Learned Behaviour

I wake up and realize that- for me, anyway- Spring Break has truly begun. It's just Friday, but my work week tends to be front-loaded, and Friday/Saturday are my days. I snuggle down in my bed and relax. My apartment tends to be under-heated, but in the perfect pair of Alpaca socks (and the space kitty onesie), I am cozy and warm. 

Most days I would cruise Instagram for a while, but since I've mostly abandoned Facebook, that "while" has been creeping up and up. Recently I realized that I was often on there for over an hour a day. An hour a day! Not acceptable. Even my YouTube hero Casey Neistat has recently said he spends too much time scrolling through social media on his phone. If he can cut back, anyone can. So now I  pay attention to the warning on the app that tells me when I've been on there for fifteen minutes... and when that fifteen minutes hits, I stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. Less time on social media is one of my Big Goals this year, so making this change is necessary. I'm learning, slowly, to make changes so I'm less addicted to social media. It's amazing how quickly I don't miss it. A few days are usually enough. Always scary how fast you can get re-addicted, though. 

Instead of mindlessly phone-scrolling, I read a friend's blog. She hasn't been writing as often, so it's a delight to see that she's back... and in Spain, no less. A playwright by trade, she has a wonderful knack of painting a scene with some well-chosen words. I decide to update my own, with some ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while now.

But first: le Francais. Another change. My mother and I sat down in January and plotted out a summer trip to Europe. Not only plotted, but put down some $$$ on plane tickets and AirBnBs. Paris, Bruges, Berlin, and Prague await! We are determined to be able to order food in German and French. (Flemish and Czech? Well, I'm determined to know "please" and "thank" you in those two.) So as I write this blog I'm also doing French lessons on Duolingo, where a happy owl dances delightedly whenever I finish a lesson. My mother has embraced German with a passion, but I find French more fun, since thanks to my Canadian education I already know some. 

More changes: the goals I put on my bedroom wall on post-it notes wave in their colourful way as I get out of bed. Since it was the first  time I'd ever done anything like this, I made the mistake of putting a lot of long-term goals up there, but not as many short-term ones. So, lofty goals like stop using paper cups, write a song a month, and write the first draft of your play will likely be up there on the wall for the whole year. It does not escape my attention that fitness goals (do a bike challenge; do yoga every day for a month) and writing goals (make notes for future play; write songs for future play) are getting accomplished a lot faster than theatre or music goals. Form a new band? The current one hasn't accomplished much yet this year. Get headshots? Too expensive. Theatre is once again on the back burner as I immerse myself in music teaching. 

Good thing I didn't walk away from it, as I was tempted to do this winter. High on the success of Fiddler on the Roof, plus two other large productions, I pictured a successful return to freelancing, with no more teaching. Ha. I chafed against teaching life the first few weeks I was back, missing the applause, missing the camaraderie of my cast-mates, missing the easy routine: Show up and try to be excellent, every day. Okay. In teaching, the routine is more like, Show up and try not to murder anyone. Or, Try not to expose the gaping holes in your knowledge. 

I love it though. Teaching. I learn to love it more every year and it's hard-won love, which makes it more special. It's never easy but sometimes now it feels wholly right, in the way that performing does. 

Back to the Goals. When one gets accomplished, I peel the post-it note off my bedroom wall, fold it up, and stick in in a big jar, along with other post-it notes which have particularly happy or important moments written on them. The idea is that at the end of 2019 I will have a jar full of wonderful goals and happy moments to read about. That jar sits next to a much smaller tin which is slowly filling with money. Another new thing: all twonies and loonies are put in the tin, which has Croissant Fund written on it. By the time the Europe trip rolls around I hope to have several hundred dollars in coins, which will buy me delicious French pastries. I am learning new behaviour around money, at this advanced age. I am learning to make do with a little less now, in order to have a little more later. 

One of the reasons I gave up on Facebook: almost no one's story ever changes. You can take a break for months and when you come back, everyone is still posting the exact same thing. I am trying to change my story a little bit, with goals and French lessons and saving money. Some things are harder to change than others:
I will stop eating all sugar
I will drink nothing but green smoothies for breakfast
I will stop eating croissants and bread until Europe
I will exercise every other day
I will do yoga and try not to outgrow any of my clothes. 
Still some work to do here, obviously.  

Sometimes our stories change drastically for sad reasons: death, divorce. Sometimes we make decisions that change the course of our lives, like one of my favourite bloggers recently did. Our stories don't have to change at all. But getting stuck in a rut is so easy: we blame having kids, we blame being poor, we blame our jobs, and we never change. And that's lame, quite honestly. 

Recently I was in a music class of kids with autism, and as always, we asked a check-in question. What do you like to learn? we asked, and a hulking teenaged boy answered I like to learn about social skills, and my heart just melted. People with autism often struggle to learn social cues and behaviour that neurotypical people take for granted. This guy has identified a challenge and he's out there learning about it. I love that. It drives me crazy when people say I hate parties. I'm socially awkward. I'm shy. Adulting is hard.* 
You know what you can do? Learn. Practice. Change your story, little by little. Go to parties. Learn to make polite conversation. Practice. Call a friend instead of watching Netflix for hours. Practice. This is learned behaviour. If people with autism can do it, so can you/I.

*These are all things I have said, by the way. 

It's now 10:45am. I am still in bed. On the plus side: I wrote, I stayed off social media. On the minus side: I am still in bed. I will get up soon, and I will probably not have a green smoothie for breakfast. I will think about what parts of my story I want to change and hopefully I'll keep practicing and saving money and staying off Facebook/Instagram and doing yoga and I'll immerse myself in the daily business of not getting into a rut. 

I Gave Up Ambition For 2019 (clickbait title)

Can we talk for a second about guilt?

Specifically my  guilt, because I don't know if you've ever felt like this. Or maybe you have?

Do you, as a "creative", feel guilty if you're not doing something All.The.Time?

Do you glance over your shoulder to see if the wolf is almost at the door if you have a few days or weeks to put your feet up?

Ever felt like less of a person because you weren't madly writing your next play/song/book?

Let's talk about this quote for a second:

For the record, I agree with Mr. Tozer 100%. But here's the thing. If we're not taking a little time to enjoy our progress before launching into the next thing, what's the point? 

Let's recap:

Five years ago in January I was subletting an apartment. Then I moved into my brother's place. For three years. I barely got any work in the city, putting all my effort instead into my spring/summer job up north. I had yet to meet my boyfriend. Finding the 500 dollars (!!!) I needed to pay rent for the bedroom I lived in was often a challenge. I had never taught a class. I had almost never performed professionally, except up north.

And now:

It was almost exactly two years ago that I found my sweet little basement suite on Craigslist. I have never had to borrow money to pay the (substantially more than $500) rent, and I've never been late. Not once. I started teaching music classes. I've performed professionally all over the place. My new band has recordings I actually enjoy listening to. In order to help pay for the apartment (and to pursue my theatre dreams instead of playing it safe), I was out of town; away from my home and my love for 25% of the calendar year. 

So here I sit , at 11:30 am, in my Space Kitty onesie and a toque (my apartment is cold in the winter, it turns out). I had a green smoothie for breakfast- part of a regimen of health and lifestyle changes and challenges I'm spicing up my life with- I did my yoga, I was just about to get into the shower... 

And then I thought: I don't have to. I don't work on Thursdays, the onesie was soft and fleecy and warm... 

So I sat my fleece-covered ass down and started writing this post. 

You know, if you've read this blog before, that I struggle with The Hustle. I love my work, but I also love my downtime. I believe strongly in a work-life balance, except for me? the scales will always be more weighted on the Life side. 

I came back from two months away and I started working pretty soon after, but let's be real here: I only work about 20 hours a week right now. I have a sweet deal, because my teaching jobs pay pretty well. So, what's happening during the hours in which I do not work? 

Am I calling colleagues and making connections and generally hustling for the next contract? 

I am not, but I AM calling venues and looking for places to play gigs and gearing up to play regularly with my band after a forced hiatus because I was away for so long.

Am I writing songs?

I am not, but I've started work on adapting a favourite novel into a 1-woman show.

Am I running/doing HIT/going to yoga class?

I am not, but I'm doing 20 minutes of yoga a day at home (thanks, Yoga With Adriene!), drinking green smoothies, cutting out alcohol and coffee, limiting sweets, cooking at home, walking or biking to work, drinking lots of water. 

I'm also learning German. (More on this soon.) I quit using Facebook again (okay, only 2 days so far, but it feels good).

I have a list of goals on my bedroom wall, in colourful post-its. I am actively working on most if not all of them. 

I'm also watching more Netflix and YouTube videos than I have in ages. In my onesie. 

This is precious time for- much as I loathe the term- Self Care. Precious time to enjoy my home  and re-connect with my sweetheart after being away for 8 weeks. 

So, do I have a takeaway from this post? Is this just monstrous self-justification for a month of laziness? 

Perhaps. 

But you know, when I stop feeling guilty, I realize that I also feel... happy. Would I want all my months to look like this? Well no, but I also don't want all my months to be frantically busy, either. 

I think we- as women, but also as a culture of creative, self-employed people- are conditioned to sacrifice, to be uncomfortable, to hustle, to be overburdened.

 [Read this post, by a blogger I adore, if you want to get an idea of what it means to be juggling too many things.]

When we don't feel like this: stressed out, exhausted, juggling multiple projects, we feel guilty for not Doing It All. What bullshit. 

I have a holiday booked for this summer. When it rolls around, I want very much to feel that I earned it with a lot of honest, hard work. But when the soft times come, I also want know that I savoured them in the best ways I could, with leisure and self-improvement and domestic pleasures.

And then, just maybe, the wolf at the door will also just lie down on your doorstep and take a little nap. 

2018: Year In Review

I stared writing this blog entry just before Christmas 2018, and now I'm into day 2 of 2019, and back home in Vancouver after 2 months away. 

I'm in Saskatoon, into the home stretch of a two-month-long contract of Fiddler on the Roof, looking forward to being home with my love (and back in my cosy basement den), but sad to leave such a beautiful production behind. On Instagram I wrote that this show has given me the gift of helping me become more of who and what I am, and I think that's actually true of this whole year, now I think about it. In 2017 I started realizing that I could never step away from performing, and that teaching would always take a backseat to my being a musician and theatre artist. This year, I was able to realize those dreams; in large part due to a lucky, lucky fact: just as I'm stretching my wings as a performer, it is truly becoming the era of the Musician/Actor. More and more productions are abandoning expensive pit bands for shows where the actors also play all the instruments. As far as I'm concerned, long may this trend continue. Of course, going (mostly) back to contract work had its downsides too: I endured a nasty stretch of being super-broke this fall, and had to battle Imposter Syndrome with every contract. Being a performer also meant going where the work was, and this has meant around 4 months of being away from Vancouver in the last 12 months. Being away for a good third of the year has meant that my future as a teacher is less certain, and that I can't always be there for my friends, or my band. I am supremely lucky to have friends who understand, and a partner who is unfailingly not only supportive, but generously excited about every thing I do. It's been so wonderful to watch him stretching his wings this year too, taking on exciting new challenges as his marketing and design ventures begin to ramp up. We may not be the youngest power couple ever, but by god, we're going to be movers and shakers some day!
Here's how 2018 unfurled for me:

January: Halfway through the month I packed my bags and sailed for Vancouver Island to perform in a production of Once at Chemainus Theatre. It was strange and beautiful to be back in a place where I'd lived and performed multiple times over a decade before. Chemainus was in the thick of its quiet season when we began rehearsals, and the constant rain and shuttered businesses made me feel as if I was living in a ghost town. On the plus side, I was living in a house with a fireplace! Rehearsals were packed full of music, and soon, so were our brains.

February: Once opened, and Jay was able to come over from the mainland to take in opening night and explore the Cowichan Valley with me for a couple of nights.  The show was joyous, and in my down time I developed a passion for antiquing (especially for little silver items). My roomie and I enjoyed many nights of post-show fires and wine, but unfortunately the weeks of heavy rain took their toll, and quite a few people in the cast battled viruses. I battled insecurity: sometimes I'd feel on top of it all, and sometimes I'd feel as if I had no business being in a play at all.

Not the most flattering shot ever of me, but I've got a nice crew. 

March: Once closed fairly early in the month and I headed back to the mainland, and back to teaching. My calendar says that I taught some Spring Break classes at Arts Umbrella, but I have very little memory of this. I also celebrated one year of living in my delightful apartment. It took a good long while to lose the cough I got in Chemainus, and my memory is that I still had it in the spring.

April: This was a busy month. I started teaching at SoM again. I also began a theatre workshop called the Greek Play Project, which was a whirlwind of devising, Suzuki exercises, Viewpoints work, and songwriting on the fly. I went to a little event called BC Distilled- which was fun, by the way- got a little (ok, a lot) drunk, and quit drinking for 3 months. Started recording songs with the Rogue Crows, at wonderful Monarch Studios, an ongoing project that spanned the spring and summer months.

May: Another busy one, with lots of changes. The Greek Play Project continued and concluded. I finished teaching at SoM. Jay and I snatched a short but beautiful holiday on Saltspring at a converted aerial gym shaped like a church, with 40-foot ceilings and gorgeous acoustics. We ate, we drove, we jogged, we swam, and we recorded music together. It was a dream. And then we came home and I dove into rehearsals for my second production of Once. At the Arts Club. Another dream come true. A cast with some old friends, some new ones, and more laughs than I'd ever imagined. Still, I fought with shyness and imposter syndrome, but mostly I just had fun.

June: I settled into the pleasant routine of rehearsing, and then performing, a show. There are many reasons I love doing plays, but one of the big ones is having a stable schedule. Of course, the downside is that your evenings are all taken up for weeks at a time.

July: was more of the same. One of my great pleasures in doing this contract was my constant biking to and from Granville Island. A leisurely 30 minute trip either way, and mostly along the seawall. Between the biking and the fairly active show, I lost a bit of weight and felt healthier.

August: Once extended to the 5th, then closed. I immediately bought a new bike to counter the post-show blues, and enjoyed going on expeditions with "Livy" all over town.

True love.

Unfortunately, heavy smoke from BC forest fires meant that some longer excursions- like a trip to the Island- were curtailed. Jay and I saw Nathaniel Rateliff at the Burnaby Roots & Blues Festival. At the end of the month I took a short but super-fun trip to Toronto to see my friend Theresa and to run a 5k race with her on the lovely Toronto Islands.

I ran a (tiny) race!

Having fun with my new phone's camera in False Creek.

September: As I had decided to accept an offer to do a musical in Saskatoon in November/December, I was not able to return to Sarah M school to teach, as they didn't want me making a brief appearance and then having to leave again. So it was back to the world of freelancing, with all of its excitement and uncertainty. One of the gigs that got me through (and was really fun to do) was Secret City: Robson Square, for which I interviewed a dancer and turned the true story of how he met his now-wife into a song.

October: As I wasn't teaching, I went back to my favourite seasonal job: the Pumpkin Patch.

Typical Pumpkin Patch scene.

Sunny, dry weather made for fun shifts there, but the downside was that in my second month of freelancing, I was BROKE. It was sobering to have a bank account that was sometimes in single digits again, but luckily, money started to come in by the end of the month. I also got to be a part of a workshop of a new musical that told the true story of a labour dispute here in Vancouver. It was exciting to be part of something that was still early in its development phase. A quick drink with my love on Halloween Night, and it was off I went to the prairies in...

November: I flew to Saskatoon November 1st, and began rehearsals the next day for Persephone Theatre's production of Fiddler on the Roof. Our brains full from cramming sheet music into our memories, our bodies sore from holding instruments and from choreography, we struggled- as every production does- with getting it all done in time for opening. And we did. Jay was even able to fly out to cheer me on at opening night (and eat some Saskatoon Berry pie!).

What Saskatoon looked like for much of my stay.

December: Fiddler extended four times, taking our run almost to the end of the month. Having been scared that the cold would keep me inside and inactive, I was relieved to find it invigorating. It didn't hurt that it was relatively "warm" there too- never got colder than minus 21. I walked miles, I hung out with other cast mates, I read a lot of books and ate at many fine cafes. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were surprisingly magical, even though I was far away from loved ones. My mother joined me on Boxing Day, saw my show, and hung out with me for a final couple of days before we flew home together on December 30th.

No fun whatsoever.

This show made my heart grow at least 3 sizes. 

2018 felt like a year in which I got to spread my wings, with all the dangers and thrills that accompany flight. See you in 2019!