Movement

I'm sitting in a freezing cold room, wearing a sweater and my husbands hoodie, my hands needing breaks now and then to warm up. Just spent the morning reaching out to people who have posted Cold Tangerine content on their FB pages, letting them know about the show. Have been editing act one to create more of an arc for the whole show. Chopped two pages barely blinking. So glad about that! 

Stumbling around moving boxes, we are  saying our goodbye to the last week of living in our little tree house apartment. It just hit me that we will be leaving our first home. We got married almost three years ago and this little place has been a wonderful cocoon of love and warmth and growth. And also inflicted with massive amounts of noise and disruption from the surrounding inhabitants. But really, gratefully, none of that from within. To really stop and reflect on these last few years deserves more time and brain space and honor than I have to give at the moment, but even just this tiny tribute to our tiny place, the home for our little baby marriage to begin, to develop, to brave the storms, to learn, to rest, is worth taking. This place has been good and beautiful, messy and sweet, quaint and lovely. Even in the midst of bass boom and German shepherds and noro virus. Oh, man, noro virus. I now know why so many people died in the plagues. Whew. 

We've stuffed this place full of friends, on St. Patrick's day with its three corned beefs. On our birthdays, and fall festivals. We've pushed our couches together to snuggle up for hours of SNL, Modern Family, Redbox rentals, No Reservations and our favorite Saturday morning cartoon-- Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. I've waxed on and on about shelves, we've broken bolts mid pot rack installation, bonked, bruised and burned ourselves enough times to initiate a system of needing what we lovingly refer to as "Safety Meeting." Each year out Christmas tree got a little bigger, from a Charlie Brown tribute, to a rosemary bush pruned in a tannenbaum-ian fashion, to an even bigger potted spruce. At this rate we will have a 100 foot baby by our 50th anniversary. 

We've sat around our version of Dave Ramsey's old oak pedestal table and learned and cried and evaluated our finances, took Financial Peace University, got on a budget and are whipping our money into shape. We will forever be changed by our decisions and actions made here in this little place. 

It really is time to go, and our new place is great. It's definitely not our final stop either, but another wonderful place to make home. It has its quirks; its round robin design, the funky heating and cooling units taking up two of four walls, it oddly placed mini bay window. But it has a kickin' kitchen, place for a dinning table and with a little creativity, two desks. My husband will finally be able to move his office from its current location, i.e. the couch. It is way bigger, has a mini yard, and a place outside for the grill and some plants. Dan can't wait to grow some "spices" as he always calls them because he can never remeberthe word, "herbs." Oh, and it has laundry. In. The. Apartment. It could have snakes and rats and I'd probably still want to move for the washer and dryer. Ok, snakes and rats is pushing it a bit, but I'm really exited about it. Maybe spiders and slugs. No, I really hate slugs. Ok, I don't want any of that, I just want clean clothes more often than every 6 weeks!!! (Don't worry, I have a lot of underwear.)

The best part is that we will be living just a block and a half away from my dearest friends who are expecting their first baby in February. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that God helped us tough it out until this place became available so that we could be family away from family to this couple. Grandma might not be able to move in for the first few weeks, but Auntie Lynn and Uncle Dan can. And will. 

There is so much beautiful good in all of this. Here's to more. And here's to surviving for another week amongst this:

If you don't hear from me for a while, check under the piles of cardboard and rubble. I'll be the one singing, "Oh, what a beautiful morning!"

Oh, what a beautiful day. 

These are a few of my...

...favorite things.

Things I love:

Earl Grey tea
over easy eggs on crisp toast
my wedding ring
pink
sweater weather
the smell of cement when it has gotten wet
my 13 year old car that is doing great
people who truly enjoy their work, some much so that they can be genuinely kind in it
Breyer's Butter Pecan Ice Cream
Dansko clogs
down blankets
my grandma's perfume: White Linen
not too sweet, not too crunchy chocolate chip cookies
wind breakers
leather
happy babies
pasta with butter and parm and garlic and pepper
fireplaces
twinkle lights
cinnamon bread
listening to your inner voice
collaboation
actors
The Splendid Table
PBS
NPR
PRI
stories
Downton Abbey
dresses
built in nooks and crannies in old houses
old houses
budgeting
Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University
making broth
oatmeal
Camelot Preschool and their wildflower kiddos
being able to squeeze things in
connecting with a friend when you have to be on their side of town already
bikes
my mom's chair orphanage in our old falling down garage
seeing something you own in a magazine or book and being much prouder of it after that
baby powder (i.e. not having to wash your hair but every three days. Whew.)
ramen
powder chai
the feeling of getting into bed and the soft coolness of the sheets
sleep
how each friend fills a specific place in my heart and each one is so uniquely valuable in their own way
old churches/going to mass
being at home in the evenings
listening to the West Wing in the background while washing dishes
The West Wing pretty much any time
traveling
Big Sky Cafe, blue corn pancakes with pecans and bananas, pozole with a poached egg and warm mugs of coffee
SLO
Bloomington, IN (that's another list altogether)



The list could go on an on, but this one has done its job, let me refocus and cool down from the day before regearning (gearing up?) to get some work done. For now, Earl Grey Tea, a cloudy day, a warm computer on my lap, and thankfulness.

Believing and doing

I believe people can do the things they really want to do. And I guess the best way to prove that belief can be a reality is to do it myself. To do the things I really want to do. 

I had this sense when I was waiting tables that anyone not doing that had the best life in the world. I would listen to people talk about how busy they were or how they had to stay home to let the plummer in, or pick their kids up at school and I'd think, "What a luxury." Everything that wasn't waiting tables, having to be there in the evenings, losing that part of the day, some part of myself, was an unfathomable luxury. It felt prison-y. Or at least indentured servant-y. I was actually ministered to by watching Downton Abbey. It allowed me to come up for air, to realize I wasn't a real servant, I wasn't working from dawn till dusk every single day, in the excesses of one family. I wasn't in a lower class, I could go to and be served at a restaurant once in a while if I desired. I was free to find different work. And it took a while to find, but I fought for it, and I did find it and I'm keeping my eye out for more or different, but I don't have to work at a restaurant right now and if I ever do again I will only accept a place that is mature and respectful. I will never work for someone or some place that makes me feel trapped. 

I don't want to feel trapped. I don't want other people to feel trapped either. I don't want other people to be so stuck that anything other than what they are doing feels like a luxury. But I can't just say I believe it like a camp counselor and then send them home and wish them luck. I can't tell people that they can change their life or live their dream because I think they can. I can have that valid voice only when I have fought, honoring my values, for the life I want and achieved it. Not like some high holy hill of finality, but of learning the discipline to daily pursue and do and figure out how to pay for the dreams that I am making into a reality. 

Earn that voice. 

Hmm...

I have a desktop. I work at it from a desk. It does not go places with me. It does not experience the world, open at coffee shops, get out of the house and dream. It sits at a desk like a boss with a tie. Business business business, it says. But not tonight...

No, I didn't take my desktop off the desk and plop it somewhere else, although I have been known to do this. I'm just stealing my husband's laptop, lounging on the couch like I'm watching Hulu cause I can't sleep. Even with the swig of Z-quil (the best invention ever) and the mug of cereal. But no Hulu for me tonight. Something wouldn't quite let me zone out like that other part of me wanted to.

I'm working on a project. I haven't shared that here yet, but one of the main reasons I started this blog in all actuality is that I'm working on a project.

I'm an actor. I am completely comfortable with this fact, have accepted it down to my bones and am even proud of it. Not proud of it like, "Look at all this stuff I've done," or "Status update: I got an audition today!" or "I'm actually acting currently in some capacity, no brag intended, I'm just doing something." Not those ways proud, even though I have done all of these things at different times. I'm just excited that I know part of what I really want to do with my life. I'm proud that I was able to articulate that and find a great place to do it as a student. Proud that my parents supported me--that's big of them. And proud that I've survived, people, I've survived and kept my heart in LA for almost 9 years with the sole purpose of having a great life and working towards getting to create and pay my bills with telling stories.

I'm cool with going to auditions, getting the rehearsal schedule and showing up prepared, (most of the time.) I'm cool with going to fittings and hanging out on set and feel comfortable being an extra or the one the spotlight is on center stage. (Funny that the one time the actual spotlight was on me center stage, I would have given anything to just be an extra, cause the experience was so rough, so that's a mini lesson on what you think success is might not actually feel like it to the person living it.) I'm cool with teaching improv, even as I'm very not cool about practicing it--that s%#t is HARD. I love that stuff. I got that stuff. I'm down. Look how down I am. I'm so down, I'm Downey.

Let me tell you what I'm NOT cool with--what freaks the heck out of me--what makes me literally want to PACK MOVING BOXES or DO THE DISHES INSTEAD OF DOING. Create something from scratch, or try to make that thing that is now created happen, come about, produced.

Freaks me the heck out.

So much so I'd rather do the dishes.

Or sleep 2 hours past the alarm.

Or watch Hulu.

So, about that project, guess what it is?

Yeah, making something. From scratch. And producing it.

Damn thing!

Perhaps there are actors out there, or there were ages in time where people who liked acting, were disciplined, and trained to do it, got to do it some or most of the time. Perhaps there are people who are given a schedule and wake up and go in and are disciplined and do good work and then go home and have dinner with their families and then go back the next day to the schedule that someone else created.

Maybe there are those people.

Talk about the 1%.

If you are an actor, you know that even if you are totally AWESOME as a person and as an actor, this is a rare occasion! Even rarer to get paid for days like that! And there are great actors who get paid to do this who love it, and there are those for whom this is annoying work like any other business business business. Some of those actors are happy and some are miserable and working as an actor promises to make you happy just as infomercials promise to make you skinny! And I've been in one of those infomercials! The Ab Space Shooter will not make you skinny by itself in ten minutes, but committing to adapting your lifestyle and your food choices and working out for an hour a day plus ten minutes on the Ab Exploder for three months WILL!!! It is about the person inside the situation that makes it a good one or a not so good one along with a million different other variables.

All of this to say that when we "working actors" actually get to be "working actors" we are very happy. Background, lines, no lines, solos, paid or unpaid, whatever, usually this makes us happy. Thankful, perhaps, is a more appropriate word.

So, what do we do when we aren't working?

We are not prepared for this, those of us who have gone to school for "acting." I loved it, my four years of camp with a degree at the end. I worked hard, and I got good grades in my other classes too, I'm not saying it was always easy. I did homework at the library for hours on Fridays. I wrote an essay on the history of China and I fell asleep in math class and I took Cosmology and the teacher laughed at me when I asked a question. It wasn't easy like easy breezy, the process was full of EASE because I was doing what I loved doing in a warm and friendly environment. I'm just saying that I got to play play play play play and grow grow grow grow grow and someone told me when and where and I showed up and went along for the ride.

And then I moved to LA.

And no one gave me a syllabus.

And I sat on my figurative and literal butt and wished a syllabus would fly in so I could follow it, so I could play and grow.

And no syllabus came and Life introduced itself to me and said I'd be playing the part of "Adult" and it was up to me what it was going to about. The play that is Life.

If I had been trained as a writer, or if I had gone to film school, perhaps a bit more of my training could have been called into play (or maybe not, perhaps all schools help their students a bit too much, script a bit too much for them, don't take off the training wheels, and maybe that's not School's job, but Life's job.) I never had to really create anything at school besides a role that was already written. I took a playwriting class and did most of my writing the day before it was due. (Lots of my plays took place at Waffle House and were conversations between a couple of friends. Were they transcribed directly from my own conversations? We will never know.) I wrote a cabaret about my old house my parents were selling, and I asked for a couple of professors to read it over for me, which they did, and give feedback, which they did. It was harsh. Stuff like, "Maybe you should move this song before the other one." Or, "How about clarifying this detail." And that was enough for me to be scared and shelve it. But I did create a bunch of roles/characters that were already written. And man did I show up at rehearsals that were scheduled for me.

So flash forward to now. And this project. I recognize that I have skills in certain areas and that I haven't had experience in this other area. I could have produced/directed/written/created anything I wanted if I had wanted back then in my safe haven college days. But I didn't, or was scared to. Mostly I was really content getting to play with things where the hard work had already been done. But I decided to keep doing this professionally, and I'm plowing my fields, and the work is coming, but ya know, not really coming, not really throwing itself at me, "PLEASE LYNN, PLEASE BE IN MY AMAZING FILM WITH THIS CHARACTER THAT IS INCREDIBLE AND WE WILL PLAN THE SCHEDULE AND PAY YOU. PLEASE!" Not that kind of work, so in fits and starts I've realized, hated, fought against, gotten excited about, run away from, negotiated out of, hulu-ed instead of, and am finally trying to get cool with the fact that:

If you want to do it, do it.

You have to create your own work. You do not have a choice in the matter. Either do this or do something else, because it is too hard to live out here just waiting for someone to want you. You must want you. A few years ago I realized I needed to stop waiting for someone else to believe in me before I'd believe in me. So I did. I decided that I believe in me. And if someone else wants to, that is very cool. I love that, but I will not wait for it. I will believe in me, now.

But that doesn't mean it's constant or black and white decided. That was a turning in a different direction. Now I'm learning to walk forward.

So I have this project.

I will learn how to produce it. I will create that syllabus. I will obey myself and show up prepared. It will become real and it will be done. And I will do it, damn it. I will. Oh, help.

But more on that later. For now, I wanna watch some Hulu before my Z-Quil fully kicks in. Cause I created this. And if I created this, I can create. Little by little, piece by peace.---Whoa. That was a typo I just about corrected but caught myself... Piece by peace...

Hmm...

Piece by peace. Or maybe peace by piece...


Oh, and the project. Right.

It's called Cold Tangerines.