When life gives you lemons
Squeeze all you can out of ‘em
Take that tart juice, add some water
Sweeten it with some self-love
Then pour that lemonade
Out into the world
And celebrate your alchemy!
#TheGetMyWorkOutThereChallenge #whenlifegivesyoulemons #DayTwentyOne
I got nothin’ today.
Seriously.
I did go to my acting class, which is something. I have been taking a serious craft class for years, whenever my teacher is here in NYC teaching, which is four times a year, a month at a time.
How does this constitute “getting my work out there?” Does it?
Does working on may craft count? I may not have anything to “show” for my time there, but boy there was a great discussion in class tonight.
The words that jumped out at me were “tolerate”, “risk” and “intimacy”.
Tolerate as in the tolerance of exploring deeply. As in the ability to develop a tolerance for the discomfort that is necessary in the course of exploring deeply. Tolerance is a muscle I can strengthen. And in doing so, I will expand my ability to dig, go to places that plays and characters require of me. I have felt this muscle get stronger in my own journey. But it is very easy to let that muscle get flabby. To get lulled into seeking the comfortable or the known.
Risk-taking as the means for learning, for gaining new information. Re-thinking or reframing what “failure” means in exploration. Full commitment to an idea to explore for a scene, whether it “succeeds” or not, will bring information that cannot be gained by doing nothing or waiting for perfection.
But the greatest thing I heard tonight is this: “Intimacy is transformative.” WOW. The idea that it is the intimacy in art that we respond to. Autobiographical versus personal — that there is no risk in the former as it is factual. But being truly “personal” is intimate. And intimacy in art can create change, shift, connection, association, reflection.
I am reflecting on all of the performances that have moved me, and they all contained intimacy. Whether it was a clown show, or improv or stand up, or a play, or a film, or a song. Or a storyteller.
One of my recent mantras is: Life begins at the end of my comfort zone. I think the Universe is trying to tell me something!
#TheGetMyWorkOutThereChallenge #DayEleven #intimate #art #create #risk #tolerate
I did it. I finally found my word for the year.
Or, rather, it found me.
As 2018 ended, I went through my end of year review and my year ahead intention-setting. And I began to live in the questions: what did I want to be my guiding word, an anchor as I traversed the days of the year ahead?
What did I want more of in my life? What was I calling in?
I kept circling around different words. I’d try them on for a few days. I’d think I’d found it. I’d think I’d found it, but in time, something would not feel quite right about it. t was like wearing a new sweater that looked great in the store, but doesn’t really feel like me when I get it home and wear it for the first time.
And then one day, as I was driving home, just sort of trying on the sixth or seventh word, free-associating, a new word came to me. And as I repeated it to myself, I found myself deeply moved. So much so that I had to pull over.
And then I just knew. It was “the one.” It was something I was ready to live in, to aspire to, to own.
The word that I heard was “Core.” And then “Ownership.”
So 2019 is all about Core for me. And Ownership. It is about living from my core. Owning my truth. Knowing and expressing my true feelings.
Getting to intimately know my core self. My power. Living from my power. Listening to my gut. Trusting my intuition. Living from my creativity.
Trusting my own sense of reality and living as fully and freely as I can from a place of deep authenticity.
Expanding and deepening my inner strength. I have been doing Pilates for a few years, but I want to really gain mastery over the deepest, inner-most and lowest abdominal muscles. To fully know my own strength. To move from my strength, my Yoni.
It makes so much sense to me now that this is the word that found me. The work of the past few years have set me up for where I am now. From Track Yoga:
The third chakra—the manipura chakra—is the center of personal power. As you’d expect, it’s located in the core of the body, at the solar plexus. To fully be ourselves, we need a strong core. Balancing the third chakra means maximizing personal power and strength.
When energy flows through the third chakra, we feel a strong sense of purpose and self-worth. We’re able to exert power without being controlling or dominant. In other words, we take our rightful place in the world and live in peace among all beings. We are energetic and enthusiastic about the life we are meant to live.
The first and second chakras govern our sense of security and our ability to express ourselves creatively and emotionally. We need a strong sense of our own personal power to use those abilities. The third chakra, then, unleashes our creative force when we feel secure in the world.
And so here I am, 29 days in. It is my guide as I move through my day, making decisions. Am I listening to my core? Am I acting from a place of ownership?
I remind myself to breathe. To listen. To sense.
It feels so right. I cannot wait to see how the year unfolds.
What is your word for 2019, if you have one? How is it going so far?
#wordfortheyear #2019 #guidingword #intuition
I share my posts here.
Today marks the completion of my five week clown and commedia extravaganza.
I am not the same person that I was five weeks ago. I am different in ways I don’t even comprehend yet.
I am exhausted in the best of ways having truly spent myself each day.
In clown, if you let yourself, you open up like a little flower.
I fell in love over and over again with my fellow clowns. My heart broke open daily and then expanded several sizes and is bursting from my chest.
The world is shinier. I hear music everywhere. I make up little songs.
I carry the moments of courage, of tragedy, of brilliance, of mess, of genius, of laughter, of wonder, and of the amazing live theatre we made together these weeks with me forever.
I found out some very important things along the way.
I am too tired to try to articulate them today. I know they will be revealed in my future work.
I am sated, for the moment, and I celebrate these weeks.
My appetite will return.
But for today, I am sated.
And grateful.
Every time I start a new project, I am terrified I will not be able to do it.
Every. Single. Time.
This terror is not my initial response. My first response is elation. Excitement. Passion. Thrill.
This is a delightful and short-lived phase of my process. Much sooner than I would like, the excitement and celebration morphs into abject doubt and fear.
Suddenly, I am overwhelmed by the work ahead of me. My mind makes it all seem like an enormous mountain that I am at the base of, seemingly without any equipment or wherewithal of how to surmount it. It is like some weird fog of “forgetting” comes over me and seduces me into believing that:
I am grateful to have a partner in life, my husband, who very fortunately has borne witness to my process over and over again. (He was actually the first person to point it out to me.)
While his reminder to me that this is “just a part of my process” does not in any way change my process, it does allow me to find somewhere within the knowing that “this too shall pass.” The knowing that this is not the end of my process. That this is actually letting me know, in a way, that I am on my way. As in, the fear and doubt kick in because I am entering into my creative process. It is a sign I am doing what I love.
That knowing makes moving through that phase a bit easier. Then I can recall, if need be, that I have felt this doubt and fear every time in the past. I can reference back and remember that every time in the past, I not only survived, but that I even succeeded in accomplishing what I took on in the end.
Awareness is everything, they say. That I have found to be true. If only awareness erased the anxiety! But I have found that only action alleviates the anxiety (to some degree.) I am lucky to have learned that as well.
My antidote to the fear and doubt is this: when it sets in, as it always will, I make sure to start the work right away. I begin the work NO MATTER WHAT, and as soon as possible, and I continue to work at it daily. I do it in chunks, and in this way, I navigate the treacherous waters of the part of me that wants to interfere with my creative endeavors.
The part of me that Steven Pressfield writes about valiantly fighting. If you are not familiar with his work, do yourself a favor and check him out. His books have been invaluable to me in my learning how to work with myself and my resistance.
And so I prevail. Not in spite of the resistance, but alongside it, through it, with it.
I am writing this as a reminder to myself as I have just begun a new project and after being very excited about it for a day or two, just about an hour ago, I got really scared and filled with doubt.
What the hell was I thinking? I cannot do THAT! I am not equipped. I cannot handle it. Reasons flood my mind as to why it was a bad idea. Dread filled my gut.
So what did I do? I took two actions in support of the project before I could fall into paralysis or start dreaming up ways to get myself out of the commitment. And I am writing this. And I am feeling somewhat better.
The jitters and the fear are still there, just waiting to take over. But for today, I have held them at bay and given more attention to my work. And somewhere in the mix I feel inside, there is a knowing.
After all, this is all just a part of my process. I am right where I supposed be.
The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones.
Ancient Chinese Proverb
Inspired by The Daily Post Word Prompt June 10, 2016: mountain
Today, I mourn the loss of yet another presence in my life.
I am bereft.
I have been working off daily word prompts for about a year that The Daily Post has generously provided.
They have given me an anchor to my days…especially helpful last year at this time when I was having to stay close to home much of the time for health reasons.
It helped me feel connected to the world and to my creativity to post once a day.
It ended up teaching me so much about creativity. About how just doing it is much better than trying to get it “right” or good.
It gave my perfectionism a real run for its money. I had to let each day’s post go, however I felt about its value.
Sometimes I loved what the word prompt prompted. Memories or associations I’d forgotten or never even known I had.
Sometimes I felt totally “dry” and annoyed at the word. Sometimes I’d be shocked when such a prompt led me to an unexpected and wonderful-to-explore place.
I learned to live with posts I wrote that I thought were total drivel. Posts I secretly thought were brilliant. Meh posts.
Thank you The Daily Post for this amazing year and all you have brought to my writing.
I get attached to things.
I’ve grown accustomed to The Daily Post Daily Word Prompts! I had no idea they were ending as of Friday!
I’ve had panic since realizing they were moving on. What will I do? How will I survive?
I have found wonderful readers and other bloggers to follow from TDP. I loved reading the myriad variations off a word!
I feel adrift, at sea. Alone in the great ocean of blogs.
To all of “you” out there: do you know of any similar sites?
I take solace today in Oleta Adam’s prolific rendition of “Everything Must Change,” which I hear in my head every time I lose a good thing in my life to change. She gets me through every time.
At least that never changes.
Today I bid thee farewell, my special unhappiness
You have been a steady companion lo these many years
You have held my hand and held me back
Kept me safe, yes, but also kept me on the outside
Looking in at my own life
I thought you were a force beyond my grasp
I thought you were put inside me
That I was a host and you had taken root
Turns out that like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
I have had the key all along
All it takes is this: my decision to let you go
I am sovereign over my own self
And I no longer want you here, in the driver’s seat
So farewell, my old friend
I am sure you will raise your voice now and then
But I choose to no longer recognize your power
So you may wish to find a new dwelling
My heart is full of other things now
There is no space for you here
Before I’d even had a serious love affair, there were things I seemed to understand about them anyway.
There were songs about breakups that for whatever reason captured my imagination and moved my emotions. My heart knew what they were about.
One that really resonated with me then, and still today, is a little known song “Tell Me on a Sunday” from the musical “Song and Dance,” with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The musical is not great, and it’s not a great song musically (sorry, Mr. Webber,) but what the song says is lovely, and it always comes to me when I think about how difficult it is to end something that was once beautiful.
Tell Me on a Sunday
Don’t write a letter when you want to leave
Don’t call me at 3 a.m. from a friend’s apartment
I’d like to choose how I hear the news
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Let me down easy
No big song and dance
No long faces, no long looks
No deep conversation
I know the way we should spend that day
Take me to a zoo that’s got chimpanzees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to know who’s to blame
It won’t help knowing
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Find a circus ring with a flying trapeze
Tell me on a Sunday please
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going
Don’t leave in silence with no word at all
Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this
I know how I want you to say goodbye
Don’t run off in the pouring rain
Don’t call me as they call your plane
Take the hurt out of all the pain
Take me to a park that’s covered with trees
Tell me on a Sunday please
Here’s a nicely acted version by Marti Webb:
I’m simmering underneath this facade
Of polite, hopeful citizen
I’ve got rage on a low boil
I’m hungry for equality
And an end to the bloodshed
I need to stop stewing
Time to eat or get off the pot
Once you start there’s no turning back.
Not a glance, or a slight pause, even if in a jiffy,
Even 1/100th of a second’s worth of hesitation
Sends a ripple that tells the Universe, “Maybe not.”
“Maybe, I’m not sure.” “Maybe I’m not ready.”
You have to just take the leap, full-throttle.
Let your heart jump to your throat
And your stomach drop into your feet.
There’s no turning back. There’s only here, now.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: jiffy
More on taking risks: Freefall
Beyond the Skinny Branches 