(Insert Title Here)

Today is the day my friends! Today is the day I start the blog I have been intending to start for God knows how long and never quite got around to. "Why would you wait so long to do something that is nothing more than a manifestation of the thoughts that are already in your head?" you may say. The same reason most people don't do most of the things they intend to do... Fear. "What could you possibly be afraid of, silly goose? It's just a blog!" you may say. For me, the fear comes from not meeting the expectations I have in my mind of what a blog should be. At its inception, this was going to be a video blog that documented all of the sudden epiphanies I had been having about life and work and art and how all of those things were unfolding to me as being the same, rather than separate pieces that needed to find a way to fit together. So while imagining what these vlogs might look like, I was thinking of my list of things to do:

1) Have epiphany.

2) Buy video camera (the built-in webcam couldn't possibly produce the quality I need).

3) Master iMovie software and create cinematic masterpieces that will be celebrated the world over.

This is my problem! I had such high expectations of what these vlogs needed to be in order to be good that it became this overwhelming chore that just wasn't fun anymore. I was so focused on the result that I was willing to forego the entire process because it may not end up the way I had imagined. That's why I am doing a blog like this. It was time to just suck it up and get over my own self-imposed crapola and do something that I want to do because I want to do it. The process is far more valuable to me than the result, and it is the only thing I have any real control over.

I recently participated in a short film competition at my acting studio. I have done a couple of contests for this before, but I wasn't as involved in the creation of the product, I was just more involved with the promotional aspect and trying to get as many YouTube hits on our film as possible. I really wanted to win and that became my entire focus. For this contest, I was hands-on throughout the entire process. I helped come up with the story line, I co-produced, co-directed, acted in, edited, and turned my apartment into a movie set for three days. As production began, I became so enthralled with the process and so attached to telling this story that we had all put our souls into that I completely lost sight of the fact that this was a competition. This was about creating a piece of work that I was proud of and that I was learning from and having an experience that taught me more in two weeks of production than I have learned in the last 7 months of acting classes. Never once during filming did we ever say "We should do it this way, because that would get us the most points with the judges." If we did film it that way, we would be sure to fail. You can't base your actions on an anticipated result, especially if that result is the favorable opinion of another person.

Writing this blog has not been without its share of pressure and expectation and general neurotic nonsense that I tend to pile atop myself and projects I choose to take on. Even coming up with a title really threw me off course and almost screwed up the entire thing. The problem was I had come up with the title first, so as I was writing and typing out whatever would come to my mind I was thrown off because it wasn't really staying with the theme of the title I had so brilliantly come up with days earlier. I had pre-determined what this blog was going to be about and what direction it was going to go in and I refused to allow it to stray from that. So I just stopped typing. I didn't revisit this blog for days because I didn't know what else to type to make it fit the blueprint I had begun with this title that I had become so attatched to. I talked to my sister about my blog and I told her my dilemma and she said "They say you should come up with the title last." Of course! The title is the result and the blog itself is the process. The title should be a product of the piece, not the other way around. Then I told her the clever little pun I had come up with as my title and instead of a "Wow Alison, that's really clever!" or even a tiny little chuckle, she responded with a rather monotone "I think that's dumb." So that was the final nail in that title's coffin.

Now at the end of my first blog, I still have no idea what to call it. So rather than freak out and try to find some side-splitting pun or play-on-words to encapsulate all that I have said, I've decided to leave it blank. I don't know what the result is going to be, and I'm becoming more and more OK with that.

*Here is the short film I mentioned.