It Was a Very Good Year

(me as Hildy Matthews in "Find Me a Dream" by Kurt Vonnegut)

I wrote my Grad School Resolutions back in September. I updated my progress in December. And now, I have officially finished classes for my first year of graduate training... it seems like a good time to do it again.


Resolutions for Grad School:

1. Take studying SERIOUSLY.
As I explained last semester, my class preparation is more about training than studying. That said, I'm doing really well with it. I take everything down here very seriously. If only I could show you how far I've come. My progress across the boards speaks for itself.
WIN

2. Finish homework, papers, reading assignments, etc. as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I got an official extension on my Titus Andronicus paper, but I ended up getting an A on it. Everything else I've done well with keeping on top of. I'm pretty proud of myself.
WIN

3. Do not add negativity into the world of the school.
In Chicago, my nickname was Sunshine. They don't call me that down here, but I don't think they'd be shocked by that name. I'm not positive 100% of the time, but I do pretty well.
WIN

4. Be open-minded and willing to try all exercises in class, no matter how lame they seem or how stupid I might look doing them.
Always. It's a promise.
WIN

5. Do not gossip behind people’s backs.
I am human. I try to limit my venting about classmates to people outside of my own class (namely my roommates and my boyfriend), but it's occasionally inescapable. I try to leave the room when other people are talking about others, but I do get sucked into the world pool.
FAIL

6. Try not to dance during class. (Except for movement class, because I think we’re supposed to dance there sometimes. I just don't want my professors to think of me as "the one who dances in the middle of discussions.")
Honestly, I'm a lot less dance-y of a person than I was when I got here. I put my energy toward more productive ends now.
WIN

7. Remember that we all made it through an arduous process to get here, and we are all clearly talented, intelligent people. They deserve to be here, and so do I.
I know that I deserve to be here now. And I respect my classmates' abilities.
WIN

8. Don’t let politics within the school get personal. Just because something is going on in class or in rehearsals, doesn’t mean it has to carry over into the rest of life.
Not all that applicable yet. I'm worried for next year, but for now, we're oh-bee-kay-bee.
WIN

9. Try to make friends outside of the program.
Considering I got a boyfriend outside the program this semester, I'm going to call this a success... Quality is better than quantity, right?
WIN

10. Go out and have fun at least once a month.
I go out every couple of weeks. Every week hasn't really been possible this semester... but I do make time to do fun things.
WIN

11. Try to stay a vegetarian until at least the first week of November (which will have been a year... I've saved plenty of animals, and I want to eat meat so badly I can't even tell you).
No longer applicable. I beat this beast last semester.
--- (WON)

12. Actually read all of the assigned reading. Don’t just skim it. Occasionally take notes.
I can't think of anything that we were supposed to read this semester that I didn't actually read. Is that possible? Whoa. I'm turning into a good student.
WIN

13. Budget properly. If having trouble, begin writing down all expenditures.
Thanks to my tax refund (thank you, Uncle Sam), I'm doing just fine at the moment. As long as I can make money over the summer, I should be fine next year as well.
WIN

14. Take all available opportunities to learn new skills.
I don't know what kinds of opportunities I thought I'd have... This isn't really applicable.
---

15. Work on outside projects (such as student films) if they fit into schedule.
I did a voiceover at a nearby college for a student project. I'm probably going to do two films this summer. I've been offered a role in a workshop of a new play, and I'm trying to fit it into my schedule.
WIN

16. Take a trip to somewhere outside of town (even if it’s just to the next closest city) at least once a semester.
I've visited my boyfriend twice this semester, and he's over 5 hours a way. Definitely successful.
WIN

17. Go to Disney World at least once.
Haven't done it yet. But I will. I swear.
---

18. Have as close to perfect attendance as is physically possible.
No missed classes yet. *knocks on wood* I was late to Movement Class twice this semester (by no more than about 5 minutes). Both times it involved baking... The first, I had put cookies in the oven and they just WERE. NOT. BAKING. I couldn't leave the house with the oven on, and I didn't want them to be half-baked. I didn't even wait for them to cool before leaving. The second time, I baked a cake for my classmate Iceman's birthday and left it at home, so I had to turn around and retrieve it. But seriously, I think I did a pretty darn good job of being where I was supposed to be.
WIN

19. Remember how hard it is to get to grad school. Remember how great of a program this is. Be grateful every, every minute.
You have no idea how grateful I am, and how much I love it here.
WIN

20. Find something to love about every class and every professor (so that I can focus on those things on the days that classes seriously blow).
I loved all my professors this year. I hope the same is true next year (slightly different line-up in the 2nd-year)
WIN

21. Do not kiss anyone in the program (unless it's required by a scene or something).
I kissed the same 3rd-year again in January... or rather, he kissed me. On more than one day. And it ended really strangely, and I regret it. But I've had my lovely and wonderful boyfriend since February, and now there's no one else I want to kiss... (By the way, I have kissed 5 guys in my class in scenes.)
FAIL

22. Do not get crushed on anyone in the program.
Not a problem.
WIN

23. Do not actively flirt with anyone in the program.
Not a problem.
WIN

24. Do not pursue a relationship with anyone in the program.
Not a problem.
WIN

25. Keep all classmates on the “As Good As Gay” list.
Not a problem.
WIN

26. Swear less.
I gave up swearing for Lent (which actually means that I just cut back, because sometimes I'd forget and a word would slip out, and then I'd pray...).
WIN

27. Replace swear words with exclamations such as “drat”, “shoot”, “freakin’”, “frak” (← it’s a Battlestar Galactica term), and the like.
I say "frak" all the time.
WIN

28. Cut alcohol out of diet (as much as possible).
I drank on New Year's Eve. I drank one night in February (on a school night, like an idiot). I drank one night with Filmmaker when I visited him on Spring Break. I drank Thursday night. Once a month... I'm going to say that's not that bad.
WIN

29. Try not to drink until my birthday (October 25 – If I can cut meat out of my diet for 9 months, I can certainly take out alcohol for 3).
No longer applicable.
---

30. Do not have alcohol more than twice in one week, regardless of occasion.
Already listed my drinking days...
WIN

31. Try to limit caffeine intake.
Yeah, I rarely have caffeine.
WIN

32. Make sure to eat tons of peanut butter, cheese, tofu, hummus, and other protein-containing foods in order to keep energy up.
Huh... I forgot that I wrote this... I mostly just eat things that I can defrost.
FAIL

33. Don’t tell classmates about my (lack of a) sexual history. Remember that it is none of their business.
No longer applicable. They all found out last semester. And I really don't care that they know any more.
---

34. Don’t even THINK about doing NaNoWriMo.
No longer applicable. In fact, until just now, I kind of forgot that I have an unfinished novel that I should kick my butt into gear on...
---

35. Try not to make the fact that I’m a blogger public knowledge. (Even though I’ve already warned my roommate. And one of the second years found my blog in February).
No longer applicable. They've known for a while.
---

36. Consider lying and saying I blog about something that they won’t want to read. Make it sound like it’s not a personal blog.
No longer applicable.
---

37. Do not discuss individuals from grad school program on my blog, in case they find it.
I did in a vague way, but I deleted most of those posts anyway... Oh, whatever. I failed.
FAIL

38. Do not mention what grad school program (or city) I’m in on my blog, so that they won’t be able to find it.
Check.
WIN

39. Be supportive of classmates, not competitive with them.
I'm good at this. Most of my classmates are not going to be once we audition for things.
WIN

40. Avoid getting too negative about myself or my potential.
I had one weekend when I had a breakdown about this, but now I'm in a good place. I'm good at this, and I can make a career out of it if I put my mind to it.
WIN

41. Use days off well, because they’re few and far between.
I'm getting so much better at this.
WIN

42. Laugh as much as possible.
I do. :)
WIN

43. Write down all homework assignments (because I WILL forget them if I don’t).
I still write them down, but I've also gotten to a place where I won't forget them if I don't.
WIN

44. Walk or bike to school on occasion. (Will work out details on this once I figure out if it’s even safe to do this, as I’d have to cross a couple of 4-lane roads, and Florida drivers are NUTS.)
Nope. Sorry. Not happening.
FAIL

45. For understudy assignments, attend every rehearsal that fits into my schedule (there are only three actual understudy rehearsals per show, and we’re mostly expected to learn what to do by watching video tapes and whatnot… so clearly, the more actual rehearsals you can make it to, the better).
I rocked my understudy stuff. No, seriously. I wish you could have been there.
WIN

46. Work on completing my novel in my spare time (HA! Spare time! Like I'm going to have any of that!).
Nope. Not possible.
FAIL

47. Remember to step back and take time to breathe.
I do.
WIN

48. Do whatever it takes to get closer to the goal of becoming a castable, skilled, professional actor.
I try.
WIN

49. Loosen up. (recommended by Eric Shonkwiler.)
Working on it.
WIN

50. Don't let things from OUTSIDE of class affect what's going on INSIDE of class. (The reverse of #8)
I'm growing up so much, guys. I think I've learned to compartmentalize.
WIN



36/42
Not bad at all.



May you get better at being good.

~A~

What Is Love?

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

This concept of love is a slippery, tricky thing, isn't it?

Filmmaker used that word early on. Not to say that we aren't still in the realm of "early on" (we've been dating for two months). But still. Earlier on than I would expect a person to say it.

It made me question what love is. I tell people I love them all the time, and I mean it. I love my friend Mike. I love my classmates. I love Matt Damon. But with so many kinds of love in the world, it's difficult to say anything about love in a relationship without wondering what kind of love it is versus what kind of love it's being interpreted as. Hence, it's a word I like to avoid. Much in the same way that I generally avoid the word "boyfriend" (a title that I bestowed upon Filmmaker and he wears proudly).

Skype photo of Filmmaker being goofy

He told me not to say it until I was ready. He acted like he was honestly okay with that for awhile before the insecurity kicked in. He wondered if my reluctance to respond to his affectionate language was a sign that I was going to leave him. He was concerned that I looked at our relationship as something temporary or frivolous.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

I responded to him with an e-mail at an ungodly hour of the morning, saying that I don't look at our relationship that way, which is in fact the reason I wasn't going to use that phrase lightly. I wrote that I wasn't going to use it until I felt it with every part of me. I wrote,

Right now, here's what I know...

I honestly care about you.
I'm happier with you than without you.
I miss you. Constantly.
I feel safer when I'm with you.
You make me want to work hard and succeed in things (and finish my stupid frakking Analysis papers) so that I'll make you proud of me, and so that I'll be worthy of someone as wonderful as you.
I'd rather talk to you than anyone else in the world.


And here's what I love:

I love the way you look at me.
I love that you take pictures of me being an idiot and like them.
I love it when you say or text ridiculous random things to me.
I love the way you hold me.
I love how much you make me laugh.
I love making you smile.
I love that your Action-SciFi-Fantasy-Comedy-Drama is so important to you.
I love staring at you and reminding myself that I'm the lucky one who gets to call you her boyfriend.
I love the way you smell.
I love that our relationship feels broken in even though it's so new.
I love that you take the time to actually listen to the music I send you without me asking you to do so.
I love that you put yourself in challenging situations.
I love that you don't give up.
I love that you [drove 5 hours] to "see about a girl."
I love that you respect me.
I love that you're open and honest with me.
I love that you were willing to watch Win a Date with Tad Hamilton and put vinegar on your strawberries.
I love that you're okay with setting rules in our relationship.
I love being able to support you and help you through your less secure days.
I love talking to you for obscene amounts of time every day... even when it keeps us up past curfew.
I love when you say you love me.

I love so many things about you, about our relationship, about the effect you have on me...
And maybe that is indeed an accurate verb to describe the way I feel about you.

But I'm not going to say it yet.

When I do say it, you'll know how much it means.


He wrote me the next morning that when he read that e-mail, it was the second time in his life that he's wept tears of joy (the first being when he was accepted to film school).

Skype photo of Filmmaker

Last week, he sent me an e-mail in a similar tone to the one I had written him (which I mentioned in my last post, I believe). I won't share the entirety of the e-mail, as most of it is just for me. But I thought I'd share some of his corresponding list.


- I love all your little quirks: the hiccups, the squeaks, the jaw pop, the odd flexibility, the obsession with names, the clean-up time outfits, and… well… all the ridiculously little things, many of which you are self conscious about, but which really just make you all the more endearing.

- I love the way you dance. Completely free of worries or self conscience. It’s inspiring.

- I love that you are willing to struggle so hard to be the best at what you do.

- I love that, even though you may be "competitive," you do everything in your power to support the people around you and help them to succeed.
[NOTE: he put it in quotation marks because we had just had a discussion in which he insisted that I am competitive, and I had insisted that I am not]

- I love that you are capable of being both proud and insecure, but that you’re a healthy enough person to keep either trait from becoming a flaw.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

- I love that you are somehow both wise to the world where you need to be but also sheltered and innocent in many ways that are good to be.

- I love that are willing to be yourself around me, that you trust me enough to show me exactly who you are, and that you are more than a little bit excited to be able to tell me stories about your life for hours on end.

- I love that you are willing to listen to my long winded stories and ideas about life, as well. (It proves that you’re not merely self centered.)

- I love that you are open to new experiences, and that you are able to enjoy many of the things that other people enjoy. I also love that you are able to appreciate the things that other people enjoy, even if you don’t love them yourself.

- I love that you have so many different smiles that it would take me a lifetime to count them all.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

- I love that you have even more weird faces. So many, in fact, that several lifetimes would likely not suffice to count them all.

- I love how unspeakably beautiful you are. I wish that you could see yourself through my eyes when you’re feeling less than pretty, because then you’d know how silly it was to feel that way. I’ve never seen you look anything but breathtaking from head to toe.

- I love that you see me as a man.

- I love that you take your relationship with God seriously, that you take the time to thank him for each meal you eat, and that you are willing to give up things that you love to remind yourself of his love for you. These things all make me want to have a better relationship with God myself.

- I love that you allow me to question your beliefs without feeling threatened or angry, and that you are willing to discuss why we both believe what we believe. This is very extremely important to me, and I hope will allow us to grow as individuals and as a couple.

- I love that one of the main reason for some of our differences in political and religious beliefs is simply that you have a true desire to be compassionate and understanding towards others.

- The thing I love most about you is the way you look at life. It’s hard to even explain, but I’ll do my best. While some people look at life as a series of challenges (as I have in the past), you seem to look at life as an experience, to be breathed in and exhaled with a smile on your face. You are so overwhelmingly positive and upbeat, and you have obviously spent so much time looking for the little things in life that makes simply existing fun and interesting, that it comes easily to you. I envy this about you terribly, and if I can take one thing from my relationship with you, and really take it to heart it will be this way of thinking. And that’s why I knew... I knew after reading your 25 Things that you were somebody very special. You were somebody I had to know. You were somebody worthy of my love. Because only a girl who looked at life in such a wonderful way could have written that list the way you wrote it. Thank you for allowing me to experience such a beautiful outlook on life.
[NOTE: Filmmaker said that the thing that finally pushed him to ask me out was reading my 25 Things meme on Facebook, which contained mostly things that I had put on this blog during NaBloPoMo 2007]

- I love that when I am around you, I am a happier person. I am a smarter person. I am a kinder person. I am a cooler person. I am a more honest person. I love that you make me the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.

- I love that this list feels incomplete.


It's hard not to fall for a guy who says such pretty things.

Skype photo that Filmmaker took of me

Is it love? Can you be in love after such a short period of time?

You tell me.


May you know that you're worth loving.

~A~



P.S. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

My Distracting Life

Things keep happening to me that make me think, "I should write a blog post about this..." But then life happens, and I never get around to it. So how about I list them, okay?


Winnie
A old woman, Winnie, who was a donor for the theatre who was very kind to me passed away suddenly a couple of weeks ago. She and I had bonded over the fact that I can't cook, which she said she couldn't do when she got married. She called me "Angie", which no one else does. She'd have me over for dinner on occasion, saying that she was worried I wasn't eating. The first time she had me over, I bought her some purple flowers at a grocery store to thank her. And whenever she'd introduce me to one of her friends (including a former congressman from Kentucky), she'd say, "This is Angie. She can't cook." She always made a point to come look for me whenever she was at a theatrical function.

My school has an "adopt-a-student" program that assigns donors to students. Winnie wasn't my donor, but I felt like she may as well have been. I saw her more than I see my donors (they live out of state for most of the year), and she was so supportive of me. Last semester, the student she was sponsoring wasn't here, and I think I was her substitute in some ways. Unofficially, it felt like we did have that sort of student/donor relationship. I wept hysterically for about 24 hours after I found out she had died. And I felt weird crying in front of the student whom she had actually been the sponsor of, almost as though I didn't deserve to cry more than she did or something. Yes, I know that's ridiculous, but that's where my mind went.

Yesterday I went to her memorial service. Her eldest granddaughter remembered me from when Winnie had briefly introduced us a few months ago. She told me that she knew how much her grandmother loved me. She said that Winnie had refused to throw out those purple flowers for months after I'd given them to her.

I feel like talking to her granddaughter gave me a little bit of closure. Someone acknowledging the relationship I had with Winnie. And knowing that it meant as much to her as it did to me.


Car Crash
My brothers used to make fun of me for being too safe of a driver. I'd never even gotten pulled over for a speeding ticket. So it was pretty shocking when I got in a car crash.

I was on my way to see Filmmaker, which is a 5-hour drive. On the highway, everyone was slowing down until we were in 20mph traffic. The car in front of me put on its brake-lights, so I slowed down. But then they came to a dead stop. My car hit their car at about 5mph. There was a teeny tiny dent in their back bumper.

The family was from Toronto. The mother had been driving. The father got out and started yelling at me. They had two of their sons in the backseat, ages 8 and 17. I called the highway patrol. I gave them my cell phone so they could call their insurance company. Being from out of the country, they needed an accident report.

After waiting for about 10 minutes, the mother tells me that the 17yo son wasn't "going to last long out here". He had just gotten out of the hospital, and she was concerned for his health. She asked me to call the police again and have them hurry up. I obliged.

Five minutes after that, she informed me that her son was "psychotic." They had taken him out of a mental institution against doctors' orders because they thought a sunny vacation would be good for him. He had "only had one bad day" in the trip, but she was worried that the environment near the highway might make him have "another episode". She said he was "heavily medicated", but you never know.

Eventually, the State Trooper got there. I got a ticket for $151. I also got a lecture about how there's "no such thing as a car accident," because they're not "accidents"... something had to go wrong before they happened. The official terminology is "car crash".

So that whole ordeal ended up taking an hour and a half. And now my mother is terrified and has informed me that she never wants me to go visit Filmmaker again.


Filmmaker
I've visited him twice now. I can't come up with an adjective to describe just how great he is. He's wonderful. He's splendid. He's everything I need right now.

He likes me, too. He made a joke once about writing a song for me called, "You're So F***ing Awesome."

We make a strange amount of sense together. Yes, we have our Religious differences (he's confused about why Catholics place so much importance on Mary, for example). Yes, it still weirds me out that he was married to a minor. Yes, we're going to be in different places for a long time. But it's still worth it.

He shaved off his beard a few weeks ago. I think he might be even more handsome now, if that's possible.



He's wonderful and fabulous and the best thing ever.

He just now sent me an email with all the reasons he loves me. I want to wear it around my neck and show the world that someone out there loves me for who I am. Maybe I'll post it on here... Or maybe I'll just keep it for myself.


_________________________________________________________

You know, I know there are more things that I could write about, but I won't. I'm putting this up so that you know that
A. I'm not dead
B. My life is not boring


May you find that living your life is more interesting than writing about it. At least occasionally.

~A~