Saying "Smell You Later" to my mid twenties

In the these last few weeks where I have been wrapping up my mid twenties, I have

1. Worked. I mean, as an artist. In my field. Kinda sorta.

I mean, I did some voice over work and I have been, once again, teaching theatre to kids age 6 to 17. Specifically, I taught the younger kids dance and I have been teaching movement, voice/diction and Shakespeare to the older ones. Surprisingly, the class I have had the least trouble with so far is Shakespeare. I know, color me shocked. Perhaps it was because it was scheduled before dance and I hadn't yet begun to use my outdoor voice for an hour straight, leaving me with a sore throat and a sour disposition.

Dance was a nightmare. Now, disregarding the fact that I am no dancer by any stretch of the imagination (outside of picking up basic jazz/musical theater moves and being an enthusiastic wedding floor dancer) I figured I could piece together a solid minute and a half of step touches and jazz squares for a group of elementary school kids. How wrong I was.

First of all, every child is the world is apparently suffering from ADHD, not just the poor souls who are actually literally suffering from it and struggling to keep up with the rest of the class. I had to threaten these kids within an inch of their lives to keep them on task for more than 20 seconds at a time. I can't tell you how many times I said

"If you don't all start your Elbow Macaroni Dance at the same time, you'll be behind for the Grapevine. Now get with the program or you're out of the dance! Starting. With. Zombie. Hands... 5,6,7,8...."

It wasn't until I cut half the dance and told them they had no one to blame but themselves, that they finally shut up and gave me some semblance of attention. Of course, by that point I had already made the youngest one cry and turned the oldest kid into He-man Woman-Hater who looked like he wanted to rip off my limbs and shove them down the organ pipes while he played Baby Elephant Walk.

Miraculously though, we made it through alive and by the time they performed their dance for their parents on Friday, they were at least able to trip over each other and look totally lost on beat and in their assigned line. They ultimately had a good time, the parents adored it, everyone was happy. Plus, the one move they got right was directly from the music video of the song we used, Birdhouse In Your Soul (the one that looks like robot arms into a waist bend)- so I was satisfied.



This week, I only had to contend with the older kids, which was far less of a headache, and actually quite enjoyable at times, outside of dealing with some "teenage moments".

I think the problem is, I am an actress. I am a teacher strictly based on my need for money. There are times when I adore working with students and sometimes nothing can be more rewarding than watching someone have a breakthrough after hours, days, weeks of work.

But truly, I just want to act. Which would explain why in addition to doing radio spots and teaching this past month, I have also been going to every regional/professional theatre audition I can drag my poor, mostly unemployed self out to.

This is when I ask myself:  Why can't I have other dreams? It is a curse.

Let me rephrase slightly. It is a curse when you come from a background that cannot financially support you while you pursue acting full time, therefore leading you off into working in fields that are totally unrelated to your line of study/interest just so you can stay afloat and ultimately causing you to lose some of your peak audition years to various soul sucking desk jobs and when you finally cut loose and throw yourself back into the "cattle call" game, you are rusty, older, broke and always on the verge of taking yet another job you hate just so you'll have food and shelter for you and your diabetic cat and also so you can get a break from constantly feeling like a boil on the butt of humanity, because no one understands that while it is certainly hard to get a "regular" job and takes persistence, pursuing a career in acting takes a special kind of masochistic maniac because it is damn near imfuckingpossible to land gigs with a theatre you've never worked with before because it all who you know and  how much experience you have, which at this point is not much because you had no choice but to work aforementioned desk jobs because you didn't have the support from real parents or sugar parents that you needed to travel around from audition to audition, and it all has very little to do with your actual talent, and as a result you just look like a lazy, untalented piss-ant turkey. 

Plus you find yourself going off on bitter and tacky ramble-filled, run on sentence tangents - and no
one wants to put up with that kind of drama.

Hey, wasn't I making a list?

2. I also tried to boil some eggs, but promptly forgot that I had started to do so - which resulted in some cool sounding explosions in my kitchen and a foul after stench of burnt yokes.

I turn 28 on Sunday and after some reflection, I am sure that I am wiser and stronger- but none of that really matters. There is no way to be totally prepared for life - just being flexible is hard enough. Last year I had a "big girl" job, full time, benefits, yadda yadda yadda- and I was totally unhappy.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like a I'm a ball of sunshine with rainbows coming out of my butt right now and I am sure I am disappointing people left and right- but at least I am working on not disappointing myself. And I totally was disappointed with who I had become last year.

Therefore, I proclaim 28 to be the year I kick disappointment straight in the nuts. My first present to myself is to add to the never ending list of personal mantras.

Skinny. Successful. Smart.

Grow. Go. Girl. 

Crisi-tunity!

In the nuts, Disappointment!


I am a believer in the birthday mantra/resolution. You add a new one each year, and retire which ever one (ones) you feel have served their purpose.

So. What was your birthday mantra this year?

Song of Summer (moving past your fear of short shorts and short income)

Summer is usually reserved for relaxing and over indulging, which are both wonderful things as long as you are financially secure with extra money blossoming out of the tiny crevasses in your apartment and so skinny that you look like a Dickensian reject in a romper. 

Yes, we like to fantasize about the summertime as life being uninterrupted by, well, life. Kudos to those jerks folks who are able to live out this dream, but for the rest of us who are feeling the burn of an economy that doesn't favor the norms, you might trick yourself into thinking you haven't earned the right to take a holiday.

Bull roar.

You know who loves summertime and for almost next to nothing (not counting family vacations and various arts/sports camps)? Kids. Those lazy little dweebs* who, after a year of apparently not learning any grammar that they will actually apply to the most common activities in their lives, texting and interwebbing, have suddenly earned the right to a couple months off. From what, I ask you? Who cares? It is summer and for some reason, nature insists that everyone must enjoy their lives and their surroundings for approximately 2 months, until it is so ungodly hot that you have a heat stroke if you even think about stepping outside.

The Summer will demand that you marvel at it's awesomeness.You really don't have a choice, so why honor it by:

sunbathing on the rooftop terrace of your kinda rich aunt's beach condo that faces the ocean and reading something you saw the detached but cool looking girl at the non Starbuck's coffee shop reading,

floatin' down the crik' with a cooler full of beer in the tube next to you while talking to your bff on your cell phone about the latest episode of True Blood (it starts next week, y'all!)

or opening all the windows in your apartment, fixing a pitcher of sweet tea and bourbon and inviting your 20 closest friends to come have a bad movie marathon.

And for the love of god- don't forget to indulge in all those summer treats. If you have country cousins, disguise a visit to pick all their wild strawberries and blackberries with a need to go off roading with them. Once you are smothering that fresh baked berry cobbler with french vanilla ice cream, you won't regret it.

Put on your shortest shorts, or jorts, if you must, light a shit ton of citronella candles and try not to punch your coworker at the company bbq while they talk about how they dragged their husband away from the golf course at the country club and took their skeletor-ish daughters, their skeletor-ish daughters' douchy boyfriends, their parents and all 50 of their neices and nephews on their 250th visit to Disney world (and 25th visit to Harry Potter world, even if they don't "support witchcraft").

Porch Tunes


Hold On - The Postelles from The Postelles on Vimeo.




Slow Down, Molasses - Late Night Radio

Bruce Peninsula - Light Flight

Volcano Playground - Waiting

Lake - Roger Miller


*It is important to note that I don't really think all kids are lazy little dweebs... just yours. (hey, jokes)

You have a new friend request

There is a special kind of "Oh Shit" moment in every young person's life. That is, of course, when your parents take the most defining leap into the 21st century and get a facebook account.

This usually arrives after years of ridiculing it, refusing it and denouncing it as something they're "too old" to do, leaving you with a false sense of security that you've potentially avoided some intense confrontation, until the day they mention in an eerily casual tone that, even though they still don't understand it, they've joined The Facebook .

So what is a young person to do? I mean, you have to accept your parent's friend request, unless you want to unleash several months of

"Why can't I see your page yet? "
"Have you accepted my friend request yet? "
"I don't think the facebook is working- it says we aren't friends! "
"What is on your secret page that I can't see??? "

Okay, fine. It might even be fun to be friends with your folks, you foolishly tell yourself. You suck it up and prepare for a period of adjustment while they learn the ins and outs of the whole "social networking" thing. You patiently introduce them to the idea of Facebook Etiquette. You gently remind them not to accept every request to play Farmville, Cityville, Suburbanville, Veganville, GiveMeYourPrivateInfoville and Mob Wars. You smack their hand the first (and second) time they get hacked and repeatedly point out spam (You are never going to know who is looking at your page, folks! And I don't care if your old friend from high school posted it on your wall, any video that begins with "OMG!" or "You'll never believe.." is never safe. Period). And then you cringe with embarrassment when they start

1. Responding to the posts of friends of yours that they've never even met.
2. Posting on your page, like, 15 times a day.
3. Publicly, but never intentionally, criticizing you, your friend's comments, your photos that they find unforgivable * Funny, Tragic and True Story: My own aunt de-friended me after seeing photos that made me look "like a jezebel" . As I am fully clothed and at a respectable level of soberness in all of my photos, I still can't figure out which one pushed her over the edge.
4. Posting embarrassing statuses about their children and then getting defensive when you mention that perhaps talking openly about my mental health with people I hardly know (or never met) may not entirely appropriate, considering the open forum and all, and besides, I save that gold for my blog, not my facebook! .... Ahem.
5. Complaining about not "getting what their giving" via friend requests, messages, comments, etc- and then broaching that delicate conversation of "people are self involved, don't take it personally".
6. Start friending your those friends of yours they still have never met.

That's when the gates of hell start showing strain and little bits of dialogue and info start seeping through while you stare at your computer, clutching the sides of your face in horror.

The thing that seems to take the most time, is getting them to understand the difference between private messaging and public posts. Any kind of assistance in differentiating between the two usually results in

"Oh Jessica, don't be ridiculous!  "
"Well, I just can't understand all that- messaging and comments and stuff   " or worse,
"If you're so embarrassed by your mother, then I just won't be your friend on the facebook anymore  "

And then, all of a sudden, it becomes an argument about how you, the child, once again just don't have any respect for their years of sacrifice while you feel your temperature boil over until you find yourself screeching like a banshee,

"Everyone can see! Everyone can see! Arrrghhhh  "

The silver lining in this is, eventually it all settles down. Really, it does! Your parents become productive members of facebook, their good intentions become a little less abrasive, and you start wondering what you were so worked up over. They have found a little internet discretion and you have stopped freaking out over every little comment, wondering if people are judging  you based off of what your parents are saying.

You only have to deal with occasional missteps, like today when my mother posted a link to an article on NPR about healthy eating.

I chose not to fight her on this. I chose to not melt into pile of paranoid goo. Perhaps not everyone looked at that and immediately thought that I was a fat fat fatty on a diet (I am on a diet) or that I was an unhealthy eater (I am kind of an unhealthy eater).

Oh, dear god, I hope that is not what they think.

ps- Mom, if you read this, you know I love you more than french toast and cupcakes combined. My blog is mostly giggles and dirty talk and less Salem witch trials. I think your facebook-ing is coming along swell.