But mostly, moving is hard because it is so much transition and so little rest.

I feel like I’ve been moving for a month and that I’ll still be moving for weeks to come.  In the month leading up to moving, there was all the stuff we put on Craigslist, the trips to the liquor store to get boxes, and all the food in the freezer and on the shelves we tried to eat our way through. And you learn things: People on Craigslist are stranger than you can imagine. You need way more boxes than you think. And face it, you never had any intention of eating that pearl barley.

In a way, moving forces you to face yourself and your past.  I bought the pearl barley while doing a ridiculous cleanse and had a fleeting and overly optimistic view of my new whole grain lifestyle. And quelle surprise, the lifestyle did not materialize. Why do I have this rock? This belt buckle? This horrible old t-shirt I never wear?  Am I really planning on keeping the metal sword we found in the closet of the last place? Ok, well, obviously you keep the sword.

But what happens as I look through all the things I’ve accumulated, is that I remember all the little moments attached to those things—my boyfriend picked up that rock for me on a walk, I got the orange belt buckle to celebrate Queensday in Amsterdam, and that ugly yellow T-shirt from Goodwill was Hella awesome back in the late nineties. And the truth is that if I hadn’t saved these things, I probably wouldn’t think about those memories…they would still exist, of course, but what would make me call them up? So if I get rid of them, it feels like I’m obliterating an event or devaluing a relationship or letting go of my early college years. I’m forgetting. And I’ve saved this furry pink sleeveless tubeshirt for years, how can I get rid of it now?

This is how you end up on the floor amidst a pile of boxes eating ice cream, drinking beer, and courting despair. 

It’s helpful when you start meandering down the winding path of nostalgia to have a good friend near by.  Someone who can say to you, “It’s ok to get rid of tiny pieces of pottery you have no earthly use for. Even if you got them in Kenya.” Or,“Getting rid of the sweater your sister gave you doesn’t mean you don’t love your sister.” And “Ok, keep the T-shirt.”

And the truth is that it feels good to purge. It feels great. With every bridesmaid dress, and Honduran vase, and pair of jeans-that-is-really-nice-but-I-know-I’ll-never-wear, that I threw into the Salvation Army box, I felt a kind of tingle—a sense of relief and release. So it is with letting go, I guess. And what with moving, and Spring, and it being Lent for a little while longer, I wonder if freedom isn’t the flip side of loss.

When I was young, I used to love stationery. I loved paper and notebooks and envelopes and the entire paper store. I also loved containers. I loved Tupperware and Caboodles and wooden chests—anything that could be filled.  And what I loved so much about them was that they smacked of potential—all these blank pages, all this empty space—so much could be done! So much possibility!

And moving to my new place is a little like that. I can’t wait to put things in drawers. All my clothes look so neat in their new piles. The coffee and the mugs and the filters are all in the same location right on top of the coffee maker, so that it’s intuitive and functional and my mom won’t bitch about it next time she stays over.

And I’m excited to get a silverware organizer. You heard me.

Our whole place is so open and clean, so full of possibility—because we haven’t unpacked most of our crap yet.

Secretly, I think that in this new place I’ll be a better person. It has more light, more space, no mice and it’s not drafty. So, I’ll exercise more. I’ll eat healthier. I’ll write eight hours a day.  And because my roommate and I no longer share sliding wood doors for a wall, we’ll generally be kinder to the world. I really hope that some of this is true. But mostly I know that I’m still me, wherever I Iive. 

And that’s the thing with paper, and notebooks, and plastic boxes that click shut and stack. They’re full of possibility till you do something with them.  The minute you start writing in a notebook, it’s not clean and fresh anymore. And maybe you wrote something brilliant, but probably not. Once you use a box for extra bulbs and batteries, it can no longer hold the possibility of everything.  Once you hang a picture on the wall, you have a nail hole. But if you don’t write, if you don’t hang your Van Gogh print, if you don’t fill the boxes, they’re pure—they could be anything. But also, they’re empty.

I’m happy to fully be out of my old apartment, because I’m starting to feel less transient and more rooted. I feel like I’ve landed. Less transition, more rest. We’re slowly getting rid of boxes. We found the wine crank. We’re eating food that didn’t come in a greasy cardboard box or paper bag. And I got a shower rod, so now we don’t have to wash in the very corner of the shower to protect the wood finishes. 

Moving is awful. But change can be wonderful. I said goodbye to things that were once important but had to go. I got rid of boxes full of knick knacks. I threw away all my socks and underwear that had holes in them. Ok, almost all of them. I have a lot less stuff.

Our new place has floor to ceiling windows and mountain views. We have doors that close all the way. There’s a bike room. Plus, my bedroom window opens onto a patio instead of the hallway of our building. It feels like a brand new start.

Letting go really is a sort of freedom—but so is embracing the new.

As we unpacked, Emily reminded me that every chip is a memory. And she’s right. Freedom isn’t only nothingness and infinite possibility. There’s also freedom in being able to make new mistakes. To knick the wall trying to get your dresser into just the right spot. To buy more pearl barley that will sit in your cupboard for four years, because you’re an optimist. To pour a little wine straight onto the carpet, just to get that out of the way.

Because the boxes are moved, we made a big pot of soup in our new kitchen, and once you spill wine on the carpet, you’re home.

Photos: Boxes- sireprinting.com, My Queensday in Amsterdam-From Nora Delaney, Granville Island Beer-goodlifevancouver.comThe Sower by Van Gogh-ReproductionGallery.com, White Wine-learnaboutwineonline.com

So my philosophy is sort of “Do shit and shit happens.”

And wow, is that ever the truth with Craigslist.  When you post your furniture on Craigslist or Kijiji or facebook (or all three, just to cover your bases), you get a myriad of responses from the netherworld of internet buyers within minutes. It was amazing. Our kitchen table and chairs were picked up within hours, and I was so excited I took a hungry look around the rest of our apartment to see what else I could sell. I briefly considered my roommate.

One Emily—clean, in good condition, snores a little but makes great coffee. Laughs at all your jokes. $75 or best offer. You pick up.

It’s like magic. You post a picture, someone comes and pays you money for your stuff, and it’s gone. I don’t even care that we have to eat dinner on the floor for three more weeks till we move.

But there is a murky side. People are strange.  And flakey.  And some people have an exaggerated view of just how important a Craigslist post is in the larger scheme of things:

One series of emails over our desk ended in the man being so sorry to disappoint me, but his friend with the vehicle was too depressed about his cat’s death to help him transport the furniture. He learned never to depend on anyone and promised that next time he would buy a van. He was very sorry.

But if you’re going to reap the bounty of internet sales, you need to field a little bit of crazy. 

And really, that’s life. You do shit, you field a little bit of nonsense, and shit happens. In the past two weeks I sent out an application for a great project, and got two rejection letters at the same time. I apply, I submit, I audition. I often get no response.  I consider getting a different job or going back to school. But as I’m busy doing all these things other opportunities pop on my radar—I book a role, I get asked about my schedule in the next few months by a local theatre, I meet a wonderful writing mentor.  They’re not necessarily related in a succinct cause and effect way, but they’re borne of the process and product of doing things.

Which is, like with Craigslist, putting it out there.  And that makes me feel encouraged—not as encouraged as instantly selling my wardrobe for 125 bones, but a deeper truer encouragement. One that I can’t spend on Ben and Jerry’s.

So yes, you might get $40 right off the bat. You might have to show a lot of people your IKEA Wardrobe. You might have to filter out some of the nutjobs. But even the flakey, strange responses of people you probably shouldn’t meet alone, are something. Do shit and shit happens.  And if you have a giant chocolate éclair, post it on Kijiji and I will probably buy it.

Readers, the interweb is a marvelous thing.  With a few quick key strokes, a virtual cornucopia of Christmas-themed-poultry appear at my fingertips. Ok, I might not have gotten just the chicken I envisioned in just the jaunty hat I would have liked (so spoiled am I that this actually makes me briefly angry), but with almost zero effort I have a Christmas Chicken.

Much like the invention of the calculator, I choose to think of this as standing on the shoulders of giants—the internet saves me oodles of time.  That I use that saved time to watch “Shit Brides Say” (featuring my good friend Lucas,) or google pictures of January Jones’ baby is, I think, a moot point.

This week I was on set for a children’s toy commercial.  At auditions, at wardrobe fittings and on set, you spend a lot of your time…waiting. 

I thought I was just playing a mom, but when I arrived at my fitting the head of wardrobe said “And this will be your outfit for the Lady of the Lake.”  Now, there are many moments in Commercial-land when I wish I had someone with whom to share a sidelong glance—a knowing, amused locking of the eyes—but it’s not wise to laugh at the hand that feeds you. So I said thank you, and tried on my aqua-green diaphanous gown.

On the shoot day, I arrived at 6:45 am (via public transit because I don’t have a car and I’m super cheap.)  I got into my first outfit—the grecian-gown—and waited in front of a portable heater for my moment in the deep background.  Apparently in certain types of children’s commercials you need to have an adult present on screen for legal reasons—whether you want her there or not.  So even thought the little girl is playing with a doll in a lagoon in her fantasy, a Lady of the Lake watches demurely against the painted Styrofoam rocks.  Actually demurely was a character choice I made upon hearing wardrobe tell make-up not to do too much to me, since they “want her to disappear.”

So I wait until I’m needed, get shuttled into position near the fake lagoon, on real sand, and then wait some more until we’re ready to shoot. Then we shoot again and again and again until everyone is happy with the first 5 seconds of magic.

Then, while they spent hours getting close-ups of the little girl and the toy, I got to leave the lagoon and change into standard tv-mom-clothes and a half-ponytail.   I have never seen an actual mom wearing a half-ponytail.  I haven’t sported one myself since I was about 14. But Commercial-land is not necessarily about veritas.  It is about hair that flows, but doesn’t cover your face.  It is about warm lighting, warm smiles, unending happiness and a product will make all your dreams come true.  We’re in a sound stage. The lagoon is fake, the bathroom only has two walls, I’m wearing a pretend wedding ring, and the girl is not my daughter.  

But I digress.  My point is that I spent most of the day waiting.  Lights got set up.  Camera’s got positioned.  The little girl spent hours in the water being delighted.  “And smiling!  All the time smiling!  You’re soooooo happy!”  But I chilled by Craft services, snacked on guacamole, added some more colour-coded boxes to the list in my agenda, and waited. 

And you know what?  It was great.  It’s fun to work.  It’s fun to pretend, and eat free food, and get paid.  And as someone who works from home and is self-employed, it is a remarkable feeling to know that just by being there, I’m at work.

If you have an office job, or a teaching job, or a construction job, I’m not saying you don’t work—you work a lot and hard.  A 9 to 5 (or 7 or 11) is a taxing schedule, even when it’s incredibly rewarding.  But also, just by showing up at your place of work, you’re kind of working.  You’re at work. That’s got to feel good.  Walking down the hall, going to the water-cooler, dropping off files at someone’s desk, taking the stairs—it’s all part of work.  And sometimes, I’m really jealous of that.  At home, I don’t feel like I’m at work just because I sit down at my desk in the corner of the living room.

At home, I often feel that I’m not working enough—and it doesn’t count as work until there are words on the page.  After all, I’m in my pajamas and I’ve stopped three times to adjust the thermostat, reheat my coffee, and throw in a load of laundry.  I can’t count any of that, ‘cause I’m at home. That some of my work necessitates puttering, thinking, pondering, and yes …waiting…feels like cheating or laziness, even though I know how important it is.

And what’s perhaps worse…I never leave work.  When I leave set or even an audition, I’ve done something at a place and then I go home. Today I had a fitting for a different commercial.  The director came over to me squinting.  He said “I’m looking at your nose.”  I told him I never broke it…that’s just how the noses in my family look.  He said “Ok. I’m just trying to figure out how to light it.”  So I waited.  Awkwardly.  And briefly I felt like a Christmas-Chicken in a disappointingly un-jaunty hat. But then I got to leave that place and go home. 

When I move from my desk to my couch, the satisfaction of leaving work is not nearly he same.  Plus my stacks of paper and filing and coloured markers glare at me with beady accusing eyes while I try to watch The Daily Show.  It’s extremely disconcerting.

So this is what I’ve been thinking about this week.  Work, time, waiting and reward.  And this is what I figure.  It’s rewarding to spend time writing—crafting something that’s mine.  Even at my desk in the living room.  Even though it makes work-home and home-work.  In a different way, it’s rewarding to stand around waiting on set, dressed up like a moss-fairy, smile a whole bunch and get paid. And in yet another—but no less real way—it is extremely satisfying to find just the photo you need floating around on the internet in two seconds flat. 

So pretty much I had a great week.  Writing.  Commercialing. Chicken in a Santa hat.  Booyeah.

Chicken picture from redtiedesigns.com

On Set Shot featuring "Mom" hair-do, from my Gallery.

On top of the anxiety that curdles in my belly like a bad cheese at the prospect of all the things I should do this year—many many coloured boxes taunting me –it is a cold and bleary month. That’s right: Bleary.  Not because it’s dim and indistinct as the dictionary would have you believe—but because it is equal parts bleak and weary.  Spoiler alert:  If you came to the November Rain City Chronicles, you know where this is going.

When I was in college in Michigan, January was such a bleary affair—cold, snowed-in and grey—that they made something called Interim—which was essentially a one month January term between fall and spring semester. Interim was easier, it was usually pass/fail, and you were encouraged to take something outside of your discipline—go abroad, fulfill a language requirement in three weeks, or take something fun.  That way you wouldn’t succumb to total despair.  Also, we played Assassins—to keep our spirits up, one imagines.

Now Assassins goes like this.  Anyone in the dorm who signs up to play gets a target’s name.  You don’t know who has you and no one knows who has them.  Your job is to ‘assassinate’ your target with a nerf gun.  Then, you take his or her target’s name and kill again…until eventually one person emerges victorious, rising out of the nerf foam and faux-slayings a hero.  As I said, to lift our spirits.

So, Assassins has a few basic rules:

1.  Your weapon must be a standard nerf or suction dart-type gun.
2. Any kill must have at least one witness or it doesn’t count.
3. No kill can have MORE than 4 witnesses (to prevent the giant slaughterhouse the dining hall would become)
4. Classrooms are off limits—it is after all, an institution of higher learning.

Now, I am a deeply competitive person.  I once potato-sacked-raced an entire class of fifth graders and cheered horrendously when I won.  I was their teacher.  Another time, a four year old girl I babysat had a mermaid sticker board, and would insist that only she got to decide where everything went.  So when she wasn’t looking, I would move stickers around and insert new ones.  Out of spite, I think.  That’s what sort of adult I am.   So when I started playing Assassins, something dark and a little disturbing clicked deep inside of me.  I very badly wanted to win.

I don’t remember who my first few targets were.  The whole time is awash in fear and adrenaline—because I could not help but take this that seriously.  I wore cargo pants, combat boots, and a camouflage shirt to class.  I started collecting the weapons of the early casualties, so I had 2 or 3 guns on my person at a time—one of which was a tiny dart hand-pistol and one of which was a huge, semi-automatic nerf gun.  I imagined myself as a spy or covert operator.  It was kind of sexy and thrilling and fun.  At first.

Very quickly, however, intrigue turned to pure fear.  I got super paranoid.  I made my roommates enter our room and sweep it before I would go in.  I wouldn’t go down the hall to the common bathroom by myself.  I slept with the pistol under my pillow, and went to class with it tucked in my belt.  I saw danger everywhere.  But I was not wrong.

My friend Lucas called and asked me to meet him in front of the mailboxes.  He was already ‘dead’ and my friend, so I thought I was safe. That’s when I got shot for the first time.  Lucas lured me down for a floormate of his.  And while there were too many witnesses for it to count (if only real bullets worked so bureaucratically), I was livid.  The treachery!  My roommates and I went back up to our room and wrote a letter to Lucas that began “Dear Judas…” and I wrote it with a safety pin and my own blood.  Mostly we did that because we thought it would be dramatic and funny.  Mostly.

I hid in peoples bunk beds.  I tip-toed down the hallways.  I became vigilant.  And pretty soon, the only two people left in the dorm were me and Nate Karsten.  Since our dorm was separated into Women’s  and Men’s floors, there were only certain times—“Open House Hours”—where I was actually not safe in my own room, but by now the dorm had polarized and Nate had spies everywhere.  I would sneak down to the basement at one in the morning to visit with my boyfriend—it being too dangerous at other times—and immediately someone would dart out of the room.  Minutes later Nate would appear, dragged out of bed in only his boxers, and the fire-fight would send me back up the stairwell to the safety of my floor.

We had a shoot-out in the gym—until there were too many witnesses.

Nate tried to drive by shoot me from the open door of a van and I only escaped because I varied my routes to and from the dining hall. 

Nowhere was safe.  One afternoon, Nate showed up at my work.  I looked up from my desk in the business department and saw a guy hovering in the doorway—a witness.  Instinctively I pulled the dart-pistol out of my belt and jumped up just as Nate Karsten popped up from behind the front desk.  We shot and ducked around files and staplers until a professor yanked Nate out of the office and lectured him on appropriate behaviour.  Now, I’m not sure what constitutes “appropriate behaviour” when a college sanctions the imaginary slaying of classmates as a community-building exercise, but I didn’t complain because it was one more day I didn’t die. 

I was scared to leave my room.  I had a stomach ache.  I was nervous all the time.  I knew it was just a game—but I couldn’t help myself.  And I’d come so far. My friends thought I was nuts—but Nate was wily and cunning and nefarious and he was everywhere.  I decided I needed an offensive move to end this, so I dragged my roommate Katie down to Nate’s room during open house hours.  I nodded, Katie threw open his door, and there he was on the couch.  I aimed my semi-automatic nerf gun and fired, but while the bullet was in the air, Nate’s friend jumped off the couch and took the bullet in his chest.  I shit you not.   And before I could reload Nate locked himself in the bathroom.  Nate was an arch-nemesis who would not be foiled.

And that’s pretty much when I decided I wanted to die.  The waiting and the fear and the constant threat of Nate Karsten was killing me.  I wanted to win, but mostly I just didn’t want to lose. And now what I really really wanted, was for it to be over. 

Interim term is supposed to fun and relaxing—it’s supposed to make January bearable, so that maybe you can make it through February, and by March the overwhelming despair of the universe will pale enough to put you back on an even keel.  But this? This was not relaxing.  And it wasn’t fun.  It was like an exhilarating, consuming kind of awful.

So maybe I got lax.  Maybe Nate Karsten was just that good.  Or my desire for rest was more powerful than my need to win.  Because Nate Karsten shot me in the head in broad daylight outside of the Knollcrest dining hall after two weeks of our mano a mano showdown.

I was defeated.  I was embarrassed.  But mostly, I was sooooo relieved. 

Was that feeling of relief worth the three and a half weeks of extreme panic?  I can’t say.  The relief was amazing.  And Assassins was certainly a distraction.  And this January, as I find it hard to get out of bed, hard to get excited about things, hard to go outside, hard to fight the bleariness …I wonder if a distraction is exactly what I need.  

I’m not gonna play Assassins again.  Ever.  I don’t have the constitution.  But remembering my showdown with Nate does remind me that maybe I take things a little too seriously.  And that does help.  Because January won’t last forever.  The sun and flowers are coming.   So lighten up, already.  And maybe don’t use phrases like “the overwhelming despair of the universe” in your blog.  I mean for real. 

I mean, Downton Abbey is a very good show.  But in advance of making my 2012 goals (two weeks into January, because I have not yet resolved to be on time for things), I pulled out my 2011 goals and with the exception of “get a new agent,” and  “start using twitter,” I can’t check anything off.  Now, I have started many of the things on my list, and that’s not nothing.  But I want tangible progress.  I want little boxes with big red checks.

So great is my desire for the checked box, that in highschool for a period of several weeks to several months, I made lists every night before I went to bed and they included

 Wake up

Shower

Get Dressed

Eat Breakfast

Brush Teeth

Do Hair.

I’m not kidding.  And I know it borders on OCD, but I left for school feeling like a champion.  You wanna feel good about yourself?  Set the bar very low.

I am not a naturally organized person.  In fact my sister said “I don’t know why you bother making all these lists.  As soon as they’re done, you lose them.”  And she’s right, I do.  But the writing of the list does a great deal to quell my anxiety and move the chaos from my head to the page.  Lists are plans.  Steps you can take.  Progress you can make.

Annie Dillard writes “A schedule defends from chaos and whim.  It is a net for catching days.  It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” (The Writing Life, 32).  So too with lists.  And being that I am self-employed creative person, my need for structure and scaffolding is great. 

So I make lists and I colour-code my Moleskine Agenda.  That’s right.  I sit down in January, and put all my family birthdays in (lime green text with a baby blue cloud around it, or vice versa); I write in anniversaries and upcoming weddings (alternating orange and red); I flip to the end of every month and write “PAY RENT” two days before it’s due (colour not decided yet because colour-coding your agenda takes a significant amount of time and I’m waiting till I catch up on The New Girl.)  And I LOVE this.  I love looking at this year in front of me that starts to have some edges and walls.  It’s like the week or month or year ahead is a ski hill and I’m deciding where to plant my poles.

But that’s about as far as the excitement takes me.  It’s like buying your books at the beginning of the semester and looking at your syllabus—that part is exciting; writing the 20 page paper at the end…less so.  Or as a kid—I loved building the fort, or dressing up my sisters and brother as settlers (and once making Larissa be the horse to draw the buggy), or setting up the “grocery store” with empty boxes of cereal and Kraft Dinner my mom had saved for us…but then, I was done.  Once we were all set up, I no longer wanted to “play.” I mean, how do you even play house, or fort, or grocery store.  There are no rules!  No plot!

But just as with life, you need to play, do, improvise.  You need fill the space between.  It’s all fine and good to write “Complete Spec Script” or “Come up with a pilot idea” or “Write a blog a week”…but then you have to do that.  You need to sit at your computer and make shit happen. 

Now, I’m not above micro-managing myself…

  Sit down at desk.

  Turn on computer.

  Open word document.

But at a certain point there is the work that cannot be cudgeled into being.  That’s a real word.  I thought I made it up, but it’s right there in my dictionary: cudgeled.  You must build a scaffold, a schedule or a list…and then you must build, do, fill.  And that makes me go…eeecccgggghhh.   

And “eeecccggggghhh” pretty much explains how I’ve felt all of January so far.  All these dreams, plans, potential…I want to be excited…I want to have done many of those things…but the doing…the doing….eeecccgggghhh.  Plus, I start to think “and then what?”  So I finish my Spec Script.  So I write a hilarious short film.  So I finally finish my animation voice-over demo. Then what?  Will my life be complete?  Probably not.  But it will be complete-er.  That’s not a word.  Don’t even bother looking it up.

So I am here.  And I am writing a blog.  And then I’ll go to Yoga.  And then I’ll watch me some Zooey Deschanel while I finish colour-coding my agenda.  2012, look out.  I got me a WHOLE buncha boxes lined up.

  Blog

So then what?  What do we do?  I think especially, but not only, of artists: We do a lot of work without pay, we see very talented individuals get passed over again and again while less talented people breakthrough to exceptional success, we keep expecting some sort of break just around the corner but have no guarantee of it, we watch the digital world create so much opportunity for art but don’t see how it will fund artists, and choosing to continue on our path is a constant exercise of hope in defiance of the invisible, more traditional boundaries that surround us. 

How do I keep going when I’m not booking anything?  When I’m not making money?  When another grant proposal gets rejected?  When someone asks me “But what do you really do?” When I see younger, less experienced people get bigger better parts than me?  When every creative endeavour I begin requires so much work with so little promise of return that I don’t know where to spend my energy?  When I start to believe that I’m just not good enough, I’m not working hard enough, and maybe I don’t even like what I do?

I don’t know.  But these are the things I whisper to myself in the dark of night. 

1.  Water your own garden. 

It can be so difficult to keep going when you face rejection, criticism, or another hope dashed.  And truthfully, it would be easier to stop—to go get a safer, more traditional job.  The world is hungry for art—but nobody gives a shit if you do it or not.    Annie Dillard writes about how free a writer is “because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.”  AMAZING!!  But she goes on to say, “The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever.” (The Writing Life, 11)  And that’s true.  No one really cares whether you write soul-rending poems, bring audiences to tears on stage, or blow out incredible tunes that make us feel the world in a new way.  People may love it when you give it to them, or they may not.  And because no one is waiting around for your great piece of art, no one is going to push you to keep going when you’re tired and defeated.  Whether you write in the early mornings when your children are still asleep, or make music on the weekends after a long grueling week, or make your art your livelihood, what you’re doing is off the grid—there’s no simple plan or map to follow.  No one will value your small successes or feel the pain of your very many defeats.  You’ll have friends and encouragers, sure.  But at the end of the day, your garden of creativity is completely your own.   And it will die without a little love.  So water your own garden.  Encourage yourself, take care of your own art, and create the space and time and refreshment you need.

2.  Don’t wait for Permission

One of my wonderful acting mentors, Gina Chiarelli, once said “Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to do something you know perfectly well you can do yourself.”  Like watering your own garden, you need to take ownership over your own life.  So often I go in for auditions and desperately want to do a good job and get “picked.”  It starts to feel like I’m just waiting for someone else to tell me that I’m good enough.  I want to please the casting director, my teacher, or my agent—and when I don’t get the job I feel shitty and beat myself up.  I want someone to recognize, validate and reward me, instead of knowing I come to the table with something unique and valuable to contribute, that I’ve worked hard and can trust my own instincts—whether it’s what they happen to want right now or not.   I’m not saying that getting parts or grants or publishing deals is unrelated to your talent and hard work…I’m just saying that whack-a-mole applies here too.  Sometimes you’re too blonde, or your book is too science-fictiony, or your music is too up-beat for the particular set of judges looking at it this round.   Maybe you’re too tall to play against the lead, or they gave a jazz grant last year, or they had a lot of applicants and it was basically a numbers game.  That doesn’t mean you’re not good.

I just found out I didn’t get a small part on a new pilot I was up for, but I did get a small part on a Christmas movie.  I had a good audition for both.  So, you win some, you lose some.  Chin up.  You are not every role you do or don’t get.

3.  Buy your own Pony

I’ll admit, this makes me tired.  I really just want someone else to give me a pony.  Hire me to play a role in your new comedy, or write for a hit sitcom, or premiere some fantastic play.  Give me a Jessie.  Or a Pulitzer.  Or just give me money.  But I can’t control what other people do.  I can study and write and network, but the truth is, if you want rewards for all the hard work you put in, go get them.  Create the role you want to play.  Write the story you want to hear.  Stage the play you want to star in.  It’s exhausting and daunting but it is the reality—no one is going to do it for you, so stop waiting and buy your own pony.  I won’t even judge you if you give yourself a papier-mâché Oscar.

These are all mental shifts for me.  Mostly they mean I can’t blame anyone else or expect anything from anyone else.  That’s hard to get used to when you were the keener at the front of the class.  But it’s tremendously freeing too—I don’t need your permission, your validation or your approval.  My art and my self worth exist outside of those things.  You can reject my wonderful children’s story, and I won’t fall apart—I’ll edit and submit somewhere new.  You can hire someone else for the lead in one of my favourite plays and I’ll still come and see it, knowing my interpretation would have been different but valid.  I will write my own hilarious sitcom and you will rue the day you missed your chance with me. 

Sigh….I’m not there yet.  I bruise pretty easily.  But I also bounce back…and I’m working on it.  Because damn it if I’m gonna let those little gophers get me down.

But...if you're just a-jonesin' for something creatively delightful to do this very night or tomorrow...might I suggest a litte rollicking Mardi-Gras themed Halloween Concert at the Cellar Jazz Club?  It promises to be loud and boisterous and the best place in Vancouver to get beads thrown at your head while enjoy some big band music and sip sazeracs. 

I think a little about the “undeserving” bit.  What it means to deserve at all—entitlement, merit, worthiness.  Perhaps it is my Calvinist upbringing—the Dutch work ethic so ingrained in my being—but it has been the great surprise of my adult life that much good work goes unrewarded and much goodness, when it comes, is splayed about willy-nilly, with scant regard to who should or should not receive it.  And perhaps that’s beautiful.  Perhaps that’s the very definition of grace.  But I can’t help feeling that much of life is like a game of Whack-a-Mole, where you slap shit down in one area only to have things pop up randomly elsewhere.  So much disconnect between merit and reward.  So much happenstance. 

This unnerves me and often pisses me off. I spent a good deal of my life being the class “leader” and “following the rules,” only to realize that nobody really gives a shit.  I’m not saying don’t have values or follow traffic laws, but I am saying that no one is going to give you a prize for it.  And that’s what pisses me off—that I guess I thought there would be a prize.  Some big gold stars in the form of money or fame or martyrdom.  Maybe just a pony.  And the fact that everyone else has been going about doing what they wanted in the meantime without penalty makes me feel cheated and naïve and generally pissy.  There should be cause and effect.  Reward and punishment.  Overall there should be order in the world.

I remember coming home one summer during university and leaving for work in the morning with my mom.  Not seeing my sister’s car, I asked “Where’s Larissa?” To which my mother responded, “I guess she didn’t come home last night.”  I heard a large crack as she blew my mind.  YOU CAN DO THAT?!!!  I would never have not come home—not only because I couldn’t bear the idea of worrying my parents or getting in trouble—but because it would never have occurred to me as a possibility. 

That’s where some things began to unhinge for me.  Not only did I see that you could break rules and not have the universe collapse on itself, but I began to see that what we do is shaped by what is thinkable.  What is possible to do must first be possible to imagine.  And that is no small feat.  Our idea of the world is so strongly shaped by our childhoods, our culture, our religion, our personal experience, and the behaviour of people we see in life and in the media that we imbibe ideas about what is and is not done, what is good, what is normal, what is expected, and what is possible.  Any gradeschool child could tell you that when you step outside of those boundaries, you pay the price:  Parent and teacher disappointment, ridicule by friends, or in the case of some bullies—worse.  But if you do step outside what you thought was thinkable you could become the father of modern physics.  You could invent the airplane.  You could create jazz.

Or, nothing may happen at all.  But we only really see the walls that limit us when someone walks through them.  Otherwise, we’re guided everywhere by imaginary blueprints and guarded by invisible lions.  We can find ourselves as The Great Lake Swimmers’ song says “in a prison with imaginary bars…riding shot gun in imaginary cars…”

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Katherine Monk speak.  Monk is a prominent journalist and film critic, and had much to say about the recent Toronto International Film Festival—especially about the large number of female directors represented.  And as she talked about women in the film and tv industry, I was struck by what Monk said about the lack of female directors who stay in the industry.  Women make films, but they often stop making them after making one good or great work.  In contrast to their male counterparts who press on, even weathering a few poorly received films, many women seem to fade away.  And Monk argued that perhaps it’s because of what they thought would happen.  Maybe they expected that having made one remarkable piece of art—having proved themselves—the accolades, the offers, and the work would simply follow.  They expected to be rewarded.  But it doesn’t always work that way.

And without getting into the socialization and psychology of gender too much…I wonder if that’s not true in most industries and for many women.  For people yes, but for women in particular.  How often have we (through all our myriad blueprints) come to expect that if we do the right thing, follow the rules, behave properly, we will be rewarded?  And when that doesn’t happen, when no one gives us a prize or a new set of instructions, we don’t know what to do.  We don’t go out and get it ourselves—we wait for someone to give it to us.

And this makes me think about “deserving” again.  I think about the relationship between work and reward: Whether we don’t often deserve much more, and much less, than we get.  Do we deserve anything at all?  (There’s some real Calvinism for you.) 

As an artist, this also makes me consider the correlation—or conflation—of reward with money.  How nebulous it seems sometimes.  I think about all the months of work that go into writing an original play, getting it read, edited, rewritten, rehearsed, and produced.  I think of how happy I am that I didn’t have to pay to have it produced—and for the $100-$300 honorarium I receive.  I think about the hundreds of auditions I prepare for and don’t get.  I think of the wonderful Independent theatre I have seen or been a part of that just broke even so nobody lost money. I think of how often people don’t want to pay for an artist’s skills.  Then I think about the commercial audition where I smile as I pretend to open a Christmas present from my daughter, and even though my part lasts only 4-5 seconds, and surely any one of hundreds of other blonde caucasian “mom-types” could smile as I did, I am flown across the country, put up in a hotel, and paid a couple thousand dollars for it.  I’m telling you: Whack-a-Mole.

I have some thoughts on what to do about this, but this blog is already very long and I'm procrastinating from an audition I should be preparing.  Surprise, surprise.  So I will end here for now.  In the meantime, what are your invisible blueprints?  Your invisible guard dogs?  And what plastic gophers might you bash down...

So here we are.  And as I think about how much energy I instinctually expend resisting work (or fun, or sleep)—I ponder some of my other crazy curious impulses.

Case in point:  Whenever I walk into a library, within five minutes I have to poop.  Badly.  It’s also true of bookstores.  I don’t know if my body feels at home there or if it’s all the starch.

And the other day, I walked by a new condo billboard that read “Move Uptown” and half a block later realized I was humming “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel.  The word went into my eyes, connected to a song lyric in the recesses of my memory and came out of my mouth without ever passing through my conscious thought.  That’s the subliminal power of advertising.  My Miracle Whip commercial could have people craving a tangy yet creamy sandwich dip every time they see my face.  Or I suppose they could think of my face every time they eat Miracle Whip.  I’m not sure which is weirder.

And weirder still…When I first moved to Vancouver, I had to put all my stuff in storage for a month while my roommate Emily and I hunted for an apartment.  When I finally pulled all my stuff out, my three-pack of dryer sheets was tucked in a plastic milk crate next to my Costco-sized box of big red foot candies (Don’t move cities without five cent candy reserves).   Even though both items were sealed in their original packaging—plastic and cardboard—when I bit into the red feet they tasted distinctly like Bounce.  They started chewy and fake-cherry delicious, but ended on a summery, soapy, cling-free note.  Most people would have cut their losses and chucked the box of candy right there.  But I am both cheap  frugal and a lover of all things edible,  so I powered right on through (carcinogens or otherwise) and finished the whole box.  And the strange thing is that for months afterwards, every time I ran the dryer I salivated. 

This makes me think three things:   

1.  The world is deeply mysterious.  (I think this a lot.)

2.  We are all Pavlov’s dogs—we make connections all the time and our minds and hearts and BODY    respond unconsciously to these connections.  That’s amazing and horrifying and balls-out crazy. 

3.  Many things that look like boundaries are in fact permeable. 

Somehow dryer-sheet-molecules infused my big red feet.  Somehow libraries exert pressure on my intestines.  Two dimensional words I hardly register evoke physical responses from me.  I am not a closed system—and no one is safeguarding this crackerjack operation.  What happens around me and next to me affects me constantly and for someone with control-freak leanings that is terrifying. 

Maybe that’s why I resist everything immediately—especially work.  Especially change.  I can feel that so much is happening to me and through me without my conscious effort or consent that I’ve developed an instinct to resist movement of any kind.  Maybe I’ve been conditioned to crave inertia because I think it’s safer.  Which is, of course, ridiculous.  Life is dynamic: even “stable” systems are not still.  Change is constant, and life-giving, and often good.  I know this.  I believe this to be true.  But I don’t feel it.  I want to dig my heels in and stay in bed, or keep the lights on and stay up late.  I want to do anything in my power to procrastinate.  As long as I’m resisting something, I have a tiny eddy of peace and the illusion of control.

Maybe I should try to convince myself that “Death” is my only real deadline.  Imagine what sorts of wonderfully productive procrastination projects I might make along the way!  How clean my bathroom would stay! How content I might actually be.   But my mind and body are not so easily thwarted by reason and self-talk.  We are taken down by libraries, and billboards, and tiny bounce-flavoured feet.  So I leave now to finish cleaning the bathroom, start making dinner, and finally FINALLY re-writing the spec script I’m avoiding. 

I’ll do it.  I will.  But not quite yet.

Growing up, my friend Jill had a trifecta of fear—the three things that scared her the most—Bees, Bears, and Water.  In the middle of August if she was driving me somewhere in her parents’ station wagon, I basted slowly in my own sweat and ran a low fever because they had no air conditioning but opening a window meant bees could fly in.

I used to mock Jill. I tried using reason or the cold bitchslap of humiliation to make her crack a window or go to the camp bathroom by herself.  “Your fine.”  On a sketchy fishing boat off the coast of Utila—trying to get back to shore amidst a storm warning—I sat next to Jill as she clamped her eyes shut, held onto the wood board of our seat with a corpse-like grip, and braced herself against the blunt force of large waves and saltwater spray.  She was barely staving off panic as I gingerly hummed “a three-hour-tour…” in her ear.  But truthfully I was protecting myself.  Jill’s vivid imagination planted potent seeds in my own consciousness and it unnerved me.  When I actually considered the immensity of the ocean, the sharks, and the power of the currents I shuddered.  When I lay in my sleeping bag imagining the huff of a warm grizzly nostril on my neck before its jaws ripped open my face, Jill’s fears seemed more than legitimate.  Then my sister Larissa drove her car straight into a tree because a bee was climbing up her shoulder.  The police officer investigating the crash suggested that in the future Larissa pause before she starts driving and listen for buzzing—the way you might check your back seat for an attacker before getting in.  I told this to Jill who looked at me like “Obviously.”

My friend Deborah once told me she doesn’t like to bike much because she’s terrified she’ll go over her handlebars, break all her teeth on the pavement, and no one will be around to help her. Now every time I get on my bike I shiver with a vivid image of my broken teeth and a mouthful of blood.

On the way to Seattle this weekend, I asked a couple of my friends what their fear trifecta would be.  And it’s sort of hard to say.  I mean, there really are a lot of things you could be afraid of if you thought about it.  The rampant popularity of Jersey Shore, for one.  Global warming, the death of a loved one, cancer, alzheimers, and as the ten-year anniversary of September 11 hangs over us, terrorism, war, and world destruction.

But maybe those don’t come as quickly to mind for some as say heights, muggers, rapists and sharks.  I don’t worry about snakes or spiders or cockroaches, but I don’t like them.  If faced with a room full of said vermin—Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-style, say—I would completely freak out.  But that seems unlikely to happen.  The more regular occurrences—looking foolish, not being able to find a bathroom when you need one, not being able to get water or money when you really need it— were fairly high on our lists.  Plus bed bugs, driving in India, and anything that would make us claustrophobic.  Mine of course was topped with “Maybe there’s no purpose at all to the universe and nothing means anything,” which I suppose would be called nihilophobia.

My point is this.  Why aren’t we afraid of more.  The older I get, the more I feel like Jill’s imagination was a truer picture of the universe than I was accounting for.  Our entire existence—as individuals, as civilizations, as a planet—hangs so precariously,  with so much that could go wrong and often does that it’s a wonder we can get out of bed each day and do anything at all.

When I did a semester in Kenya everything was so different and so foreign to me.  I had no context for anything.  I remember going to a club in Nairobi and at the end of the night letting some random guy we met at the bar give three of us women a lift home.  Now, I would never let some stranger from the bar drive me home in Canada, in a place where I know the streets, know the culture, know the main thrusts of the legal system, and feel that my rights are generally respected.  So why on earth would I take a late night ride home from a stranger in Nairobi?  Because it seemed no less safe than any other option.  Police officers were widely known to demand bribes.  Matatu and Taxi drivers chewed strange herbs to stay awake.  Every price was negotiable.  I couldn’t drink the water, I was constantly bumping up against cultural taboos, I stood out like a sore thumb—everything in Nairobi was outside my experience and so it all felt somewhat unsafe.  But when everything feels equally unknown and unsafe, the opposite is also true—everything feels equally safe.  You lose your mooring in a foreign culture and have to trust your gut.  I talked to the Kenyan guy at the bar.  I had a good feeling about him.  Everything else was up for grabs.  And since it was 3 am, I couldn’t judge the taxi drivers, our other friends had all left, and the only other guy with us was a completely loaded Australian traveler…riding home with a decent stranger seemed as good an idea as any.

But that’s the thing.  What we know to be true is rarely as solid as we think.  Even on our home turf.  Whenever a Tsunami hits, or a 3-year old child is randomly abducted, or we think back to events like September 11, we feel that shifting of the ground beneath our feet.  What we thought we could trust was an illusion.  We were never safe.  And maybe it reminds us of a truer, clearer picture of the universe—bees can fly in your window, bears are scary, the ocean is immense.  We should be afraid.   It makes sense to batten down the hatches and roll up our windows and hold on tightly to those we love.  But that’s no way to live.  And we don’t have strong enough bunkers anywhere to keep all the evil and all the fear out.   But on the other side of that fear, when we recognize that anything can happen—and sometimes does—is possibility.  If there is danger everywhere, so too are hope, growth, and wonder.   If nothing is really safe, then what is truly unsafe?  Maybe fear is just the underside of joy.  Maybe it’s a catalyst for life—if we let it be.  Maybe we need Jersey Shore to have Six Feet Under.  I don’t know; the world is mysterious.

I’m not saying don’t be afraid.  The more I know, the more there is to be afraid of.  Listen for the buzzing before you drive if it makes you feel better.  I’m just saying that if the ocean is roughing you up pretty bad, your worst fears are actually coming to fruition, and you can still smile through a clenched face when your best friend sings the theme song from Gilligan’s island, you’re probably in a pretty good place.