Once upon a time, there was an actress named Melissa who lived in Boston. One evening after her day job, she made her way over to an audition for a local production produced by a local theatre company. She wore her Grandma's wedding anniversary ring on a chain around her neck for good luck and carried with her two monologues that the director has sent, her headshot and resume, and a sense of adventure.  This was the seventh audition she had been to in 2018, and after vowing to get out and about in the field more often and practice her craft, Melissa was feeling pretty darn good.

​When Melissa arrived at the audition (ten minutes early despite having tried to use the wrong door to get inside), she waiting patiently in line behind the other actors. When she made her way up to the front, the kind producer behind the table asked her to fill out an audition form and asked her what song she would be singing tonite.

"Excuse me?" Melissa said.

"What song will you be singing for us tonite? A cappella, of course."  He paused, surely noticing Melissa's deer in the headlights expression.  "We were going to tell people in advance, but the director thought it would be better to ask people when they arrived tonite."

The sense of adventure went right out the window. Melissa was suddenly filled with panic. No, rage. No, fear. No, ALL THE FEELINGS. She looked down at her newly printed headshot. She felt like ripping it in half and walking out. She hadn't sang for an audition in fifteen years. And even then, she wasn't a strong singer; her voice shook, her knees knocked together, and she always left feeling like a loser. It wasn't kind of her to think of herself that way, but there was no denying that was how the experience had made her feel in the past. How could she willingly repeat that experience, one that would surely make her feel like her anxious, shaky teenage self all over again? 

She stood still for just a moment, feeling her feet pressing into the floor, and realized that over the years since her last singing audition, she had learned to become more kind to herself. Melissa had learned to take care of herself in the decade plus since she has last auditioned for Into the Woods at SUNY Geneseo, and as a result, she became her own Fairy Godmother and granted herself permission to leave the audition right away. No one was forcing her to do this, and there was no need to do something that would make her feel like a failure. After all, asking actors to sing a song with no advance notice was not very professional anyway and she wasn't obligated to do it. This was her choice.

Melissa felt her feet pressing into the floor again and took a deep breath in, then exhaled. Melissa had made her decision. She would sleep soundly tonite and all the nights after this one, knowing that she did what she had to do to take care of herself and to be at peace with herself, not just as an actor but as a human being. It wasn’t about what other people wanted her to do, it was about what she wanted to do.

When the producer called her name, Melissa marched into the audition room, shook the director's hand and sang "Moon River" from Breakfast at Tiffany's for all four people on the other side of the casting table. She didn't hit every note perfectly, but she stayed in one key (mostly) and gave it all the heart she had. The most amazing thing was that her knees didn't knock together and her voice didn't shake.  When she walked out, she felt as if she had just skydived: she was still high on the adrenaline from free falling through the air and at the same time, she felt more grounded than ever.

Alright, I am interrupting this in-progress story for a brief newsflash. Spoiler alert: The Melissa in the story is the very same Melissa typing to you right now (what a twist, I know!), and this audition experience actually happened to me this spring.  A director really did spring a singing request on me at an audition and I, a lifelong scared singer and anxious artist, walked in like I owned the place, sang my heart out, and lived to tell the tale. How the heck did this happen? How did I get here?

It hasn’t been an easy journey or a straightforward one, but the explanation is actually quite simple: over the years, I have practiced the art of not giving a f*$k. Or rather, of giving less f*$ks. And most of the time, I didn't even know it. 

You see, in the years since I last sang for an audition, I've gained a stronger sense of self-worth. The kinder view of who I am has been hard won and is not over by any means; through conversations with mentors, meeting friends who shared my love of theatre and creativity, self-help books, meditation, therapy, and a boatload of soul searching, I think I have finally run out of the enormous amount of energy that it requires to hate or shame myself on a regular basis about thing that are supposed to bring me joy. I am starting to accept my perpetual imperfection and to value my enthusiasm and creative courage, and have grown a community of kindred spirits who love and support me for me, not for some talent I do or do not possess. I have taken risks, been down and out, enjoyed a number of successes, and eventually found ways to support myself through the roller coaster ride that is a life. Even in the darkest times, the sun kept rising, and I rose with it, and life moved forward. Progress wasn't obvious but was happening all the same, similar to how we don't often notice day to day differences in the mirror, but can see changes when we look at an old photograph of ourselves. I make tiny inroads into personal peace again and again and again without seeing any difference, until one day, the day of the aforementioned audition, I was able to see just how far I have come in regards to giving less f*cks.  And boy, does it feel GOOD. 

In his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson explains that we only have so much energy, we only have so many f*cks to give, and when we choose to freak out about every interaction we have, every risk we take, every new goal we strive for, we end up giving away all our energy and all our f*cks. This is exhausting and is certainly not a sustainable way to live, create, or love.

Manson goes on to explain that it’s not about not caring about anything at all, but rather being mindful about what you do choose to give your energy and worry and time to. I love this middle path between not caring at all (is it even healthy to not care at all what any other single person on the planet thinks about you? Doesn't this mean you have a serious emotional issue going on?) and caring so much that you literally lose sleep over something (a recipe for mental and physical health anguish). What if we thought of our ability to care as currency? Would we be willing to hand a lifetime of emotional and spiritual savings over to a stranger who witnessed our clumsy dance audition? What would we be willing to spend our caring on, and how much would we be willing to give?

If I’m honest, I have had a few moments since the singing audition where I have thought “Oh my goodness, four people I don’t know heard me sing a song that I didn’t get the chance to prepare and could be thinking all sorts of bad things about me.” It’s natural to feel that way when we put ourselves out there and take a creative risk and one of the signs of making peace with yourself is realizing that there will be times that the peace comes and goes.

I can also honestly say that I haven’t lost sleep over my audition, called myself a loser like I used to, or felt discouraged to seek out other auditions. I feel brave and a bit more sure of myself, a bit more like myself, and that feels like gold. As Manson says, “Not giving a f*$k does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.” Who couldn’t use more opportunities to be comfortable being you, in all your courageous, creative glory?

Call me corny, but I'm committed to being my own best cheerleader instead of my own worst critic. We often don't realize just how far we've come from the shore where we started until we allow ourselves the moment where we stop paddling like mad and look back to see just how far we have been able to come in this little boat of ours. It’s not about big leaps, but small and steady steps. Experiences like my audition are so important to have because without them, it’s hard to gauge the progress that we’ve made.

And as for what other people think, I don’t really care too much about what those casting folks thought of me; I don’t know them and more importantly, they don’t know me. They don’t know how far I’ve come because they don’t know where I started. It’s not their fault at all, it’s just impossible for us to see things in the same light.

But I do care what certain people think; people in my life who have been dear friends who have loved me and have showered me with encouragement and enthusiasm throughout the years. I told this story to a few of them and they laughed along with me as I described in detail the unfolding of the audition and rejoiced with me at the end. Sharing felt good and nothing at all like failing. It felt like the biggest victory possible.

So my Friends, what are your stories of courage in the face of the critics? How have you grown in compassion for yourself and all that you are and all that you can do? Have you had an “a-ha!” moment when you realized how far your have rowed your little boat out to sea? I would love to hear all about it!

​

I hope you had a restorative weekend and are gearing up for a week full of play and possibilities! Five things that have inspired me recently and that I hope might spark something for you, too.  Happy Monday!

1.) I just started listen to the audiobook version of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and goodness,  it is GOOD. The author also narrates this book that makes the case for why we should consider coming into the present moment more often so that we don't miss the life that is right in front of us. I think this is a book that everyone can benefit from, but more and more, I am convinced that as creative souls, we must continue to seek out as much mindfulness, "boredom", and real life experiences (as opposed to screen time) as possible. Bonus: you can listen to this audiobook for FREE via Hoopla's digital app. 

2.) I love Tara Brach's Buddhist-bent podcast, and this week, she is right on the mark with Part One of her "From Human Doing to Human Being" episode.  Brach emphasizes the importance of being still in order to take a break from our hustling and striving and access our deeper consciousness in order to find peace and joy in the being. A must listen for anyone who needs to expand their toolbox in regards to slowing down and learning to listen to your soul.

3.)  I had the pleasure of being interviewed about my anxiety and how acting onstage actually helps me to stay in the moment and stop the stress cycle for Episode Four of the incredible first season of The Perpetual Visitors Theatre Company's podcast Identity Tales, conceived and hosted by Kate Marple. It was a vulnerable leap to chat about something so personal for me, but I can honestly say that it was freeing, and I have been blown away by the love and support I have been met with from people who have listened. Remember, if you suffer with anxiety or OCD, you are not alone.

4.) Speaking of not being alone, here is a terrific article by Patti Murin, star of Broadway's Frozen who talks opening about her experience of being an actress who also suffers from panic attacks. I am so grateful to the lovely friend of mine who sent this my way this week!

5.) Have you seen This Is America by Childish Gambino yet? It's an intense, haunting piece of art and ever since I watched it for the first time last month, I can't get it out of my mind. Donald Glover is such an incredible, bold, and creatively courageous artist. 

Belief is a funny thing. To believe that things could look and feel differently than they do at this very moment involves faith and imagination. In order to believe that life could be different requires us to attempt a kind of balancing act that would make even a tightrope walker think twice; belief in something different asks that we hold the vision we wish to manifest  in the front of our minds and see it with incredible clarity as if it existed in the now, and at the same time,  hold it loosely enough that it has permission to be fuzzy and change shape and turn out completely differently than we planned.  

Spoiler alert: I don't have the secret to doing this, so if you are looking for a surefire way to dance your way across the tightrope of a creative life, I am sorry to say you won't find that in this post. If you do find the secret somewhere else, by all means, let me know right away, will you?

Back to belief. I have been in therapy nearly a year, and after just 5 or 6 sessions of meeting with my counselor, we were in the middle of a conversation about making changes in my life. I was trying to convince her that I just couldn't see how some things that I was wrestling with were ever going to change when she looked right at me in that way that only therapists can and said "You know, you are a black and white thinker. All or nothing. It seems to be very hard for you to imagine life looking different than it does now." Of course, she was right and of course, I wasn't prepared to hear this. As you do, I called one of my best friends on the phone and told her what the therapist had said.

"Can you believe it?" I balked. "Me, unable to imagine things looking different? I'm an actor and a writer--that's my whole thing, imagining things that aren't real, that come from my head and heart."

I stopped, realizing the other implication of not being able to imagine things differently. "Oh, no! Does this mean that I am not a supportive friend? When someone is looking to change something in their life, I have always considered myself their biggest cheerleader, but doesn't this lack of imagination mean that I'm not being a good friend? And what about the world? It has more problems than I can count, but I'm the first one to speak up and say how much I believe that it can change for the better. Does this mean I'm really a curmudgeonly pessimist that doesn't believe in any good?" 

There was a pause, and my lovely friend gave it to me straight. "You do believe that the people in your life can be anything and go after what they want. And I know that you believe in the possibility of the world getting better and better. Maybe your imagination only gets murky when it comes to have the same sense of imagination about your own life."

Hold. The. Phone. I totally got it. My therapist and my friend had helped illuminate the fact that I tend to be an endless optimist when it comes to the people I love and the world around me, but I wasn't always giving myself the same kind of support. I didn't have all that much faith in the possibility of my own metamorphosis. 

Brief survey: How many of you believe that change is possible for the people you love, that your circle of friends has the ability to transform their lives and themselves? Me too, absolutely. Now, how many of you believe that your own life could look different, that you are capable of transforming yourself and your experience?

I'm hearing crickets, folks, and there's no hands to be seen. Yup, me too.

Since realizing this last summer, I haven't done a 180 and become my biggest cheerleader for change in my life. I'm still reminding myself on a regular basis to stop gripping the steering wheel so tightly and working to dismantle the default belief that while other ships can cruise around wherever they want, mine is stuck going in one direction only. And? I'm starting to entertain the idea that there might be a different life to explore, if I let myself. There might be different choices to make, different risks I could take, different dreams I can let myself chase.  Might.  Hey, we all have to start somewhere, right? 

So now about the door they built. You see space is precious in Boston (big surprise, huh?) so this week in my office building, they decided that a corner of the foyer would make a decent sized office for a new tenant. I've been at my job for three years now and the foyer has always been the foyer: copier, trash bin, and a lone file cabinet that no one ever opened.  With the exception of an occasional box of copy paper on the floor, it hasn't changed much.

But this week, the construction crew started working on transforming the space. They came, they measured, they marked walls. They even built a wall. Then came the primer and the paint. They vacuumed, they moved the copier, and then they built a door. 

This transformation was so powerful to witness. When I came in one morning, the crew was just starting to move things around in the foyer. When I walked by that afternoon, there was a new wall. The next day, it was painted with a door. It was incredible and yet it couldn't have happened without imagination. Someone at some point had to be willing to see the foyer space as something other than what it was and what it had been for all the years prior. And then, someone had to take that vision and break it down into doable steps that would lead from the before to the after.  Someone had to follow through with those steps--mistakes are allowed and going back to redo something is ok, but ultimately they kept going forward and saw the change through. 

Now,  I realize that when you are a creative soul whose days are filled with day jobs, finance stress, family, laundry, landlords, commutes, thunderstorms, and all other manner of things that we generally classify as Life, building a new door might take longer than two days. It doesn't matter how long it takes you. What really counts is cultivating your ability to imagine that things could be different than they are now. And if you are having trouble imagining right now? Try taking a step further back and imagining that you might someday have the imagination to change things and see life differently. J.K. Rowling even feels so strongly that imagination is the missing link to our individual and collective well-being that she devoted her Harvard commencement speech to the subject. 

Sometimes exercising this skill involves doing a deep dive into your own self-worth. You might decide to see a therapist or check all of Eckhart Tolle's books out of your local library. It might take awhile and the process might be slow going. That's ok. Everything that's worth doing is worth doing slowly.

Other times, exercising this skill might mean simply forming new habits and using new language. The words we use to talk to ourselves and about our dreams matter. And remember, it doesn't have to be black and white; possibility lives on a spectrum, with infinite options along the way.

Start small. "I can't ever imagine having enough money to film my movie" doesn't have to immediately become "I know exactly how I will get the funding to film my movie!" How about "I don't have the budget to film my screenplay today, but I can imagine that there might be some creative ways to raise money that I could try"? 

Often times, I notice that my problem might not even be the inability to imagine, but the unwillingness to let myself imagine.  I can imagine plenty of lovely ways that my life my look differently, but can often cut myself off from even thinking about them lest I be disappointed.  I know firsthand how painful it can be to try to bring your head out of the clouds and ground yourself in "reality" and to possibly even punish yourself for daring to dream.  I'm not talking being reckless, quitting your job with no other means to support yourself, or giving up your non-negotiables that you need to be a healthy you. What I am talking about is giving ourselves the chance to look at all the possibilities that could be. What happens if we give ourselves the permission to look up from the pavement, and if not float completely away into the clouds, at least allow ourselves to gaze at the sky every now and then? 

The door that they built in my office this week--someone dreamed it up, it's true. But it came into being, was actualized into solid reality, because they also drafted the plans, measured, marked walls, drilled, nailed, primed, painted, vacuumed. They did all the things that allowed the dream to become a door.  And, there is no denying that all of this was put into motion because one day,  someone was standing around, looking at the foyer going, "Hmm, I wonder what this space might look like with a door?"

Go for a walk or sit quietly inside with a cup of tea. Be honest: what would you like your life to look like? Do a short journal entry about it. What does it look like, feel like, smell like, sound like? Notice what of resistance arises for you. Do you hear that voice telling you that it's not ever going to happen? What happens if you acknowledge the voice but keep going and make a list of steps that you could take to make the transition from what is now to what could be? It doesn't matter if it feels far fetched (or if it is far fetched) or if you feel silly planning your way to a lead in a Broadway nominated play, it's the exercise of imagining that counts.  

Wishing us all dreams of infinite doors and the possibilities of what might await us when we walk through them. 

Legend has it that violinist Itzhak Perlman was performing a concert in the mid-nineties when one of the strings on his violin snapped and broke. Instead of bowing out right then and there, he simply noticed what happened and said to the audience, "It is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left." He kept playing the rest of the concert, one string down, but not deterred in the least.

Is it a true story? I don't know, but I love it. I really appreciate the idea that as a creative soul, my job is not to try to keep things in life from breaking or falling apart, but to take whatever pieces remain and see what I might make of them. One of those jobs feels like setting yourself up to fail, no matter how hard you try, and the other task sounds just a bit more like an adventure. Or at least an experiment that promises to be interesting. 

For years, I told myself that I needed to quit my day job or find a different day job, the "right" day job. before I could focus on acting. At the end of a work day, I would come home from my day job, my mind whirring in overdrive, and spend hours browsing and applying for other day jobs in hopes of finding The One that would give me the permission to rehearse, take an acting class, or audition. I would spend even more time, usually around 3 AM, beating myself up about the fact that I could just find a way to save enough money so that I didn't even need a day job, then my problems would be solved. Then, and only then, could I learn a new monologue, go to an audition, or start writing my own play. 

Sound a little crazy to anyone? Wait--there's more. 

Day jobs aside, I was also convinced that I needed to not have any dirty dishes or laundry or old sneakers or a head cold or any of the everyday annoyances we all have in order to write something. I put off my creative callings for so long because I didn't think that the circumstances were "right". I was stubborn; I wasn't going to play without my instrument fully in tune all the strings intact. Worn out shoes? I needed brand spanking new sparkling shoes if I was to walk into a writer's group. Habit of keeping my desk cluttered? I needed to get rid of those papers and notes to self before I could be a Real Artist. 

Spoiler alert: the "right" time never arrived and The One job never showed. I felt stood up by life and cheated out of my creativity. This wasn't fair, I fumed to myself. How can they do this to me?

Hold up. Who was "they", and what exactly were "they" doing to me? It took me a long time, but I begrudgingly realized that the mythical people or forces bent on preventing me from playing and creating weren't real. I made them up in my mind; they didn't exist. The only thing that was real was my own refusal to take any steps forward until my life was organized the way I thought it needed to be in order to be creative.

Let's be honest here. Would it be ideal to not have to work full time and to not have any dirty dishes to wash? Of course. Would I take this version of life if it showed up on my door today? In a heartbeat. And? Is is absolutely necessary for exercising your creativity and imagination? Not at all. To this day, I tell myself my own fable about not being able to really get down to creative business until I no longer need to work full time and my house is clean, but I have the day jobs, illnesses, anxieties, and all the things I made during the messy times as evidence to the contrary. 

There's a Buddhist concept of the Two Arrows. The first arrow is something that causes us to suffer, and that comes from outside ourselves; it's not within our control. You get sick, you lose your job, you trip and fall into a mud puddle on the way to an interview. It sucks. No one is here to argue with that.

But the second arrow is when we cause ourselves to suffer. Right on the heels of the event you can't control, say, losing your job, we heap more suffering upon ourselves by telling ourselves "Of course I got laid off. I'm a terrible worker and I can't learn anything new."  Do you see? We all do this. Even once we become aware that we do this, we still do this. It's a brand new (to me) idea that has blown the cover on my habit of making my own suffering more painful than it needs to be. 

if we look at this in the context of my creativity dilemma, it is true that my first arrow might be that I need to work full-time and thus cannot spend 8 hours a day acting or writing. Enter the second, self-induced arrow. I have an incredible amount of time mourning these circumstances, and on top of that, I have spent even more time mourning all the time that I spent mourning for the time that I wish I had to devote to more creative projects. It's a wormhole and once you dive head first into it, it's hard to pull yourself out.

In order to disrupt the cycle, we must accept how much time we spent mourning our less than perfect circumstances and let it go. We must recognize when we find ourselves in our own version of Emotional Inception and do something different. We got angry about how we wishes things were, we mourned what we don't have, and then we have the choice to accept ourselves and our  lives as they are at this moment. This doesn't mean that we lose hope of anything changing or becoming easier, but it does mean that we can move forward without this guarantee. It means that we agree to work with what we have in this very moment. 

What if we released ourselves from the impossible task of "getting it together" or keeping everything in perfectly working order? 

What if we didn't put pressure on ourselves to have all the time in the world, all the talent in the world, in order to make something?

What if we let ourselves be ourselves, with our worries and fears and faults and flaws and play anyway?

What if the Good Stuff is actually born out of everything that went wrong, or at the very least, differently than we thought or hoped? 

What would we make? What would we dream of? What would be give ourselves permission to dream of doing? Who would we be?

Creativity takes place in the present moment. Art is in the act of doing something, not in the planning or ruminating. 

A creative life is not about airbrushing, sweeping things under the rug, being ashamed of all the ways that you feel that you and your life are not "together" or picture perfect.  A true creative soul doesn't need things to be squeaky clean before she starts working her magic. No way. The hallmark of an authentic creative soul is the willingness to wade into the shit, head straight into the middle of the mess, whether it's your kitchen sink or the deep dark recesses of your own heart, discover what is there and claim it all as yours. It's about being able to stop chasing your life as you want it to be and start bear hugging the hell out of wherever you are right now. It's about not just be ok using what you've got to work with, but learning to celebrate the wacky, burned-out, rusted, motley crew of emotions and thoughts and cells and life stuff that is YOU. These are the raw materials that you will use to make your masterpiece. ​

Get sifting through that emotional junkyard, My Friends, and I promise you that you will find things that you wouldn't trade for all the gold in the world. The point is not to judge or shame yourself for what you find, but to become intimately familiar with every item that you carry with you right now. Each piece you find, whether you decide to put it on display on the mantel of your heart or to chuck it in the trash pile, is invaluable. These bits and bobs are the good stuff that you can and will use to make something that lasts. 

Creativity can be clarifying. Art is action. Take a deep breath, dive inward, claim it all, and let us know what you find--it might be in the form of a poem, a song, or a dance step. No matter. It's all going to knock us right off of our feet. And we need more of that in the world.