Getting Back on the Wagon

I have fallen off the wagon. The exercise wagon, that is. I went from working out 5 times a week to not seeing the inside of a gym for about 2 months. Shameful, I know. So when I went to walk a client's dogs last week up in the canyons of Beverly Hills, I was in for rude awakening. I had walked them many times before on this same rigorous path, but I hadn't done it since I had been out of my regular exercise habit and off the "Kilamanjaro" setting on ye ole eliptical machine.

The first part of the walk is easy, because it's all downhill. We were skipping along and frolicking together just like old times. Then we reached our first steep hill. I don't think I was even a quarter of the way up before my calfs started burning and I started gasping for air. I had to stop quite a few times and the dogs were looking at me like "Come on! Pick up the pace, lady!" The part that scared me the most was that I still had TWO more steep hills to climb!! By the time I reached the top of my final summit I was envisioning the phone call I was going to have to make to my client: "Hey, *weez* Could you *weez* come pick us up? *weez* I'll be in a heap on the side of the road *weez*" It was even hard to enjoy the easy parts that were all downhill because the thought of my upcoming ass-beating at the next hill soured the moment.

This reminded me a lot of my life, an up and down journey that kicks my ass and leaves me in a heap on the side of the road. I hadn't been doing the amount of emotional and mental exercise needed and putting the hours into myself that I should to be able to withstand the treacherous climb and enjoy the ease of the downhill. In the last year I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to get my head and my heart in order. I have a life coach named Genie Kahn (http://leslykahnrecommendations.blogspot.com/2009/08/services-life-coaching.html) who is nothing short of a miracle worker and has helped me transform my life in every way. We have been dealing with areas of my life that I had been hiding in the dark for years and even areas that I didn't know existed. We have been working on self-accountability, self-love, self-judgement and incorporating that into my career, my personal relationships, and my sense of self. This year has probably been the most intense year of my life, both good and bad, and without Genie and my own quest for balance I would probably still be that heap on the side of the road.

You have to be in good shape to handle the peaks and valleys, both in the canyons of Beverly Hills and in life. It takes time and it takes energy and it won't happen overnight, but when you are standing at the top of that apex and you aren't beaten down and gasping for air, you will know that the ardent training was well worth it. I'm really lucky, I had a Genie to help me.

Sometimes the Best Medicine is a Healthy Dose of Fear

I've been getting some grief about having only one blog posted thus far, and my response to that is: You can't force ah-ha moments, people!! The truth is, I've had many ah-ha moments since my last post, but haven't been entirely comfortable posting such deeply personal things on a forum for the world to see (which kind of defeats the purpose of a blog, I know). But I'll get over it.

During my blog writing hiatus, I have been presented with challenges in my life that one might say require a certain "fearlessness". I have been thinking about the word "fearless" and I have decided that there really is no such thing. I don't believe that anyone is ever truly without fear. In fact, I think fear is a wonderful thing! The best decisions I've ever made and the most amazing I have ever performed came from a place of inexplicable terror. I have often amazed myself at what I am capable of when I pull out all the stops and bring the best part of my will to meet the fear head on. It's like jumping over a hurdle. If it is a tiny step stool that you know you will have no problem clearing, you probably wouldn't even jump, you would just step over the stool. But if it were a cement wall that was taller than you are that you are trying to clear, you are going to come up with a strategy, get a huge running start, and jump with all your might. The fear of smacking face first into the cement wall is what makes you dig deep and use everything you got.

A few weeks ago we were presented with an assignment in my acting class that sent fear piercing through our souls and had us all questioning our abilities as actors.... SNL AUDITIONS!!!! We had to do what is required in an actual audition for Saturday Night Live, which consists of coming up with three original characters and three celebrity impersonations, and then preparing a one-minute monologue as each. Excuse me?!?! I'm barely funny when it's material written by an Emmy-winning sitcom writer and you want me to come up with my own stuff?!? The fear washed over me like a rogue wave and I immediately began contemplating calling in "sick" that week. But once I got over the initial shock (and my own ego), I took on the motto coined by my acting coach herself: "Dare to Suck." I rehearsed like I had never rehearsed before. I spent hours watching videos of celebrities to impersonate online and I studied their voice and movements and their trademark idiosyncrasies, and spent most of my waking hours up to class thinking about the assignment. I dug deeper for this assignment than I ever have before because I wasn't sure I could clear the cement wall. Well, clear it I did. It was the greatest class I have ever had and every single person in that room was the most brilliant I had ever seen them. Actors who have spent their lives studying drama and realism suddenly became believable cast members on SNL. The reason is, we dug deep! We prepared more and studied more and committed more to this assignment than any other because the fear of failure forced us to pull out all the stops.

Fear has shown me what I am truly capable of. It has tested my limits and shown me that I really don't have any. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." I am not a fearless person. If I were "without fear" I would probably spend my life just stepping over the tiny step stool. Fear has just forced me to get a huge running start and jump with all my might.

(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.