Hogmanay!!

I was trying to decide what to write about this New Year's Eve day, and so I went looking for inspiration on facebook, as you do.  Two things are jumping out at me.One is the idea of setting intentions rather than making resolutions. Two is showing up.

  I like the word intention because it denotes the idea of action, mindfulness, respect.   It's not just making a wish throwing it out into the universe and hoping the gods of your particular cause will make it so. For those of you who have in the past made resolutions and followed them through successfully; kudos, yippee and you're awesome! Intention resonates for me.

Showing up means bringing all of me to my work and my life.  Showing up means being open to all possibilities, the wonderful stuff and the not so great shit. Showing up means there's a chance of getting hurt.  Don't get me wrong  I have no intention of becoming any one's punching bag.  But I have reached a point in my life where I am really only interested in truth.  And your truth and mine might be very different and that's okay.  As long as we are well informed and respectful and clear about our intentions, we can debate and discuss and maybe start working on something bigger and more important than us.

 Chief Spence http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2012/12/30/weakening-attawapiskat-chief-spence-issues-call-to-arms/ is showing up, Prime Minister Harper, not so much.

Malala Yousufzai serenely showing up with inspiring intentions http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/02/world/asia/pakistan-malala/index.html

The last word today goes to the  Idle No More movement a bunch of ordinary folks, intending to make a change and showing up.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-bPJTWP3D5o

Unleash your inner 10 year old

Recently I had an audition that required me to skate.  I got the notice about the audition two days before the audition date.  This never happens, you usually get 24 hours notice max. So being the smart little actor I am, I decide to get myself on the ice before the audition to lesson the odds of making a complete fool of myself..

  Back in the day I was good skater.  When I was 8 my family emigrated to Canada from England.  We landed in Weyburn Saskatchewan in the middle of one of the worst winters they had had in years. Oh boy!  So unless you intended to hunker down in the house for 6 months, you learned how to skate.  I skated from the age of 8 to 16.  I even taught skating when I was in high school.  So yeah I know my way around the boards, but still it had been a few, several, well many, many years since I had laced up.  I don't mind admitting I was hesitant to get back on the ice.

  I went to an adult public skate session at a local rink.  Put on my skates, jumped onto the ice, okay stepped gingerly onto the ice, and.................couldn't move.  There was so much rust on my blades they refused to run.  I shuffled, I wiggled, I stamped, I got nowhere.  Finally after much scraping and wiping my blades I managed to get some movement happening.  And you know what? It was fun.  It was exhilarating. It was cold!  But it was fun. I remembered how much I loved skating.  Not the competitions or the tests, just skating.  The freedom of it. Unleashing your inner 10 year old to see how fast you can go.  The holy crap I'm going to fall, oh, no, haha saved it moments. The great sound blades make when you are carving deep edges.  I enjoyed it so much it is going to become part of my routine.  I'm going to get my blades sharpened, whoa just imagine the sound they will make then, and go play on the ice a couple of times a week.

 Is anyone else hearing the music from Charlie Brown?  Yeah, good isn't it?

The last word today goes to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr ~Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

maiden voyage

As the title of this post indicates I see this as something of a beginning.  Now I know I have written a couple of posts before but nobody read them so they don't count and  now I am determined to make this more of a regular occurrence. Not the people not reading thing, but me writing!  I am not promising a post a day. I am not giving myself any kind of guidelines for the amount I will write or even how often I will post.  Such parameters will make me crazy and stressed and hugely disappointed in myself if I don't achieve them and this blog is not about stress and disappointment. Quite the opposite, this blog, for me is about creating and communicating.  And maybe, just maybe, creating a community.

I am an actor a teacher and a writer.   DISCLAIMER! so as not to offend my friends who are real, do it for a living, this is their job, big time writers.  I write songs and I am working on plays.

I am also a woman of a certain age.  Don't ya just love that expression?  Yeah me either but you know what I mean.  I NEVER say my age.  Not that I am embarrassed or ashamed of it.  For me it is a) irrelevant and b) limiting.  The minute people in my industry know your age, you are plonked into a very small limited category.  A category being the people, characters you can play and the stories you can tell.
 The lead?  Not unless you are Judi Dench ( love her ).
The love interest? eww gross. 
Sexy, smart, strong? No! No! No!
The thing is, I am sexy smart and strong and funny and sometimes a little weird and all the things I was and felt when I was in my 30s and 40s.  I'm not counting my 20s, they were messy.  Aw hell yes so everything I was in my 20s too. My point is we don't stop being who we are because we reach a "certain age".

I am sure I will revisit this ageism bull shit sooner or later but enough for now.

 I give the last word to Andy Rooney~" For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress."