Step One: Forget everything you just learned

As I said before, I'm starting to look beyond this transitory period of my life, and focus my attention on the path in front of me. What steps will I be taking in order to succeed in what it is I want to do with my life. What is that exactly?

I told myself after college that I needed to stop being a "jack of all trades" sort of person and focus. Someone in the past few weeks said this in a conversation - I can't remember who, but it's so true: The really successful people in life are obsessed with what they do." There's an exception to every rule and many paths to the same destination, but as a whole, I think this assertion is pretty spot on.

I've spent much of my life trying everything to see what I liked (I learn from experience, remember?), but when I came to California, I told myself that I would be the obsessed person, the one who fights for a single dream. So, my first obsession was getting settled; finding a home, earning a living, etc.. And now, on to the dream part: I want to act. I always have and I've always known this. After three years of acting school and Emerson College, I felt somewhat in disarray. Here I was with this great education, great connections and a vast comprehension of the "work." I know that I am business-minded as well and that my ability to promote myself is pretty good Still, I felt the need to put it aside for a while and walk away.

Like a lot of things in my life, I think I needed to find it (acting) again on my own terms. Regain control of my passion and see it from my perspective, not the perspective of a school or career or other people. This has become a pattern in my life, starting the piano. A lot of people outside of middle school and my family don't know that I've played the piano since I was in kindergarten. I was classically trained, my parents saw this as my free ride to college and I was to be a concert pianist. The pressure became too much. The passion overshadowed by a necessity and goal. I walked away my sophomore year of high school. Four years later, I decided to take lessons again. I wanted to relearn and teach myself music and feel it again on my own terms. I wanted to understand, after all this life experience, what the composer felt and meant with their notations. I wanted to play for me and no one else. It's funny to think about what an exhibitionist I used to be with the piano and now, I can barely play for people. It's become a personal thing to me. Anyway, I digress.

You've read numerous entries like this regarding my faith, so I won't go into that again, but you get the correlation. Acting fell into the same file for a time. I needed to find my roots in LA; define myself, assert a strong foundation, rebuild my confidence. I needed all of this before I could ever think of stepping into an audition - they'd see right through my forced smile. During my trip to Boston, I met with one of my acting teachers who just sat across from me and enumerated on how I'd changed since the last time she saw me. She agreed that my efforts to settle before auditioning were well-placed. She also recounted my last performance at Emerson (The Philadelphia Story) and she affirmed my passion and my desire to press on.

Being back at school, seeing shows and talking to teachers and peers, I know the next step I need to take. I need to grab this by the horns and go. My life has settled into an easily recognizable pattern. The first step to moving forward for me is to forget everything I've learned, step away, get some perspective on the lessons in regard to my life and then dive in. I've taken this first step and now it's time to start running. I'm confused and a little bit scared, but, for some reason, I think that's a sign that I'm on the right path.

Holy Crap... 6 months!

When did December happen? When did I move to LA? When did I graduate college for that matter?

I can't believe that it has been 6 months since I've moved to Los Angeles. We're working on the first week of December and I can't even begin to think about how I made it through this year. The list is too long.

There have been a lot of changes this year. Change in '08 wasn't just a successful political slogan. There have been a lot of trials and hurdles and there have been a lot of blessings. I have worked harder and harder on trusting God to carry me through the good and the bad and the ugly. Everything from graduating college, moving across the country, loosing loved ones: the more I think about it all - the more unbelievable it seems. The things that the human spirit can endure! I look, not at myself in amazement, but I look at my friends - losing parents, trying to have children, moving on into our adult lives. 2008 will really be the year I remembered becoming an adult.

So how do things change? That's the point of this blog, I guess. Superficially, I think this is meant to chronicle my adjusting to professional life in LA; but, deeper than that it's about the dynamic and pangs of adulthood.

More important than the physical changes are the emotional changes in the nuances of relationships with friends and family that have proven to be the most detrimental to my growth here. After my best friend's father died earlier this year, I had to rush back from Boston to Philadelphia having just returned from Spring Break. This hiccup in the final stretch of my college life became one of the most trying, yet defining moments of my life. For the first time in a very long time, my 3 best friends from childhood and I all got to really spend time with one another. In the wake of this loss, we offered each other our fears and hopes and theories about life. We all acknowledge that this was the catalyst of change... suddenly, we're adults, dealing with adult issues and our adult lives.

Suddenly, we have to balance many more things than a social calender. College doesn't do adulthood justice. There is little appropriate preparation for the "real world." I think that term should be stricken from our Generation MTV vernacular. The real world has nothing to do with high school, college or some other traditional checkpoint in the road of life. It's not a physical diploma, but an emotional graduation. You realize that friendship and love aren't things of convenience. You work hard for the people that mean a lot to you - even if they are 3000 miles away.

I feel like I've graduated onto this part of my life. It took one very hard year, but it happened. I thank God every day for the things I've been given. I even thank (or try to remember to) Him for the hard things; because, without the dark, I'd never see the light.

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Here's a few excerpts from the Book of James. I've been reading the Bible more in this effort to reconnect with my faith. This is another factor in 2008 that's made all of the difference in my life. I found these versus to be the most helpful.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of faith develops perservearance" 1:2-3

"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow... If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 4:14

"Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed" 5:16