Although I thought I’d have a lot more time to post here as a post-grad, I was wrong, but I also feel I’m sticking to my original intention of only posting my thoughts on here when I feel I can offer up something insightful from my own experiences rather than a weekly, obligatory “here’s what’s going on in my life right now” kind of post. Now is one of those times, because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my future as I complete applications for my second attempt at going to graduate school for an MFA in Acting.

I’ve been reading (and re-reading) Audition by Michael Shurtleff, both in anticipation of my graduate school auditions and for (as of yesterday) a callback I received from a local theatre company for their Spring production. He talks about how it is the actor’s job to create a heightened reality for the audience because that’s what performance is all about; it isn’t (at least not usually) about the humdrum, everyday things in life, it’s about important moments and events that are filled with drama and conflict. Within this discussion, he makes a brilliant point that really resonated with me:

“People live for their dreams, not for the oppressiveness of truths.”

The moment I read that I had one of those moments where a light had been shone upon something that I knew was there, but didn’t realize was there. I sometimes have those moments of clarity, as I’m sure all of you do, where someone says something and, for you, something clicks, it all lines up and you go, “That’s weird, I feel like I already knew that”. And that’s because, in some way, you already did, but it took the insight of that other party to connect the dots for you.

The concept of living for your dreams speaks to me very deeply because I have come to the conclusion that, well, life is too damn short to be doing something that makes you unhappy. Now, this demands a certain amount of long-term perspective because, if I were to take stock of my immediate life and assess it in those terms, I’d be pretty ticked off at myself. That all said, I feel what I’m currently doing in my life (impersonating Buddy Holly, dealing blackjack, taking acting and dancing classes) are all part of my journey and are molding me into the person I’m supposed to be, so I’d say I’m doing an alright job of getting there.

…

So why in the hell is this post titled “scared”?

Well, since you were so kind to ask (although I’d ask you to mind your language in the future), it’s because of another quote related to one’s dreams that a friend of mine who knows exactly what that’s all about recently posted on her Facebook from Lowell Lundstrum:

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.”

This quote hit me because of an experience I had on my way home from a dance lesson earlier this week. I don’t remember what I was doing exactly besides sitting on the train, but, all of a sudden, I was struck by this unexplainable sense of fear, thinking to myself, “What if I can’t do this? What if I’ve been fooling myself this entire time? What am I, an idiot? Who thought this was a good idea? This is all your fault; why didn’t you just tell that insensible creative side of yourself to clam up so you could do something more reasonable with your life, you dope?”

Well, I don’t know if I thought all of those things, but allow my artistic license to entertain you at least a little bit. My point is, I had this brief moment of terror and then I read that quote and immediately thought, “Well, I guess they are big enough.” I guess I’ve realized that, for all of the dissent I’ve faced or am going to face for my current choice of career path, the only one who’s truly going to figure out if this is going to work for me is me. I know I’m going to fall flat on my face multiple times, and (God forbid) the time comes when I don’t want to pick myself up, I’ll know then that I gave it a valiant try and won’t spend the rest of my life resenting and regretting the fact I didn’t give it a real shot.

My point: if you have a dream, go and live for it and let it scare the crap out of you. If you don’t, I at least hope you find a sense of contentment and accomplishment in your life that makes you happy because, to be perfectly honest, that’s all that really matters. We don’t get to spend, in history’s perspective, a whole lot of time on this Earth, so as long as the positives outweigh the negatives by the time you leave it, I think you have to have done something right.

Happy Holidays!

-MJH

At that moment, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I was frustrated, angry, sad and, to top it off, sick. I hated knowing that, with this opportunity so close, I had to stop myself from going because of how terribly I felt and how going wasn’t going to improve my condition. I went back to bed and tried to sleep it off. Later in the day, I texted some of my co-workers about the situation because they were so excited for me and were extremely vocal in their support of me.  One of them replied back to me with this:

“Apparently there will be something better around the corner.”

Here was somebody looking at, as I saw it, a brick wall, and seeing an open window. It really made me feel better, not in a pander-y “what a nice co-worker” kind of way, but because I knew she believed it. There’s really nothing more affirming than somebody believing in you and what you can do.

I definitely feel like I’ve been lacking that in these post-graduate months. (Here’s a secret: it’s part of the reason for my hiatus). Two things would consistently get me down in these months since leaving DePauw: 1) seeing my friends go on to great pursuits, whether that was graduate school or jobs that utilized their particular skill sets and 2) getting trapped in how mundane my life had become, in a job that I know isn’t my career and not feeling like I was making any headway to get where I wanted to be. Of course, in a way, these two things oddly connected to one another and provided me with a little further hope.

Knowing that my friends and former classmates are out there living their lives with such vigor made me realize how big the world can be. Knowing how big the world can be is definitely a remedy to the mundane. I think part of the reason people get bogged down in the mundane is because of how limited their worldview becomes. I know I became really weighed down by the mundane when my only focus was on work; all I thought about was how small and insignificant what I was doing really was in the grander scheme of things. It wasn’t until I realized how limitless the world really can be that I stopped being, for lack of better terminology, a lame mope.

So, the next time you start feeling the heaviness of life bugging you, think of the amazing and open world that has been set before you and what you can (or need) to do to re-engage yourself with it. A dose of that will get you feeling right as rain before you know it.

I wonder if there’s a way to get something like that for physical ailings…

-MJH

Was it a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to be liked? I’m not saying I’m an overly likable person, but I’ve never had much difficulty getting along with folks, so I didn’t imagine it was that. Could it be that I was intimidated by the prospect of breaking down the craft that I’ve grown to love because I hadn’t done it before? Bingo.

That’s not to say that I thought I was “above” taking classes, because, well, if that was the case, I wouldn’t have bothered signing up for a class (let alone two of them). I think my hesitance or intimidation about the situation comes from a very basic human instinct: to avoid vulnerability. By taking these classes, I’ve come to realize that I have to make myself vulnerable to the process of learning how to act, rather than all I’ve been doing, that is, reacting. Essentially, opening myself up to criticism, failure and growth to take the most out of this process and, hopefully, come out the other end of it a much better actor.

So, I made it through my first class, doing improv exercises (which, in my humble opinion, are going to go the farthest in breaking me down and building me back up), communicating without words, creating conflict, sitting on my hands (quite literally; go ahead and laugh, those of you who know of my wild gesticulations during conversations) and learning how to act and react to what your partner gives you. In all, it went really well. However, I experienced another initially un-explainable feeling as I was waiting for the train home, which was a kind of moody confusion. I know I didn’t feel that way the whole way to the train station, I just sort of realized it as I stood on the platform.

The confusion was oddly liberating in a way; here I was fresh off of this first class having had a bunch of new ideas and concepts thrown at me, ones that made sense to me, but weren’t already part of my process as an actor and, as I stood there mulling them over before heading home, I figured out that my confusion was the first step in this process of vulnerability and growth. Having our core set of ideas or values or any preset way of thinking challenged is confusing at first, but, in the end up, it’s what we do with that confusion that makes us who we are.

In my honest opinion, I’m excited to see where this confusion takes me.

-MJH

I registered for an acting class at Chicago’s ActOne Studios, the second acting class I have signed up for, having signed up for the other at the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston. It’s the beginning of what I see as an arduous and defining journey in my life.

I certainly don’t want to assign too much weight to it; for all intents and purposes, the actions of my life currently are as inconsequential as spitting in Lake Michigan. However, after coming home in May and facing rejection at every audition I’ve gone out for (a few callbacks, but nothing from those either), I realized I had to do something. I’ve been told that I have good instincts, but not enough formal training. All I have at this point is a job at a casino impersonating Buddy Holly and dealing blackjack. And that’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed the job itself, or the people I’ve met. But I’ve certainly realized that this isn’t my calling; it’s really the defining difference between “a job” and “a career”. What I’m doing right now is my job; signing up and taking these classes is what I want as my career.

The most difficult thing, not to harp on this point, is not having caught on somewhere (either in terms of going to graduate school or, since coming home, in a professional production); I keep reminding myself of a mantra a friend once told me that, in this industry, “you have to face a thousand nos before you get to that one yes” you’re looking for. It’s definitely shifted my perspective on how things work.  It’s, in fact, quite the opposite of what anyone is led to believe in the first twenty or so years of their life, wherein you go to school, and then more school and then, if you work really hard and apply, more school. Game, set, match. Connect Four. Yahtzee.

The life a person faces after graduating from college (and I’m sure much the same for graduate school) is not the cut-and-dry sequence that we’re all presented with as we grow, mature and develop. That’s not to say that there’s a problem with structure, it’s just to say that there’s a problem with this kind of “pass GO and collect $200″  mentality we’ve developed. If anything, real life is more like “pass GO and keep looking for that job” or “don’t pass GO, at least not yet”.

I’ve started to try to come up with a much more long-term view of where things are headed, where they’re going and what I need to do to get there. It’s the “long game” in every sense of that phrase. The way I see it, I’m going to take these classes, train for what I hope develops into my career, keep this job (both because it’s been quite a bit of fun and is definitely an interesting study in human behavior) and keep trying.

I just finished reading wrestler Mick Foley’s fourth memoir Countdown to Lockdown: A Hardcore Journal and, in his afterword, he says something that, where I am currently, speaks very deeply to me: “If I’ve learned one thing in life, one truly important thing – it’s not to allow anyone else to define what success is. We get to do that for ourselves.” And you can bet your bottom that, by my definition, success is going to knock your socks off.

-MJH

Now that we’re past that, the title of this post is from a song by the popular band Train. It popped in my head today as I was driving back to Chicago from Fort Wayne, Indiana, after attending the wedding of two very good friends of mine. It was a beautiful ceremony for a beautiful occasion; I had never shed a tear at a wedding before this one, mainly because I knew how real and wonderful the love shared by my friends was, and how happy I was seeing them making the ultimate commitment to each other. Besides the ceremony itself, I also had a wonderful time living it up with many college friends at the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, the reception and today’s post-wedding brunch.

The unfortunate side effect of this (and the reason I’m referencing this particular Train song) is how many feelings that were resurrected from the immediate fallout of graduating from DePauw in May. I found myself overcome with emotion as I left today’s brunch due to the realization that there wasn’t another get-together we could all circle on our calendars in anticipation of seeing one another again. It made me re-realize how many people I  knew I would miss having in my life on a regular basis, how many people I had shared laughs, jokes, thought-provoking conversations and knowing smiles with and how emotional I felt about all of it back in May.

I realized driving home that, since then, I had basically forgotten about how it felt, which almost made me more emotional about the whole ordeal. I’m not a proponent of dwelling on one’s feelings, or constantly re-hashing old feelings for the sake of not forgetting them, but I figured out that I had stopped hurting over the course of the past three months because I had pushed all those feelings in the back of my head. I didn’t deal with them, I basically put them in a hole and thought,  ”Well, that should do.”

No more, I say.

If you’re reading this and you’ve touched my life in any way, shape or form (or I in yours), know that I will always carry you in my heart, that you will always be with me on my journey, and that I don’t regret a single bit of any of it. We are products of our experiences and our interactions, so, no matter how insignificant you may think it may be, if we’ve met, talked, laughed, drank, enjoyed each other’s company or any combination of those activities, you’ve helped make me who I am and, for that, I am grateful. This isn’t goodbye because, in my book, that’s too permanent; when we part, I wish you safe travels, blessings on your experiences and the hope (nay, the expectation) that we will see each other again. Don’t ever forget that.

I know I won’t.

Yours,
MJH

This confusion became extremely apparent to me during my now-yearly tradition of being a part of Teen Service Week, this being my second year as an adult leader on the week. During the week, I led a group of four wonderful young women to Nativity BVM Elementary School and the Sisters of St. Casimir Food Pantry, where we diligently performed every task set before us. It was in one of my down-times during Teen Service Week that I realized how undirected my life had been in the weeks since graduating. (Granted, it had only been three weeks up to that point, but I still felt that way). Being able to focus all of your energy into the work of service and seeing the satisfaction it brought to the people we worked with really revealed to me how wonderfully worthwhile it is to perform service for others.

During the course of the week, we watched the 2000 film “Pay it Forward”, with Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment. The basic premise of the film is that this young boy comes up with the idea of doing a good deed that doesn’t require a reciprocal act for the person who does the act, but that the benefiting party “pays it forward” to someone else. It definitely runs counter of the modern “what have you done for me lately?” mode of thinking. These days, people are more obsessed with what they’ll get out of doing something, rather than doing it for the sake of doing something good.

To me, it’s part of the reason why doing service is so fulfilling. I do certainly have great reasons for wanting to do it, because of all the positive experiences I’ve had doing it, but that’s not the motivation for doing it. If we spend all our time chasing gratitude and accolades for the acts we perform, the product is a hollow endeavor. The pursuit really has to be solely motivated by a want to do it for the sake of itself, with a hope, not the expectation, that there will be gratitude or a pat on the back for it. The difficult part, besides the service itself sometimes, is to find that intrinsic motivation to go and do it and persevere through any hardship you face along the way.

During a prayer I planned on Teen Service Week, I used this excerpt from the letter of James for some guidance through the difficulties we may face. (If the Bible’s not your thing, thanks for reading this far anyway )

“Consider it all joy, my brothers & sisters, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you lack wisdom, he or she should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he or she will be given it. But he or she should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he or she will receive anything from the Lord, since he or she is a person of two minds, unstable in all their ways.” – Jas 1:2-8

Mother Maria Kaupas, the founder of the Sisters of Saint Casimir, who started the high school where we had Teen Service Week this year once said,  ”Always more, always better, always with love.” Once you’ve managed to persevere, I think this is a perfect mantra to live your life by. Hopefully, there will be less of gap between now and the next time I post here.

-MJH

P.S. definitely a cheap plug, but I’m involved in an online singing competition. If you like this blog, head over to the following link and forward it on to your friends. Thanks for the support! Sing! 2011

That abstract concept became all too real as I put on my graduation garb on Sunday afternoon, just hoping that the ceremony would go smoothly, since inclement weather had been predicted in the forecast. However, what ended up happening was quite the opposite of smooth, unfortunately. After going back and forth between having it outside or inside, the final decision was made to have the ceremony outside. The only problem was, after that decision was officially made, the only course of action when weather turned bad was for the graduates to retreat into East College, where they would receive their degrees in MeHarry Hall. MeHarry could barely hold the graduates, meaning that a lot of parents did not have the opportunity to see their child cross the stage and receive their degree. As frustrating as it all was, to me it just seemed to be a terribly anticlimactic way to end our DePauw careers (and that was even with me being in the lucky minority to actually receive their degrees outside).

This has been a really difficult couple of days for me personally, as I’m sure any graduating senior can empathize, just because of how hard it is to part from those people who have served as a support system, becoming an integral part of the college experience. Every time someone left, it was like a family member telling you that you weren’t going to see them for a very, very long time. That’s really the worst part of it; in a majority of cases, especially if you go to a residential school not close to where you come from, you really don’t know when you will see those people again. Of course, today, the world is so much smaller; those people that I love and care about are probably reading this right now, but it’s certainly not the same as being able to share their company in person.

Nobody tells you when you show up to college, “So, four years from now, you’re probably going to have a hard time leaving this place.” I know it would have been a downer if an upperclassman had said to me, “Yeah, the last two weeks are UBER sad,” but I kind of wish I had had some kind of warning. The whole experience does support the old adage of “Time flies when you’re having fun”, but I wish someone had said, “Take it in everyday, no matter what; don’t let any of this slip past you.” Of course, this may be the immediate post-graduate-version of myself getting the best of me right now.

The title of the post is from the [Scrubs] theme song, “Superman” by Lazlo Bane. I had it on a mix CD that started playing as I was on my way home today and I just lost it. I never thought a banjo intro would elicit the reaction of uncontrollable sobbing and yet it did. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I knew what the lyrics were and what the song was about, and it made me think about how much it meant to my own experiences.

Well, I know what I’ve been told/
You got to work to feed the soul/
But I can’t do this all on my own/
No, I know, I’m no Superman/
I’m no Superman.

And, luckily, I didn’t do it all on my own; thank you to anyone who touched my life. No interaction or word was insignificant; just having you there along for the journey makes me grateful for you being there. As it says in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 9, “For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” Thank you for being my co-worker.

-MJH

Weather in Indiana right now is pretty terrible, but I managed to go out on a run in between the crazy rain storms (and now tornado warning) around campus a bit. Besides not having any endurance (vicious cycle, eh?), I had a somewhat emotional moment as I ran out by the Intramural Sports fields on my way. The wind was blowing just enough, and I stopped, stood directly in the face of it and took in the view of the green fields and the DePauw Nature Park just behind it. It was a solidifying moment for me…in five weeks (give or take a couple of days) I won’t be here anymore. Although I’m sure you’ve all read enough about me struggling to cope with my life progressing, I just couldn’t believe how much the moment of being outside in the sun, with the wind in my face and the beautiful sight I was looking at was so real. To me, it’s an almost tangible moment in time that I will always be able to refer to and go “what a memory”. It seems like I’m having a lot of those these days, as I keep fighting the current of time to enjoy my time with my dear friends.

A song came up on my iPod as I was running, Yesterday by Atmosphere, which also kind of helped to solidify this moment in my mind. The main chorus of the song says, “Yesterday was that you?/Looked just like you/Strange things my imagination might do/Take a breath, reflect on what we’ve been through/Or am I just going crazy cause I miss you?” What struck me was the line about taking a breath and reflecting; I think it’s something that greatly neglect in our society. We’re always going, doing, reading, listening, tweeting and so on, but when do we stop and reflect? Reflection gives us time to process and enjoy our past at least a little bit, it allows us to see our mistakes and improve, it gives us resolve and persistence. I know I’ll be doing a lot of it in the next few weeks, hoping to solidify a lot more memories of time well spent.

-MJH

Part of it may be because of how much I relate to them personally, which is very much because of how close to them in age I am. Conversely, though, I have found the past few weeks to be extremely bittersweet because of my experiences in the classroom. Unlike most of my DePauw compatriots, I have spent my semester spending every day in the classroom, getting up ridiculously early in the morning and working with students and then coming back to campus utterly exhausted. This is in deep contrast to the collegiate experience (that I dearly miss) of a block schedule that could possibly afford one the fortune of not having class one or two days a week, or not having class until ten or eleven on certain days. It has felt like being in a completely different universe than basically all of my friends. It has also made me terribly aware of how my undergraduate experience is quickly coming to a close, as I wonder if the connections and relationships I have created in my time here will stand the test of time and distance after I graduate. One of the biggest things that terrifies me about college is that I will lose touch with all of those people who have been my support system over the past four years.

I can only hope to successfully complete my student teaching and thoroughly enjoy the rest of my five weeks at DePauw. Now, the incredibly cliche lyrics that inspired the post title, from KT Tunstall:

Can you help me?
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can’t see me anymore

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it’s too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You’re close enough to see that
You’re…. the other side of the world
to me

-MJH

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus, as I’m sure you can tell, because it’s been over six weeks since I last posted. This is mainly because my days have consisted of waking up between 5 and 5:20 to get ready to go to school, departing between 6:10 and 6:30 and arriving at school anywhere from 7 to 7:35. This has led to long days and evenings of, for lack of a better term, vegging out until I go to bed to repeat the process the next day. This whole experience has given me more perspective on how much the people who educate America’s children go through on a regular basis. I certainly have no reason to gripe, since I’m 1) a young buck of a college student (I’ll wait a moment for laughter to die down) and 2) I’m not dealing with nearly as much responsibility as an actual teacher. Now, if you will, I will ascend to my soapbox just to say that I find what Indiana is doing with its educational system to be personally horrifying, mainly because of how much it devalues the efforts of educators everywhere (I’m not even going to get into how little arts education is considered, but I find that equally appalling). It’s interesting because I’ve learned so much from other educators on an informal basis about how little care is being given to their needs or concerns both personally and professionally. As an American citizen, it actually concerns me about the future of our country, because 1) we treat our educators like crap and 2) the people in charge know very little about education, which then further impacts point number 1.

If you take anything from this post, I hope it’s this: find an educator as soon as possible and thank them for their efforts, then find a politician and make your voice heard to them. If we don’t do either, the status quo will prevail which, I hate to tell you, is pretty crappy as it is. If we can all tap into our reserves of omnipotence, persistence and determination, we can enact change for the better. If we don’t, then what of this life is worth living?

-MJH