Down the Facebook rabbit hole; or, Have I become less fun?

Its 2 a.m.  I'm not even sure what time I got in bed with my laptop.  I thought, "I'll do something productive!", and then I thought, "Let me look at what people wrote on my Facebook wall between 2006 and 2009!".  God damn timeline.  At first I started to notice comments from "I have no idea who this person is" people.  But then more and more I saw little notes and inside jokes from people that I genuinely miss.  A lot of people.  And also a lot of people that I've de-friended over the years.  Not for any other reason that clearing up my Facebook newsfeed.  Is it normal to be feeling suddenly guilty over these "trims"?

I also started wondering if I'm any fun any more.  Let me rephrase that.  I know I can be fun.  But I used to be a performer!  A crazy kid that stayed up so late with cast mates playing drinking games and watching infomercials that we could then walk to McDonald's and get a mcgriddle when we were done.  I was the girl who was always trying to prove you could give a kick ass performance without taking anything too seriously.  I was cocky.  I had limitless energy.

So I'm not 21 anymore.  That's okay.  My body and my energy levels have changed.  And it doesn't bother me that I'm on a different career path with different goals now.  I think this strange feeling is due to the major change in my social life.  I used to see my friends all the time because I was always at auditions.  So what happens when you remove that part of the equation?  What happens when this one thing that you are all so passionate about is suddenly not your passion anymore?  I find myself longing for these friendships, because there were some really really great ones.  Its not like I no longer consider these people friends.  Its one of those situations where if I ran into any one of them, I'm sure we'd be thrilled to see each other.  But as it is now - me clicking through Facebook, wondering if anyone thinks about me anymore and feeling too chicken shit to do anything about it - I feel like I've lost my key to the club.

I worry that we won't have anything to talk about any more.  For some reason I feel like maybe I've lost the right to be in touch with them.  There are some people who I think might not even like me anymore after my breakup with Mark.  I really have no idea.  There was recently a reunion for Hartt School MT alums, and I was unable to make it due to work.  When I got a chance to look at the pictures, I realized that I hardly recognized anyone.  Its been seven years since I graduated - wait, let me double check that.  Oh yes, SEVEN YEARS since I graduated - and its all fresh blood now.  I feel such a strong disconnect from so many things that were once so familiar.  Its natural, I know, but where do I fit in now?  I'm in a kind of lifestyle limbo.

The thought of walking into the equity lounge just terrifies me at this point.  Even though I've lost 5 pounds and have fabulous hair.  (Wink.)  I feel like a foreigner.  There are still things that make my heart ache.  Pregnancy Pact auditions are coming up, and I read yesterday that Westchester Broadway is doing The Music Man in July.  Parts of me feels a strong ownership over these roles.  But then I remember the rest of the process and the complete uncertainty of the work.  Whereas shows used to be my life, I now feel like shows would interfere with my life.  Ah, conflict.

I'm reminded of a concept from a book on grieving that I read several years ago.  The author suggested that all changes in life - even positive ones - bring on an appropriate grieving period.  You could be thrilled that you've got a new job, or a new baby, or a new apartment, but you'll still grieve the way your life used to be.  That's where I am right now.  I think that's also just a natural part of getting older.  I've still got a year and change to go, but I pretty much just consider myself to be 30 now.  I'm really okay with that, but its weird when I think about myself at 22.  And 23.  And 24.  And so on.

So what's the conclusion here?  I don't know.  Yes I do.  I should be brave.  (Insert any number of quotes here that say you should do stuff that scares you.)  I just wish that being brave didn't give me so much anxiety.  But I guess that's just part of it.

Is this the part where I stand on a roof somewhere with my arms outstretched and I yell some sort of affirmation?  Or should I yell out a window?  You get the idea.

Literary procrastination...

I can't believe I let the whole month of March go by without writing.  Don't get me wrong, there were several times I planned to fit it into my day, but I never made it happen.  I've been suffering from a definite lack of focus and I didn't want to publish something that didn't make any sense.  We'll see if I can make that happen by the end of this.

I spent the majority of the month of March thinking about IIN (school), The Container Store, and The Hunger Games.  Not a joke.  I also spent a good chunk of today moving all my important files onto my external hard drive in order to prepare for the arrival of my new laptop.

Just this sexy thing.

I'll go down the list.

School has been really great, per usual.  I recently had to really sit down and brainstorm a name for my future LLC, and I finally decided upon Bright Life Wellness.  What do you think??  Having seen a whole number of other "health and wellness" company names, I tried to think of something that wasn't completely cheesy and evoked a positive feeling.  Who doesn't want to live a bright life?  I'm currently working on my personal website...stay tuned for the finished product!  I'm also expecting my very first business cards soon.  I'm an entrepreneur, y'all.


The Container Store has been a very interesting learning experience so far.  Imagine, if you will, a working environment in which its almost impossible for you to do something wrong, you're immediately given a lot of responsibility because they trust you, and you can literally ask any other employee for help and know you will get a genuinely friendly response.  Yeah.  I'm still adjusting. I think this job is going to teach me some really valuable people skills.  I'm also starting to accumulate funny/interesting stories.  For example - on Wednesday nights a lot of our customers are Hasidic women trying to haggle with us for container lids, which we don't sell separately from the containers.  What's happening to the original lids?  Why do they go through them so quickly?  Why on Wednesday night??  These are the mysteries of the universe.


And now on to The Hunger Games.  Oh.....The Hunger Games.  I read the trilogy before I started this blog, otherwise you would have already heard me talk about this.  I won't go into too much detail.  I am one of the crazy obsessed fans.  Crazy.  Obsessed.  Reading the books made me feel like a teenager again - when I would read so late into the night my parents would yell at me to go to sleep.  Regardless, I had been counting down the days to the movie premiere like a mad woman.  When I did see the movie on the afternoon of the 24th, I found myself repeatedly trying not to sob during certain scenes.  I loved it.  There was really no way I wasn't going to love it.  I may have even seen it 3 times already...?  Maybe in another post I'll get into why, but honestly I'm too tired right now.  YEAH what an exciting post.  


More soon.  


P.S. During Mad Men this week, I really thought they might give Betty a thyroid cancer plot line.  WHAT.  But no, she's just fat.

I don't want to freak you out or anything, but...

...I've been feeling like this lately:

This coming from the girl who's name tag at Barnes & Noble read "Mellencholy".  (True story.)

For years and years I've been purchasing and reading books that all essentially preached the same message:  retrain your brain to think positively, and positive things will come to you.  Its basically "The Secret" but in a much less commercialized, much less annoying package.  The law of attraction is a real thing, for sure.  I've just never been able to get it.

I still can't say I've gotten it, but I'm definitely on a positive roll.  I think this might actually be the first time I can say "I love my life" with confidence.  Really.  I can feel my attitude changing and its CRAZY.  Maybe I won't always be the semi-jaded, overly cautious chick.  Its definitely been an incredibly long road to get to this point, and I've hit some major bumps.  I think that maybe instead of just ideas, I'm starting to see a future materialize.

When I was an actress, I know I let that define so much of who I was.  There was no doubt it completely controlled my emotions and my feelings of worth.  Even when I finally realized how unhappy I was doing it, it took a very long time for me to stop feeling guilty, like I'd failed and that I was somehow "wasting" talents I'd been given.  But here's the thing - I know it was the best decision for me.  I had a lot of fun, and then it was time to get real.  I hate to admit it, but sometimes when I think about my former life, I just feel embarrassed.  I don't necessarily have any regrets....its just that I didn't have to self-awareness to understand that I was going against my nature.  I was never built for that life.

I'm absolutely loving my nutrition school, and the information I'm receiving is already changing me - which is great, because if I'm a health coach, I want to look and live the part!  I just started a job at The Container Store, which is SO effing SWEET.  I never could have imagined that a retail store could be so different in its approach to both its business and employees.  I'm excited and thrilled to be working there.  Maybe someday I will redesign your closet.

On the workout front, things are great.  I'm seeing changes in my body and that is always encouraging.  I'm not even going to weigh myself anymore.  I'm just going to let myself feel good about how I feel and clothes fitting differently.  That's enough for me.  I've started doing regular Zumba classes at the Y, which are hilarious and effective.  Amazingly there are some moves I look good doing, and then there are others that I just look like a crazy white girl.  Its my damn long legs....my center of gravity is too high!!  I could fall over at any moment.

Happy happy happy.  Happy thoughts, happy things.  I just feel grateful.  I know 2012 is set up to be one of the best years of my life.  And you know what else?  I've been married for six months today. :)

THIS guy.

Mama's got a brand new bag.

I have to say - things are going well.  Isn't that different?!

I've recently started thinking about balance.  In the past, I tried to be so hard-core about everything that I really just set myself up for disappointment - doing things gradually was never a forte of mine.  Little by little, I'm getting so much better.

Since my last post, I've been feeling more and more encouraged.  I'm still really watching what I eat, and therefore able to enjoy a "bad" treat from time to time. (balance)  I've been working out often, at least 4 days a week if not more, and going easy on myself if I don't get to the gym on a day I wanted to. (balance)  With this new routine, I've lost 3 pounds so far. (hooray!)  I'll take any victory where I can.  

I've just been feeling generally good about where things are going.  One piece of very exciting news - I am a phone call away from getting a job.  A job!  I've had two successful interviews, and they made it clear that they're very interested in adding me to the team.  Now its just a matter of numbers and how many people they need to hire.  I'm not going to say more, just because I don't want to jinx it, although I think I'm entitled to some optimism.  Its a fun retail job that would work easily into my life.  Done and done.

I've spent the last year feeling so discouraged over my work situation.  A final bad audition experience (lots of tears) led to my official exit from the theater world, which led to me getting laid off from a retail job, which led to me getting FIRED BY A BUNCH OF CORPORATE ASSHOLES, which led to me getting laid off from an office job.  I was destroyed.  And so now, after being terrified to even attempt to re-enter the job market, a company I respect took interest in me after seeing only my online resume.  That, is awesome.  Might seem small, but it feels huge to me.  Being made to feel valuable and worthwhile is a very welcome gift.

Even if I don't get this job, its given me a healthy shot of courage.  I'd like to officially end the days of "Ellen being down on herself" and begin the new era of "Ellen dives into her rad new life"!  Maybe the whole positive thinking thing does work, because I feel things falling into place.  Joy!  Inspiration!  Productivity!  Good Health!  Abundance!  All those things.

Basically, I want to feel like this all the time.

P.S.  I considered writing a blog entitled "All the Reasons I Hated "SMASH", but I decided it would be too controversial.  Regardless....................I will not be watching it.

get a grip!

I've now been going to the gym for the majority of the past two weeks.  It feels good, and I'm definitely getting stronger.  I've even lost 2 pounds, which is pretty great considering I'm trying to lose the 10 pounds I've gained in the last six months.  So why is it that after just a few negative experiences I feel like I've accomplished nothing?  I know part of it is the desire for instant gratification.  Everybody wants that, and I am a particularly bad offender.  But you just can't undo something overnight.  (Why?!?!)

I'd like to address something.  We (women) have all had this experience:  We run into a friend that maybe we haven't seen in a while, and we say, "Wow!  You look great!" and mean it.  The friend then grimaces and says something to the effect of "No, I don't."  You could think that this friend is completely crazy, and that she has the perfect body, and yet its clear that she's not happy.  In most cases, I don't think that this is the sign of any kind of real problem - its just the way that women are.  I will admit openly to everyone right now - I have never felt worse about my body than I do at this point in my life.  Technically, I'm still within a very normal weight range for my height, and by most standards I'm pretty slim.  The fact is you become used to your body being a certain way, and if it changes, it can be very uncomfortable.  For the most part of my adult life, I hovered between 120 and 125 lbs.  I'm now hovering closer to 140 pounds.  AH.  Sure, its me getting older, its my thyroid condition, its my metabolism slowing down.  But that doesn't make me feel any better.  Its also me eating crap and not exercising.

I've never been thrilled with my body.  There are certain things I've always liked, but there are more things that I don't.  Honestly I think a lot of that has to do with being teased when I was younger.  Flat chest, wide hips, big hands, big feet.  I've heard lots of stuff.  The thing that I'm starting to realize is that while at no point (except maybe one) I was really happy with how I looked, about a year or so later I was always yearning to look the way I did before.  Today I saw a picture of myself from autumn of 2009, in which my stomach is showing.  WHAT??  Not only is my stomach flat, but I have some muscles there.  Muscles!  They are GONE.  I felt so bad after seeing it that I turned my computer off for a while, like it had done something wrong and needed to be punished.

The other day I was out with Tom and we were killing time in a Target before seeing a movie.  They had lots of cute stuff, so I figured I'd try something on.  And then I encountered the most unforgiving dressing room mirror of all time.  Oh God.  I had a serious "Is that what I look like from behind??" moment and felt completely deflated.  I even started feeling bad about my short hair (which I usually love), like it called attention to my flaws.

But okay.  This is just a part of life.  I've been exercising.  Its good.  I will continue to exercise.  I've really been watching what I eat and succeeding at making smarter food choices.  These are very good things.  Sometimes (okay, most of the time) when I am faced with the prospect of a lot of hard work over a long period of time, I get scared and discouraged immediately.  And I say NO!  No no no.  I'm going to do this.  I'm not expecting to get back to that happy flat tummy place immediately, in fact I may never get back there exactly.  But where I am IS a good start, and its time to focus on what I can do now.  I don't think I've ever said it officially, but one of my resolutions for this year is to be kinder to myself.  Retraining your brain is a tall order.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming...

Ouch!

Tom and I recently joined our local Y.  Not just because of the new year, but because we've been wanting to get back into shape for a while.  (We dubbed 2010 "the fat year".)  Today was our fifth consecutive day of working out and now we're both crippled.  Okay, I'm exaggerating.  But it pretty much hurts to do anything.

OHHH it's the deep burn!  OH it's so deep.
Oh, I can barely lift my right arm, 'cause I did so many.

I have to admit that I kind of enjoy this feeling.  For one, it makes me feel good that I've been working hard.  Two, its added another level of weird to our relationship.  The combination of physical pain with our already silly dispositions caused us to be in hysterics this morning.

But in all seriousness.  Its great to have a workout buddy.  I can't believe how motivated I've been feeling lately.  This was my first week of classes at IIN and it already seems to be having a positive effect on me.  Although I've been giving family and friends health advice for a while now, I'm excited to be legit.  I can't wait to start counseling people.

I'm still looking for guinea pigs to practice health histories on....anyone?  Anyone? :)

gulp...

Thursday night I was on the phone doing a health history with a fellow student.  About ten minutes into the conversation I heard the beep of an incoming call.  Glancing down at the screen, I read: Tara Rubin Casting.  Oh boy.

I need to provide some back story.  Tara Rubin is one of the biggest casting directors in New York (and a very nice woman).  At the end of 2007, I went through a series of auditions and was being considered to cover the role of Christine on the national tour of Phantom of the Opera.  The casting agency was very positive and went to the trouble to tell me that 1) they loved me; and 2)  they had to decide between me and one other girl.  I lost the job and was devastated.  They haven't called me in for anything since.

Through the rest of my phone call I felt absolutely sick to my stomach.  When I was finally able to listen to the message, I learned that they were casting a new musical at Two Rivers Theater (where I recently performed) and wanted to know if I could audition last minute.  I spoke with a casting intern and before I knew it I had an audition for Friday at noon.  I just didn't see how I could say no to such important people.

After I hung up the phone, I continued to feel sick, which turned to anxiety, and then doubt.  (Are you getting the picture as to why I don't do this full time anymore?!)  After looking up the show and discovering that I knew the book writer, I relaxed a bit.  What did I have to prove?  What did I have to lose?

Friday morning I got up and entered into my old audition routine: hot tea, vocal warm-ups in the shower, going over sides.  Not only was I worried that I would annoy Tom, but I was also annoying myself.  I can't believe what negative emotions are attached to all of these actions now.  At any rate, I got myself out to the door and to Pearl Studios.  The audition went well enough I think, although my opinion of it has been changing every hour since then.  I hate that.  How did I go from feeling that it went pretty well to mediocre at best?  I guess I should try to go easy on myself, considering that this was my first audition in about two years.  But still.  I just can't stand the thought that I didn't represent myself well.  And I'm sure I'll feel a twinge of disappointment when they cast the show and I'm not in it.

Not to be referencing my old blog too much, but I did notice that only a few months after graduating college I was expressing doubts about acting.  I never doubted my own abilities, just my own personality and how it didn't exactly mesh with the lifestyle.  I've never hated anything more than feeling like I have something to prove.  I understand that the audition process is a necessary evil, but it never worked for me.  Time and time again I would walk out of a room wishing there were some other way to show them that not only was I capable, but that I was also cool and would be fun to work with.  Less than two minutes isn't enough time for you to get to know me.  It just couldn't make it work.

Its been interesting to see all the petty and insecure emotions that this one audition drudged up inside me.  I'm happy to say that I'm not going to lose any sleep over it - I think that I'm finally able to take an observational stance on most of it now.  I'm so grateful that I've distanced myself from it all, I really am.  It seems that for me acting is something best practiced in moderation.