“Here’s to you, here’s to me–here’s to where we are, and where we’re gonna be.”

When looking back on 2011 to respond to this blog-wide prompt, the results appear to be less-than-tangible.  There has been no great revelation or advancement in my career.  I have not yet been discovered and thrown into steady and consistently artistically rewarding acting work.  Josh Groban and His Perfect Tone Quality have yet to bump into me on a crowded New York City street, lock eyes with me in a meaningful and admiring gaze, and offer to take me away from all this hideousness to bask in a world of 1%-ers, complete with cigars and the finest of Scotch whiskies.  (For the record, Joshua, I drink 16 year old Jura when I can get it.  I’ll leave the cigar pairing up to you.)

Still, when I think back to January 2011–how I was, where I was, and what I was doing–I am kind of shocked at just how much better things seem now than they did then.  This picture is even clearer for me after having taken Rhonda Musak’s Leap Into Passion Workshop a couple of weeks ago, which offered me the time to look back, and engaged me in focused exercises that helped rid my perspective of the SELF-DOUBT FOG that rolls in every now and again to hang for a spell.  So I write this post with a compassion and appreciation for what I’ve gone through this year, and I say very loudly and directly: Fuck off, Fog.*

Here are my top three accomplishments of 2011, and the three things I’m most looking forward to in 2012.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF 2011:

1. I moved.  Okay, this may seem like an insignificant event to some people–even though moving is one of the most stressful and/or traumatic experiences people can go through, right up there with severe illness, divorce, and death of a loved one–but it was a BIG deal for me.  I had spent a little over a year in the apartment I had been in at this time last year, and the last three and half months of my tenure there were less than ideal.  I won’t elaborate here for fear of a libel suit, but let’s just say things were bad.  It’s near impossible to stay proactive and productive in or about your career/your art/yourself when your home life is less than stable.  Being an artist demands consistency of focus, which is hard enough, but near impossible to gain when your environment is causing you undue stress/fear/crying jags.  So a change of space was vital personally, and subsequently professionally.  Now I live with a delightful roommate, in a larger room, in an apartment that boasts a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, and a small terrace.  I know, I know: you’re jealous.  But the lesson learned: Your environment directly affects your output as an artist.  My output has definitely benefited from the knowledge that I can do laundry whenever I want.
2. I expanded my community.  The environment mentioned above is not limited to your physical surroundings, but extends to the people you surround yourself with.  For too long I labored under the delusion that I was the only actor I knew, overwhelmed with a sense of wandering under the cover of night in deep isolation, until one day I realized I was the only actor I seemed to be making an effort to know.  So I started putting myself out there a bit more in different ways: I joined a book club with a focus on playwrights; I started going to open mics to practice singing in front of people and trying out material; I took some classes; I wrote for this blog.  I found the more active I was in seeking out other artist voices, the more I realized how vast this community is, and that I have a unique place in it.  I also realized how supportive people are–it was extremely rare to meet someone who did not have words of kindness, good humor, and wisdom to offer me about this business and lifestyle, and watching the courage they undertook to do their work was equally inspiring and heartening. (The few people who were obnoxious, self-absorbed, narrow-minded in their work, bitchy and biting–and those people do exist–can make like the aforementioned fog and Fuck Off.)
3. I sang.  Growing up, I sang quite a bit.  Singing was, for me, the first thing I knew I could do well–and there is a lot of collateral for a child who moved a lot and was never quite sure where she fit in to know she could do something well.  I was in every honors choir, every musical, all that.  And then when I got to college I stopped.  I went to a voice teacher for a little bit on and off during undergrad, but it never quite took.  I don’t know if it was the repertoire she was trying to steer me towards–I’m a mezzo-belter, and have no business singing “My Lord and Master” (not to mention, I’m white-Latina, so really: not a song I ever need to learn)–or the overwhelming bombardment of the musical theatre community I was dropped into at college, where you couldn’t get through a day without passing someone who was singing “Defying Gravity,” and not necessarily well.  But I convinced myself that I was simply not good enough, probably not good at all, and shouldn’t bother.  I had a long list of “reasons” that I’d present to people as to why I stopped if the topic ever came up.  But the bottom line is: I quit on myself, plain and simple.  So began my life without music–which was not without value, but considerably less joyous.  I left New York for grad school, and when I was preparing to move back I started thinking about what I wanted for my life in the city the second time around.  On top of that list was to sing again.  It took awhile to get started, but this year has been much more full of music than previous ones.  And I’m so happy for that.  I participated fairly consistently in a musical reading group, became acquainted with a lot of musicals I didn’t know, was in voice lessons with a new voice teacher more consistently, practicing on my own more, and, as mentioned above, began going to open mics.  This not only gave me a chance to see what else was out there in terms of sounds and voices, it also helped me gain a sense of who was out there and doing what.  Most of all, singing again has been like coming home.  I was surprised by how emotional this journey was, still is.  And I am so thankful for finding the faith to start again, and for finding people who have faith in me.

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO in 2012:

1. Expanding my musicianship: Next year I plan on continuing to work on honing my sound as a singer, helped in part by having a monthly focus on specific artists (singers/composers/lyricists) that I’m passionate about.  The focus is not meant to be solely on “material that would probably be good for me to know,” but on material that I *want* to know.  I have spent too much time in my life putting off what I want to do for “what I should be doing which is ultimately no fun.”<–Fuck that, too.  I have actually already started: this month’s artist is Miss Peggy Lee.  I also want to perform in public (open mic or whatnot) at least once a week.
2. Writing Finishing a play: I have started about six plays over the past four years.  And have not finished one.  I seem to have this manic ADD when it comes to my writing, and while I think I’m a good writer (and being INCREDIBLY JUDGMENTAL of my own work, I find objective validity in my opinion), I am terribly un-self disciplined.  So by December 31st, 2012, I want at least one first draft of a full length play.  Ooo, ooo–which one will it be?  The one about the fisherman and his sons?  The one about a circus?  The one about two Very Famous characters and a bathtub?  I am looking forward to seeing what will come.
3. Buying a red satin dress: This may seem frivolous, but let me explain.  One of the exercises from the Leap Into Passion Workshop asked us to look at ourselves moving about in 2012.  In nearly all of those visualizations, three things were true of my personal aesthetic: my nails were done, I had a fabulous blow out, and I was wearing a red satin dress.  It had a portrait neck line, stopped two inches above my knee, and gathered at the waist, with black underlay just peeking out.  I can already do my nails like an ace and blow out my own hair.  The dress is the final piece of this picture.  So obviously, I must have it.

So let’s raise a glass (Joshua, do you need a refill?) and toast: Here’s to me, and you, and yours, and mine–let’s have a great 2012.  And to borrow a phrase popular amongst practitioners of Open Space Technology: Prepare to be surprised!

*My apologies for the amount of swearing in this post.  I am from New Jersey–it is a dialectical speech pattern.