and make something resembling lemonade.

This New Year's Eve, I'm fighting a cold, so I'm in a favorite sweater propped up on the couch, with my second batch of chicken soup cooking away, alternating between reading and binging This is Us on Hulu. I've got a backlog of emails, texts, and messages to respond to, the fallout of a full fall schedule, and I've got an ever growing to do list that I'm not allowed to look at until January 2nd. I'm not feeling particularly energetic at the moment, and I'm not going to use more precious energy fighting that feeling. I am where I am and I trust that there is time for it all.

Wishing you a moment of radical acceptance today, wherever you might find yourself and all the best wishes to you for a healthy, curious, creative, and adventurous New Year ahead.

​When I was a kid dreaming about being an actress and a writer I remember an adult responding to my goal by quoting John Lennon. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." As a kid, I resented this response to my dream. See, the person who said this to me didn't offer any other information beyond the quote itself, no supplementary information at all beyond the statement that their own dreams didn't work out. I have spent a couple of decades since wrestling with hard to define fears and frustrations about how I might make an artistic life for myself in the face of life itself, which in that adult's mind, would surely win the game every time. 
 
One specific fear that I had after hearing this quote was simply the fear of making plans. After all, if life is going to happen on its own while we make other plans, then what's the point of making plans at all? Is it an impossible task to try to steer our lives in a direction that we want to go, even just a little? Maybe worse than that, is is a naive task to try to carve out a creative existence? Does that make us stupid or silly? Do we really have no control? 
 
I'm turning 35 years old this year, a far cry from the child I was when I first heard these words. Admittedly, I spent years hating these words by John Lennon, and I am only recently starting to think about them in a new way. What if the person who shared them with me shared their own interpretation of the quote? As with anything, I needed to work out what they might mean for me, and not someone else.  
 
Will life have its way with us, throwing obstacles in our path beyond our control? You bet. Will some of the plans we make be tossed out the window at a moment's notice? Absolutely. Should we continue to dream and make plans for the kind of life that we want to live? Without a doubt.
 
See, I don't think it's about not making plans. Have you ever tried to write a poem, a novel, or a blog post before? The first blank page stares back at you, blinding you with doubt. The longer you let it stare back at you, the more likely you are to be intimated to begin. You stay frozen. On the other hand, if we can scribble down a few words, maybe even a sentence or two, it's like breaking a spell. The process isn't smooth sailing, but at least, we have begun. 
 
Making plans, or taking that first step, is necessary--not just for an artist, but for a human. Can you imagine a person sitting in a cave long ago, refusing to leave to hunt for and gather food, simply because her plan to search for something to eat might go differently than she anticipated? If you leave the cave, you're certainly going to be surprised by something (a bushel of berries or a bear), but if you refuse to leave the cave, you won't be able to survive for very long. In this case, fear to act would cost you your life.
 
Ok, so you consent to leave the cave, to accept the role in a play that you are feeling challenged by, or to move to that new city for graduate school. Step one, making plans--check. Now for the life part of the quote. Because, certainly life will turn out differently than we have planned, right? 
 
It's likely life will mix with your well made plans. And yet, why does encountering the unexpected need to mean that we're doomed? Have you ever started to work on a creative project--a play, a five course dinner for guests, a short story--and had it turn out differently than you expected? Have you ever had it fall apart and go up in flames? Have you ever thanked your lucky stars that something changed shape along the way, because it turned out even better than you imagined? These outcomes may be on two different ends of the spectrum, but they both have something in common. They both, as my husband often says, give you new information. We can grieve after something is lost or blows up in our face; we need to give ourselves the space and grace to do so. We can also learn from life's plot twists. And without this learning, without discovery, what is life? Isn't this collateral damage of sorts also able to exist as collateral creativity?

I like John Lennon's quote, but I'm being so bold as to make my own when it comes to this subject.

​Life is the joyful, painful, satisfying, terrifying, delicious, hopeless, messy, heartbreakingly beautiful bits all smashed together, all of the time. It's not if we are going to experience peace and pain, it's when and how. Peace may feel more pleasurable than pain, but the thing is, both feelings fall flat when we don't examine them on a deeper level. As a human being, we may be cursed with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", but we have also been gifted with a sense of curiosity and this curiosity is what is responsible for any art that has ever been made and been meaningful.
 
Artists make breathtaking creations of all kinds not because their plans remain untouched by life itself, but because they get curious about their life experiences, and this curiosity turns the remnants of their scheming into collateral creativity. It's artistic alchemy. 
 
What if we get curious about a loss we have experienced? 
 
What is we get curious about why we feel so much joy when we are with someone special to us?

What if we get curious about a soul crushing defeat?
 
If we get curious about these things, what happens then? What questions can we ask? What can we learn? What can we make? How might we heal in the process, and possible even help others to do the same?
 
Collateral creativity might be an idea scribbled on a napkin after a lunch interview gone awry. It might be a book you decide to write, inspired directly or indirectly by struggle. Collateral creativity might be your favorite musician's darkest hours turned into an album that feels like home to you. 
 
This blog you are reading is my own collateral creativity. It took me years of feeling frustrated with being an artist with a day job (something my ten year old self most definitely did not plan on) before I wondered what might come of getting curious about sharing my experience online with other actresses, writers, and artists that might feel the same way. I can now find gratitude that some things turned out differently than I planned, because that means I have something to respond to and to write about. 
 
Curiosity can transform life from one challenge after another into one big creative meditation that provides a way to both make our plans and find a way to enjoy the twists and turns along the way as much as possible. When we allow life to penetrate the plans we make, we can accept and access an infinite source of wonder and inspiration.
 
Make plenty of plans. Prepare to stay curious about what happens. Be ready to dig deeper into all of it and believe that from the remnants, you may be able to make something magnificent. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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MOTIVATION MONDAY is here to help usher in another week! Here are some things I'm finding particularly fun to think about this week:
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Something to Daydream About: Lately, I've been wishing for a chance to go on an artist retreat with some of my dearest friends from grad school that live far away. How wonderful would it be to reunite AND be creative together? Here's 8 creative havens for a retreat that are fun to dream about (personally, I'd pick the Tuscany one)! Have you ever planned a retreat with your creative circle?


Something to Listen to on Your Commute: Adam Driver may be starring in the new Star Wars film, but did you know he was a United States Marine who has found powerful healing and purpose through the arts? His TED talk is a beautiful meditation on how theatre might serve those who serve our country in the military:

"It's a powerful thing, getting in a room with complete strangers and reminding ourselves of our humanity, and that self-expression is just as valuable a tool as a rifle on your shoulder. And for an organization like the military, that prides itself on having acronyms for acronyms, you can get lost in the sauce when it comes to explaining a collective experience. And I can think of no better community to arm with a new means of self-expression than those protecting our country."
 
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​Words to Consider:  
"If you want to work on your art, work on your life."
                                                                                                                                                                   ~Anton Chekhov

Don't be fooled--working on your craft as an artist can mean learning a monologue and learning new ways to deal with your anger and anxiety. It can mean taking a stage movement class and committing to eating more vegetables every day. You are both an artist AND a human. One feeds the other, always. 


A Book to Read: I am listening to the new biography of Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and am hooked. Da Vinci left over 7,000 journal pages that survive to this day, and his curiosity about everything from engineering to theatre set building to human musculature is well documented, along with sketches of animals, babies, and flying machines. He is often touted as a genius, but Isaacson encourages us to look past that label, which often implies inborn ability that no one can successfully strive for, and instead allow ourselves to be inspired by his tenacity, curiosity, and willingness to make mistakes. 


A one pot meal to make: Ok, so truth be told, this isn't a meal. Or perhaps I should say,  it's not supposed to be. But if you are seeking a better for you cookie this holiday season, look no further than Alaena Haber's Snowball Cookies. Made with honey, these little bites are gluten-free, and have an unexpected secret ingredient: white sweet potatoes. You can make the basic recipe and then divide the dough into a few different bowls to make different flavors that include vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, or citrus. Efficient and delicious! I made a double batch this weekend--half vanilla and half chocolate--and highly suggest you do the same!

In this world, there are so many buildings, large and small, each one designed and built by human beings whose time and talents help to shelter us all. Each time they walk past one of these structures, I like to think that they can rest a bit easier, knowing that their heads and hearts and hands contributed to making something we can see, feel, and touch. 

But I'm not an architect or a craftsperson, and the things I make don't stand for all to see. Theatre is not tangible in the traditional sense, the way a building is, and this impermanence is both unsatisfactory and seductive. I make plays and tell stories and tonite, after three months of work and play with my grad students, our play will be released into the world. It will glow like the flame of a candle in the dark, burn brightly, and then at the end, flicker out, leaving but a wisp of smoke curling into goodness knows where. Actors, using their bodies and their voices, their intellect and imagination, will disappear from the stage, and the audience, having generously offered their attention (one of the greatest gifts to give someone), will take leave of their seats. 
 
The energy that will crackle and spark between you and the audience when you stand onstage speaking words aloud, feeling at once minuscule and enormous, like a guyser and a well, your feet planted like roots connected to all those artists that came before you, while at the same time, getting the sense you might just fly away in the midst of the magic of it all.
 
After, the theatre is empty. Soon it will be dark. Then, the question that haunts me each time I play onstage: Was that real? Did it ever really happen?

Silence.

Yes?

Yes. A tiny voice, no more than a whisper, answers me.

YES. Not only WAS it real. It IS real, still.

I haven't made a building. I've haven't made children. And I don't know that I will. For an artist, it's easy to feel invisible, insignificant, like the outsider at a party, where everyone but you showed up with something to share with the group. There can be deep shame, doubt, and a sense of wishing you could want something different for your life while at the same time knowing you cannot possibly want anything but this path. When your creations appear and disappear with consistent regularity, and some that never saw the light of day at all, it's too easy to sink into a place where you fear you've never made anything that matters. Not done anything that counts. That you don't matter, don't count. 

It's easy for me to dismiss what I do, what I am capable of leaving behind, but then I think of incredible plays, books, songs, and works of art I have been lucky enough to see, read, hear, and experience, and I know the ways that these things and their authors have changed the course of my life. The indescribable ways that the words, notes, colors, sensations, have etched their meaning on my very soul. After awhile, it becomes harder to dismiss ourselves in this way. 

What might we have offered another human being with something we've made? What course did we alter? What smile did we give? Does the intangible nature of an experience make it any less? 

After Philip Seymour Hoffman (one of my favorite actors) died a few years ago, I started to imagine a conversation I might have with him, before I went into an audition or performance. Call me crazy, but I racked my brain to imagine what kind of advice someone like him might give someone like me, a diligent but doubting artist. And one day, walking through the park in the spring, I heard it. "You have to believe that what you are doing matters."

You have to believe that what you are doing matters. That what you have done matters, and what you will do matters. Don't buy into beliefs (someone else's or your own) that make you question your worth or the worth of what you are making. 

And if you forget? Go back again and again, to art that speaks to you, that moves and shakes you. Sink into how much it matters to you. And eventually, this appreciation and wonder might just seep into your own practice as you realize that as an artist, you are part of that ecosystem, that legacy. How could you not matter?

And if you forget a million more times?  You're welcome on this little corner of the internet. I'm committed to keeping this space as a place where you can come to be reminded that what you are doing matters, whenever you need it--and if you're like me, you'll need it often.