And Though Scary is Exciting, Nice is Different Than Good

OH GOOD MORE PICTURES OF ME!

YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY BECAUSE I FOUND MY CAMERA BATTERY CHARGER SO THERE WILL BE MORE GRATUITOUS AND UNFLATTERING PICTURES OF ME AT ALL TIMES!

Also, I survived my first day!

In this picture, am I listening to Destiny's Child's 'Survivor' on my headphones, as I go into this adventure? I most certainly am! Did it help me survive? It most certainly did!

I was so thrilled to a) have a working camera again, and b) be starting this, that I documented my walk to the theatre.

It probably didn't need to be documented. Although, hat store!!!

So scary but so exciting. Man, working is a lot better than sitting around feeling like a jerk.

I spent a lot of time before this started being scared, so I'm working on the excitement now. Also working on being 'good' rather than 'nice'. I hate nice! Good thing I am not nice!

I'm totally consumed with the worry that I'll never work again....it's very demoralizing. I feel that it is preventing me from thinking that I'm an actor. So stupid.... And there are extremely talented and experienced actors in the room, and they also talk about periods of 'not work' and feeling that they are off people's radars, and, man, that sucks. I honestly don't know if I have years and years of that in me. I love the work, but the 'not work' is just so incredibly awful.

Enough of that. I'm working for a brief period of time, let's just remember that in case I never do again.

There's a lot to learn in the room and I am overwhelmed by it. How these amazing actors (actually, people that I grew up wanting to BE, and now am in a show with) attack and question the script, are so open, are so brave. It's all stuff I know I want to do, it's just, for whatever reason, hard and scary to do it. I'm intimidated, but it's also really incredibly cool.

Also, this: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/27/purpose-work-love/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+brainpickings%2Frss+%28Brain+Pickings%29

Better Run Along Home and Avoid the Collision

Tomorrow I start a project that is the scariest thing I've done since the last project.

They're scary in different ways. I'm just an actor in this one, which is both more exposing and less exposing than being the actor and playwright, I'm finding. This is probably on a bigger scale than almost anything I've done. Maybe Tout Comme Elle was similar, but there were lots of other people in that one, to insulate me.

I'm scared of everything, because I am whatever the opposite of the honey badger is. I give an enormous shit about EVERYTHING and live in perpetual fear.

So I'm basically ill with nerves, as we could all predict. I have a general malaise and a very specific tummy ache.

Starting new things is still really terrifying, and I don't know, at this point, if that's going away. I feel now that I've done things a few times there's more pressure, because you want to keep climbing, and because I've had the opportunity to do a few professional plays, I always feel like if I mess up, someone's going to pop up and snatch that away. In the beginning of all the things I do I feel like its' probably the last time I'll ever do it. And having had the taste of doing it once will mean that I can never forget it and will have to wear a wedding dress and skulk hallways mourning my potential for the rest of my days (should I read more Dickens? Probably).

I think that's a contributing factor in my general bad attitude and all-consuming sadness, probably? Who knows. I am not a doctor. I can barely read.

But seriously, if it doesn't go away, that would be terrible. Does that feeling mean that I'm in the wrong career? Maybe my complete lack of talent means I'm in the wrong career....hm.

Anyway, I'm really really nervous and hoping that I'll be not terrible, but it is still a really cool thing I will be able to say I got to do and that is super exciting and great, if I could pay more attention to that it would far outweigh the nerves, but I am just in that nervy place right now.

I'm super excited to have some structure for my day and I'm hoping that it will make me an efficiency/productivity machine. There are quite a few projects that I just want to have HAPPEN FOR GOD'S SAKE, and because no one is interested in giving me money or space to do them, or helping me with them, I have to do them all by myself. So efficiency and productivity are needed, and I am hoping that being a busy bee will encourage them along.

Ha ha ha, that was a good one, I will of course, continue to watch Survivor and New Girl all day long and leave the succeeding and interacting with real people to my fantasy self, who is doing awesome, thanks for asking.

Just One Look Sets the Screen Aflame

Inspiration.

Awe. Art.

This is a trailer FOR A PLAY that is from Vancouver, coming to Toronto via Canadian Stage, called Tear the Curtain!

Obviously all of this is right up my alley and I'm knocked out by this:

The Songs Were Rotten, The Book Was Stinkin'

I saw some 'art' recently, in the form of theatre, and I really didn't like it.

I am a very tough critic and I'm very easily bored, so it's common for me to not like things. Also, I am played by Jack Lemmon in 'Grumpy Old Men', so I just shuffle around in sweaters hating on everything. It's the best, because I was once in 'The Apartment', which is like....maybe my favorite movie ever? It's no 'Jurassic Park' but it's up there. It's perfection.

Anyway, I like 'The Apartment' and I like 'Jurassic Park' but I often don't like theatre and maybe that's because I'm a crank and maybe it's because I have terrible taste and maybe it's because I'm jealous and confused and want to like my own theatre best so I have to hate everyone else's? I don't think so. I like things on occasion, and I am capable of loving things.

So we know it is not biological.

Seeing bad art makes me feel like I'm an empty plastic bottle being stepped on. By that, I mean it gives me these faces:

I get all crinkly and unfit for recycling.

It's frustrating, especially when I'm not working, so feeling as if I'll never work again....

But this dovetails nicely with my discovery of more and more people who did not like my show, Modern Love. Maybe because I've been able to process things from that experience a bit, and maybe because it has been a while so people don't feel they need to say flattering things anymore, because as time goes by we can all be a lot more honest with each other. But anyway. There are lots of people out there who don't like what I do, and if I keep doing things, I'm sure there will only be more of them.

Honestly, because I'm incredibly sensitive and paranoid (just two of the many reasons I would be a very good Russian spy), I never really thought that anyone liked it, and it's ultimately impossible for anyone to love it in the way that I do or in the way I want them to, which is totally and completely, because it came from my brain, and no one else has that. But then there are people who flat out didn't like it. And also there are reviews that are positive but still manage to harp on little things, or mention what they didn't like prominently, even when they're trying to encourage people to do my show. And of course that bad stuff sticks to me like glue, and becomes the overwhelming flavour.

'Too much Modern and not enough Love', is my least favorite quote. Or my least favorite.

So I sometimes don't like things, and other people don't like things, and sometimes the things that others don't like are things that I made. And that hurts, but .... I do go around shouting my opinion sometimes, so other people will too....

It's so hard to talk about the work that I see and to feel like I have a right to have an opinion on it, because, who am I? It's really hard to make work, and if someone did that, even if I didn't like it, don't I have to respect the fact that they did it?

I think so. At least a little.

The other thing to think is that I try to avoid saying negative comments directly about shows on here, because it will have an impact on my career. And people who are brave enough to write reviews like that, they are taking a risk that they might pay for. I'd like to be a better person, but if we are telling the truth, I will likely not be too favourable to someone who said something about me I did not appreciate. Especially if they said it in front of my best friend, the internet. So maybe those people are brave risk takers, which I have to admire. Even if we don't see eye to eye.

Bastards. Kidding!

I don't know how to balance these feelings, and I especially don't know how to express them, but I bet you they're worth thinking about.

I have been not on Facebook which I am sure is good for my growth and my neverending quest to become an interesting and mysterious person, but not so good for my 'How should I fill this time?' problem, or my 'Maybe I should have friends and leave the house' plan. And that's all that's up.

We Did What We Had To Do

Um, maybe I should learn my lines, right?

Or work on the project that I have the grant for....

Or work on the project that I have to do for writers circle....

Or even work on the projects that are buzzing around my head and are the things I actually want to be writing.

Or maybe I should just read The Hunger Games real quick.

THE HUNGER GAMES THE HUNGER GAMES OH MY GOD THE HUNGER GAMES.

I have a week of 'free time', because I am in grade four and still have 'free time'. Rehearsals start in a week, and let's just be honest, I am incredibly ill with nerves about it. I guess that is partly why I am not doing anything, because doing anything reminds me of how much more there is to do and how amazingly unprepared I am for all of it. The other reason I haven't worked on it is that there are lots of really wonderful things to do on the internet that involving the leaving of reality and the embracing of musical theatre.

So instead, I have mostly been listening to this on repeat:

(I prefer the original cast version, where Priscilla Lopez sings this and it is magic. But that wasn't on YouTube because everything is balls).

I HAVE TO DO THINGS AND I DON'T KNOW HOWWWWW.

LET'S JUST TALK ABOUT OUR FEEEEELINGS AND ART THAT WE WANT TO MAKE, AND IF WE TALK ABOUT IT ENOUGH WE CAN PUT OFF HAVING TO MAKE IT.

I think the reason that I am so put off by that impulse is because I have it incredibly strongly. It is equally repulsive and seductive. Doing nothing is the worst, but it is also the best.

As much as I'm aware that I am the only one responsible for my wrathful success or my miserable failure, it's a completely unmotivating prospect to actually change anything about it.

Thankfully, I just went to writers' club circle thing, and I have to present next time, which means in the next two weeks I have to start scary rehearsals and move forward with my show, and then it will be judged. So I have lots of scary stuff. Hopefully that motivates me to DO stuff.

I will! I promise!

And I promise that I'll get my camera and take more unflattering pictures of me and then this blog will be less boring because my ugly mug will be all over it, for your perusal and judgement.

Hold Your Hats and Hallelujah

MY BLOG IS BACK!

For all of you who do not care:

My blog disappeared a month ago. I have no idea why, because I am not King of the Internet. Let it be known, if I were King of the Internet, there would be 24 hour streaming of Paul Rudd movies and TV episodes constantly, musicals on demand, and several sites devoted to casting me in plays and finding me a husband.

I think these things actually already exist and are called YouTube and eHarmony.

ENOUGH OF THAT. Jessica, focus. Yes. It disappeared because the Internet is a spiteful master, though one that I pledge myself to body and soul. Really, no one cares about how I emailed this website several times and cried about it and in the end it was something about my google account? Whatever. I'm back. It's Britney, bitch.

I didn't blog about Modern Love, which was a strange experience in so many ways and something that taught me a lot about theatre, but also left me with so so so so so many questions about theatre that I feel I might be farther back than I ever, ever was. Maybe I'll get around to pondering them on this thing because ALL I DO IS TALK ABOUT MYSELF ON THE INTERNET ALL DAY LONG! It's the funnest!!!!!!

But really, right now I am in a pit of despair over acting and writing, and don't know what to do and who cares. You'll get to hear all about it right here!!!!!

MY BLOG IS BACK!!!!!!