30 'Til 30 Day 12. And 13. And 14, 15, 16...

Well, faithful reader. I had a busy weekend. And writing a blog per day during the school week has proven to be a bit more challenging than I initially anticipated. But I promised to share 30 life accomplishments before I turned 30 and dammit if I'm not a woman of my word....

So in keeping with last week's plan to write about Seattle, I've condensed my experiences on the west coast to five major points, lessons I'm glad to have learned during that season of my life.


1. I faced the darkness, both metaphorically and literally.

On the literal level, Seattle is one of the darkest cities in the country. During the mid-winter, the sun doesn't come up until nearly 9am, and sets well before 5, and even then, it's usually hidden by a low swirl of gray. Sometimes I would go for stretches of two or three weeks without seeing the sun.

For a sensitive soul like mine, the darkness was crippling some days. It was cold and dreary, and my spirit felt as cloudy as the skies. Though, as I mentioned in my last post, I made some dear friends in Seattle, I was also very alone some days, away from my family and closest friends.

But just as eyes in a dark room find their focus by even the tiniest sliver of light, I sought out the one light source I'd always known, pressing into my faith, even though God felt as far away as the rest of my loved ones. I looked to scriptures and prayers and sermons as my footlights in the dark, and when it finally grew warm and sunny again, I was more grateful than anyone.


2. When the sun finally came, I never missed an opportunity to soak it up.

People always associate Seattle with the rain, for the exact reasons listed above. But what Seattle-ites like to keep secret is the fact that when the sun does come out, "Rain City" becomes "the Emerald City." Summer days in Seattle are long and idyllic, with the sun staying up until almost 9 and the air reaching a perfect, humidity-free 75 degrees. Gorgeous flowers and fields of tall green grasses blow in perfect breezes, as a city previously imprisoned by rain and gloom comes out to play again each spring.

After the long, grey months, I, with the rest of Seattle, took as much advantage of the sunny summer days as possible: camping, hiking, kayaking, going to outdoor concerts and movies, and picnicking all over the city.

Of course, the metaphor for life continues here as well: just as I learned to seek the light in the darkness, I also learned to never take the sunshine for granted. In the past 30 years, I have had many low moments and plenty of disappointment, but my time in Seattle taught me to cling to the promise that the sun will always shine again. Some stretches of cold and gray may seem to go on forever, but inevitably, a beam of sun will push its way through the clouds and summer will arrive again.


3. I had some incredible adventures and took some awesome road trips.

Aside from my big trips to and from Seattle, which took me through national parks (notably, Redwoods, Yellowstone, and Grand Canyon) and major U.S. cities (Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, to name a few...) I had always wanted to visit, I made so many incredible memories on overnight and day trips in the northwest. Some of my favorite excursions:

• A weekend ferry trip to Orcas Island.
• A spur-of-the moment drive to Vancouver for the last day of the winter Olympics. Though we didn't catch any events in-person, we feared for our lives as the minority Americans watching the U.S. v. Canada Hockey finals surrounded by Canuks in a dive bar, and caught the closing ceremony fireworks before heading home at midnight.
• Two visits to the Skagit Vallet Tulip Festival
• An epic week on the road in Oregon with the one and only Antointette Michelle which included way too many flights of beer at the state's many craft breweries, a trip to Crater Lake, my first view of the Pacific ocean via the Oregon Coast, and a visit to the Oregon Shakespeare festival.
• A trip with the afforementioned bible study girls to Sacramento, CA for one of the most fun (albeit a bit sweaty) weddings of my life, book ended by winery tours in Oregon on the way down and a pit stop in Redwood national park on the way home.
• Multiple concerts including the Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge in Eastern Washington.
• Skiing in the Cascades.
• The most epic day ever at Mt. Ranier National Park with my SCT intern crew.

4. I tried new things I was too afraid to do before.

The great thing about moving to a city where no one knows you is that you can be whoever you want to be and do things you never would have tried somewhere else.

Though I was a theater major in college, I actually only performed in one non-Children's theater production, largely because I let myself get so intimidated by other students I thought were more talented than me that I didn't even audition.

But in Seattle, with no one I knew to compare myself to, I finally went for it. I was in two productions in my time in Seattle-- a community theatre production of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, for which I dyed my hair bright red to play a wannabe pageant queen, and The Odyssey at Taproot theater company, an ensemble show in which I played several parts including a queen, a siren, and, my personal favorite, a slaughtered sheep.

It was a joy to finally be onstage again, and it motivated me to put myself out there again when I returned home.

Perhaps one of the most challenging and memorable "new things" I tried in Seattle was teaching a theatre class at a men's homeless shelter. I had always had an interest in applied theatre, or the use of theatre in non-professional or academic settings, so through a connection at my church church, I started leading a weekly theatre class for the "guests" at Seattle's Union Gospel Mission, in the heart of downtown Seattle. It was a terrifying, challenging, and at times emotionally overwhelming experience to attempt to share my art form with such an unfamiliar population, and I ultimately ended up finding it too difficult to maintain any consistency in instruction with the changing dynamics of the group. But for the few men who did keep coming back, I think the class offered at least a sliver of hope, a chance to imagine possibilities beyond their current realities, and I grew immensely as both a teacher and a human from my weekly interactions with them, interactions I never would have had if I hadn't given it a shot.


5. I grew. A lot.

Personally. Professionally. Intellectually. Spiritually. In every way, my two years in Seattle shaped me for the life I have now. Though things felt sort of all over the place at the time, looking back, I can see how God was working out my future every step of the way. My internships and crazy freelance teaching artist jobs taught me how to adapt in any classroom, and also built an appreciation for the more steady, though equally crazy, work I do now. And though it took me a few more years to work through some of the personal/spiritual things I started to unearth in Seattle, I am forever grateful to have had those years alone to begin to work out the process of self reflection, growth, and acceptance that I'm still discovering today.

Ultimately, Seattle did exactly what I predicted it would when I first set off for the west. It pulled me out of my comfort zone, which is exactly where growth occurs.

30 'til 30 Day 11: Friends in Far Places

When I first moved to Seattle, I knew absolutely no one. I had interviewed on the phone with two nice people that would soon become my bosses, and my parents had some friends about an hour away who they had known when we lived in Florida, but for the most part I was on my own. I found my roommate through a Craigslist posting and she was just crazy enough to agree to live with a complete stranger from 4000 miles away who she'd only ever talked to on the phone. Aside from having a great name, my roommate Sarah was incredibly welcoming. She invited me out with her friends every weekend and made sure I knew how to get around my first month in town. Unfortunately, after just a few weeks, Sarah announced that she had the opportunity to live in Dubai for several months for work. She would continue paying her portion of the rent, but I would be all by myself again

By that time, I had started to get to know the other interns at work, but many of them worked on shows in the evenings, and others already had good social circles in the community. Fortunately, I had also started to attend a church in the area, where I joined a women's bible study and met some new friends from the area, as well as other transplants: Meghan from California, Lauree from North Carolina, and Liz, Arielle, and Mary--all from, you guessed it, Virginia! 

Soon, we developed into a tight-knit group who regularly gathered to cook dinner and do life together. Over the next two years, the group would celebrate engagements and new jobs, dance at birthday parties and weddings, cry through breakups and other losses, and laugh over lots of glasses of wine. Perhaps it was the fact that many of us were away from home and family & needed surrogate sisters to get us through, or the fact that we just all happened to be asking the same big life questions about love and work and adulthood at the same time, but there was something extra special about the bond forged so quickly between this beautiful group of ladies. 

Eventually, Sarah returned from her middle eastern adventure and I started to spend more time with her friends and my theatre friends, but some of the most precious memories from my time in Seattle remain the dinners I shared with my bible study girls. Though I lost touch with some after I moved, most remain dear friends, who still make time to catch up with me whenever I am lucky enough to be on the west coast. Even though we were only in the same place for a few years, these women made my time in Seattle so rich and I am so blessed to have them in my life, even from thousands of miles away.

30 'til 30 Day 10: Living on a Prayer (and also food stamps)

First of all, sorry for falling off the wagon yesterday. The idea to stick with a daily blog all month came to me in the midst of winter break, as I was still choosing to remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that I am a teacher and start to have trouble using my brain after 5pm on school nights. I'm going to keep doing my best to keep up, but yesterday was a busy day!

That said, I still want to dedicate this week's posts to the memories made and lessons learned during my two years in Seattle, starting with the reason I moved out in the first place, my internship in the education department at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

After an absolutely hellish year in a DC theatre internship (more on that another day), you would think that the last thing on earth I would want to do would be to take on yet another yearlong internship. But at the time, a second internship year felt like one of the only ways to get experience in theater, and Seattle Rep sounded like a dream company to work for. They'd won a Tony Award for regional theatre and had a great season of professional shows to look forward to, including co-productions of the 39 Steps with La Jolla Playhouse and Equivocation with Oregon Shakespeare. And their education department, where I would be working, was doing some really exciting stuff that I was going to have the opportunity to be involved in: training teachers with a nationally recognized program called Bringing Theatre into the Classroom, running a student playwriting program, and teaching an elective drama class at an alternative high school. The internship stipend was meager, but I would have Mondays off and could get a second job to help ease the burden.

So I decided to go for it...

Over the years, I have noticed that most theater companies take one of two approaches to internship programs:

1. They treat their interns like cheap labor, expect them to work unreasonable hours and generally dump all of the soul-sucking grunt-work of the organization upon their underpaid, overworked shoulders, 

2. They view their internship program as a way to continue the education of recent college graduates and cultivate a bright new generation of theatre artists and administrators. Companies who take this approach value their interns' dedication and ideas and focus on providing mentorship and support to these poor, hungry, creative young people.

There has been some changeover at SRT, so I cannot speak for the state of their internship program these days, but fortunately, in 2009, Seattle Rep's view of interns fell under the second category.

Though we only made $200 a week, interns were constantly being thanked for their hard work with coffee dates, free food, overpaid babysitting jobs, etc. At Thanksgiving, the company even hosted an annual intern food drive, where we were all sent home with huge boxes of non-perishable food items, beer, and wine. 

 Yes, I still qualified for (and took advantage of) food stamps that year. But what I lacked in money, I made up for in life and work experience. I saw incredible theater on our stages almost every week. (A one man journey through The Iliad and an anniversary production of August Wilson's Fences still count among my all-time favorite productions.) I met brilliant designers, directors, and performers, whose work I find myself referencing in my classes even now. I gained mentors, brilliant teaching artists and arts education advocates, whose lives remain an inspiration to me.  I wrote curriculum and taught workshops to hundreds of students in dozens of classrooms across western Washington. I directed student written original plays and helped produce a festival of one acts. I assisted with teacher training, discovering and wrapping my head around the concept of arts integration for the very first time. I moonlighted as a house manager and picked up one of the best friends I could have asked for, bonding over music, pop culture, and foodie-ness while waiting for audiences to go home.

I had no connection to Seattle Rep when I first moved west. But by the time I left, it felt like a second home. Though many of my friends from the Rep have now gone elsewhere, the company will always hold a special place in my heart as my first professional home. 

30 'til 30 day 9: Moving West..

I'll be honest. I got a bit side-tracked today and sort of forgot that I needed to make a post.

One thing that got me off track was continuing to decorate my new bedroom. On one wall, I hung up a few of my favorite prints, postcards, and mementos from my time on the west coast, absolutely one of the biggest, bravest choices of my young adulthood.

Since I'm short on time this evening, and my westward adventure is a lot to cover...I figure today's entry can start the story by going back to the record of my thoughts at the time: the OG blog, Go West, Young Lady.

Specifically, twos posts sum up the emotions and intentions I felt at the beginning of that journey:

http://ladygowest.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-move-update.html

http://ladygowest.blogspot.com/2009/09/intermission.html

Reading my own words again now, so many feelings rush back. I vividly remember the combination of apprehension and elation I felt that fall, packing up my whole world and moving to a place where I knew no one, with no idea of how long I would be gone or if I would ever move back.

The next two years would wind up being some of the most challenging and exciting years of my life, and I am planning to revisit some specific highlights here this week. But for tonight, enjoy the hopeful perspective of 23(!!) year old Sarah, as she embarks on the adventure of a (30 year) lifetime.

30 'til 30 Day 8: Run, Sarah, Run

The first time I ever laced up my running shoes was the summer before 9th grade when my father made me go out for the cross country team.

Since Jimbo (as we now have taken to calling my dad) is a professional jock for Jesus (he's been on staff with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes since I was 3), I wound up being an FCA leader in middle school, despite my lack of any general athletic ability. But when I started high school, Dad pushed me to try a sport, since I was really supposed to be an athlete to be a leader of Christian Athletes. 

I picked cross country because it was the only team that didn't cut anyone.

It would be such a great story to say that cross country transformed me from a slow, clumsy non-athlete to a track star, but that's not what happened. I started at the back of the pack, barely able to run one mile, much less 3.1. And, though I eventually was able to finish the whole course, I pretty much brought up the rear in every meet for the entire length of my cross country career.

But I liked the other girls on the team, some of the boys were cute, and pasta parties the night before meets were a ton of fun. So, for no other motivation than socialization, I came back and ran again as a sophomore. That year the coach told me that if I could focus on my running as much as my flirting I might actually be able to get somewhere in this sport.

I was pretty much done after that. 

I came to a few summer conditioning practices before junior year, remembered that the Theatre Department was doing The Taming of the Shrew in the fall, and officially quit cross country as soon as the cast list went up (take a wild guess who I played...). I also discovered Antonin Artaud's quote: "Actors are the athletes of the heart," and managed to make a solid case for staying an FCA leader in spite of my departure from jockdom.

It wasn't until college that I dared to run again. This time, I started running less as an athletic pursuit and more as a means of stress-relief. I was surprised to discover that without the competition component of the sport, I actually didn't hate  getting out into the fresh air and moving my legs. My senior year, a friend and I signed up to run the monument 10K, which I somehow managed to finish in one hour- a huge accomplishment given that my personal best time for a 5k in high school was pretty close to 30 minutes.

Since then, I've been more inconsistent in my running habits, but I still manage to get myself moving from time to time. When I was in Seattle, I especially loved running in Queen Anne, finding hidden staircases and park views of the city and, on the rare clear day, the Olympic mountains. I'm looking forward to hitting the pavement in my new neighborhood, which is also full of city views and a staircase or two.

With 30 on the horizon, I know that getting into good physical habits is more important than ever (she writes while still sitting in bed in her pajamas as noon approaches), and running is the cheapest way to break a sweat... so I suppose there's no better moment to get out there than today...

30 'til 30 Day 7: JMU Children's Theatre Playshop-- the summer of big butts and pie fights.

Earlier this week, I shared a bit about the various jobs in theatre I have been lucky enough to have since graduating from college, but my very first paid job in theatre actually happened the summer before graduation.

Each summer, the JMU theatre department hires a company of students to perform in a season of shows for young audiences. JMU Children's Theatre playshop is a tradition for many families in Harrisonburg Virginia, and, for me, one of the most fun two months of my college experience. 

That summer, I played a big-bootied nurse in an adaptation of James Thurber's Many Moons, a saucy narrator in The Emperor's New Clothes and a busty German saloon owner in perhaps the most ridiculous children's show ever: The Showdown at the Sugar Cane Saloon, which featured a crew of evil pirates disguised as old prospectors, and ended with almost every single character getting smacked in the face with a shaving cream pie. Giggles abounded. 

I'm not sure I learned any huge life lessons that summer. But I did make some great friends, had a blast, and developed an appreciation for children's theatre that would ultimately follow me into my career as a director and teacher. And I got to wear a giant fake butt and pie people in the face for five shows in a row... so if that's not worth counting as one of my top 30 life experiences, I don't know what is.

30 'til 30 Day 6: European Adventures

When I was in college, I did a summer study abroad program for six weeks in London. On my way, I made a stop in Seville, Spain to visit some other friends who were ending their own study abroad journey. I sun-tanned on rooftops and visited beautiful parks and cathedrals and ate tapas and reveled in bars with crazy football fans.

In London, I took Shakespeare, Theatre, and Art History, all of which I studied on-site at some of the best museums, theatres and historical sites in the world. Our group saw Shakespeare at the Globe, new works at the Royal Court, and modern classics at the National Theatre, we discussed Turner and Van Gogh (or as our British Professor pronounced it, Van "Goff") in the halls of the Tate Museum. I spent afternoons perusing the bookstores on Charring Cross Road, explored the markets at Spitalfields and Portobello Road, and enjoyed my first beers in the pubs near our flat in Bloomsbury. And, perhaps the greatest cultural experience of them all, I saw, nay, experienced, the Queen tribute musical, "We Will Rock You" on the West End.

One of the best parts of the experience was the opportunity to travel to other parts of Europe on the weekends. Our program deliberately didn't have classes on Fridays so students could take advantage of discount travel opportunities in the UK and on "the continent". One long weekend, four of us explored the sites in Paris. A few weekends later, my friend Lauren and I hopped a plane to Rome. We ate our weight in Gelato and pasta, waded in the Trevi fountain, and were serenaded by a man in embroidered white denim on the Spanish steps. Another weekend, a few fellow Theatre majors and I sojourned to Stratford to visit Shakespeare's birthplace and see a show at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The whole program took a four-day trip to Edinburgh, where we toured castles and passed around a bottle of Scotch on a highland hike.

Though I had been living on my own as a college student for two years already, I developed a lot of independence that summer. For the first time, I couldn't call my parents at any minute to help me make a decision. I navigated public transit and booked foreign flights. I drank wine at dinner and ordered beer in pubs and visited neighborhood markets and vegetable stands for groceries.

It's hard to believe it's been almost 10 years since that summer. I always dreamed of going back to Europe but the time and opportunity (and funds) were never right.

Until now.

That's right. Yesterday, I booked a plain ticket to SPAIN. My former roommate from Seattle, invited me to join her and her sister on a wine-tasting adventure over spring break! At the end of March, this gal is Barcelona bound! Something I've realized lately is that this may be the last season in my life that I will have the freedom to pick up and travel without having to check in with a husband or figure out what to do with the kids, so I'm seizing the day and taking a new opportunity to travel the world! 

Guess I better start brushing up on my Spanish...

30 'til 30 Day 5: Be The Change

I just wrote a college recommendation for a student's JMU application!!

It's crazy to think that it has now been TWELVE years since I first became a Duke. I feel like such a different person now than I was then, even by the time I graduated. Like so much of myself was discovered after those four years. But college was also absolutely pivotal in setting the foundation for my adult life. And nowhere was that more clear than on graduation day.

This has been a posting on a previous blog already, so I apologize in advance for the redundancy to anyone who has read this before, but as some of you know, one of my proudest accomplishments to this day was being chosen as the Senior Speaker at graduation, so it's fitting that it should make an apperance here, too.

So today, I'm sharing my speech again. It came from the heart then and it rings even truer now. Being the Change, as the JMU campaign would have it, doesn't have to be about huge, heralded acomplishments. Quiet, selfless action, carried out in love-- that's where the real change begins.

Ambition.

“Ardent desire for rank, fame, or power, desire to achieve a particular end, desire for activity or exertion.”

As I look out on the sea of purple that makes up my graduating class, JMU’s Centennial Class, It’s all I see.

I see it in fellow theatre majors who’ve spent hours in an old turkey hatchery* directing and designing, building and rehearsing their shows. In tour guides who will walk backwards through driving rain just so that one prospective student can have the best possible visit to JMU.

I see it a nursing major who spent more of her senior year driving to and from a hospital in Charlottesville than she did in her own apartment. In roommates who stayed in on weekends to write lesson plans, case studies, and theses. In friends who’ve poured their last year of college into fundraising and planning, working together to build a school in Uganda.

You are ambitious people. Not only dreamers, but movers and shakers too. If I can be really cliché for a moment, I’ll even say that you “are the change.”

However, as I’ve pondered what the future might hold for us ambitious folks, I’ve found a surprising new definition.

Since, next to a cheesy dictionary definition, every graduation speech needs an inspirational quote, bear with me as I read you a bit of wisdom I recently stumbled upon. A mantra, if you will.

“Make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, so that your daily life will win the respect of outsiders”

You who know me are already laughing. The last word anyone would use to describe me is “quiet.” If you don’t know me… You’ve probably heard me. Whether screaming the fight song at football games or standing by Chip’s, harassing cars to “honk for Choices” … I can get a bit loud. I was barely allowed to walk at my last graduation after a suspension for “inciting a riot” And yes, I was that girl dressed like Britney Spears on the commons a few months ago asking random strangers, “Y’all seen Sean Preston??”

A “quiet life” has never really been my goal.

Yet this quote says it should be my Ambition.

“Desire for rank, fame, power.” The original Greek used here is Philotimeomai. Love of Honor.

This we pursue with quietness? Is anyone else confused?

I recently finished a book called Velvet Elvis, weird title, I know, but an inspiring work nonetheless. Anyway, after recalling the story of a woman who moved into the inner city & bit by bit fed and clothed her new neighbors, the author, Rob Bell, makes a great point:

“It is the quiet, humble, stealth acts that change things,” he says, “The kinds of people who change the world… they improvise & adapt & innovate… they don’t make a lot of noise and they don’t draw attention to themselves”

Class of 2008. I challenge you. Be these kind of people. Let’s stop talking about change and live it with “quiet lives” of great significance.

Some of you are going on to graduate programs, some have jobs lined up, others plan to travel, see the world. If you’re a theatre major like me, you have no idea what’s next. I leave you all with a word of caution: as you set off with your huge dreams and plans, your high hopes for worldwide change, don’t forget about the smaller world around you.

You may never get out of suburban America.

That’s O.K.

Wherever you end up: whether it’s New York or London; Uganda, Africa, or Harrisonburg, Virginia. Change your world.

Love your neighbors. Your co-workers. Your family. Work hard at whatever you do and look for opportunities to quietly fight injustice whenever you see it. Live a quiet life. A life of humility, service, and love, and you will see change.

Thank you. And go get ‘em, Dukes!

30 'til 30 day 4: A (brief) Life in the Theatre

Today, I taught my production classes about jobs in the professional theatre world.Though I know I just posted a few days ago about how blessed I feel to have the teaching job I have now, I still see one of the greatest accomplishments of my 20's as the fact that I managed to actually work in professional theatre for the first five years of my career. For one, it absolutely made me a stronger theatre teacher. I was able to observe some incredibly brilliant artists and picked up so many tools and tricks to pull out now that I'm teaching and producing a whole season of high school shows. I also am able to speak from experience when advising my students who are seriously considering a career in the professional world, and have even been able to connect some with professional learning opportunities within the Richmond theatre community. But on a personal level, those years gave me some incredible experiences, life lessons, and lasting friendships that I would never have known if I had jumped into teaching right away.

Looking back, I realize it was kind of an insane choice to try and pursue a career in theatre at the time I did. I graduated from college in 2008, which some may recall as the year that the economy decided to go completely tits up. I can still feel the stress of that last semester at JMU: as my more confident actor friends landed touring gigs (I regretfully made the decision too soon to not even try to do the professional actor thing) and friends with more sensible majors were finding jobs in business, healthcare, etc., I was frantically applying to every theatre internship that was still taking applications.  As March and April rolled around, more friends started to solidify plans, and I started to panic, still having no answer to the constant question of "what's next" from well-meaning professors, friends, and acquaintances. Somewhat miraculously, the eleventh hour brought two opportunities: a summer internship at a Theatre in Vermont and a nine month "Apprenticeship" (fancier word for an internship), in DC. Both had housing and a small (VERY small) stipend, and both actually wanted to hire me.

So I went for it. I will probably need individual posts for each of the four internships I would ultimately hold in the next two years,* but the overarching impact of those internships, the subsequent assortment of contract jobs, and the final salaried position I would ultimately end up with before making the switch to teaching full time, is that they shaped the work ethic and skill set I have today.

I learned that working for a Theatre is not just fun and games. Some days I ended up doing a lot of mindless manual labor. I stuffed envelopes, I entered patron information into databases, I sold subscriptions over the phone. Other days, though, I got to visit inner city schools and talk about theatre. I got to watch whole audiences of high school students see a professional production for the first time. I took pre-schoolers on silly, crazy imaginary journeys like a real-life Miss Frizzle. I got to help classroom teachers learn how to use theater to better teach Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. I got to go to conferences and seminars with the leaders in arts education at the Kennedy Center. I got to direct things (that's definitely another day's post, too)

It seems that the trend of this blog is me realizing that my experiences have shaped me, and I wouldn't trade them for anything, and blah, blah, blah. I worry that I'm starting to get redundant. But it's all true. There were many moments in the past decade where I felt like my career was a joke, like I didn't know what the heck I was doing in theater. There were seasons where I had no clue what was coming next, and days I cried because I just didn't have it in me to juggle any more jobs or send out another resume. But things always worked out, and each new job brought me closer and closer to where I am now. My only regret is the time I wasted worrying and waiting for the next thing, getting too frustrated with where I was to not embrace the opportunities and enjoy the experiences at hand. Still, I grew and learned in spite of myself and can now dive into the next season with a new attitude.


*Again, looking back, this seems like insanity-- but at the time these were the only opportunities I could find, and in the words of Alexander Hamilton via Lin Manuel Miranda, I was "young, scrappy and hungry and not throwin' away MY SHOT." Mic drop.

30 'til 30 Day 3: F*R*I*E*N*D*S

Confession: I binged watched three seasons of Friends over break. Between syndication and the first run of the show back when I was in high school, I'm sure I've seen almost every episode already, but the allure of the whole series being right there at my fingertips on Netflix was just too hard to pass up.

Like many in my generation, I think Friends set a bit of an unrealistic expectation for my post-grad social life. Of course, I knew people who moved to the same cities as most of their friends from college and who, from what I can tell on Facebook, have been hanging out with the same people ever since. But my nomadic lifestyle, especially in those first few years after college, kept me from forming that kind of a tight bond with any one group.

Even in high school and college, I never stuck to just one clique. I was friends with lots of individual people from all walks of life. I had my theatre buddies, my youth group friends, then in college, my Intervarsity friends, more theatre pals, my tour-guide friends, etc.

For a long time, I saw my scattered friendships as a failing, longing for a close-knit group of my own and envying those who had this type of community. I once dated someone for a few months longer than I should have, simply because his friends and their wives and girlfriends, who had all known each other for years, were this cool clique that I wanted to belong with so badly. I was devastated when we broke up, less because the relationship was over, and more because I no longer was welcome in the group.

As time has gone on, I've grown to be grateful for the friendships I do have. On one of the (too many) episodes of Friends I watched recently, some character said something about leaving town to get away from the group, to which Phoebe replied, "But where are you going to go? All of your friends are right here."

Having one group to hang out with is great in many respects. I have been lucky enough over the past year and a half to grow really close really quickly with a "crew" of teacher friends, with whom I love to spend most of my spare evenings, weekends, and break days. But I also would never trade the individual relationships I have cultivated over the years. From a roommate-turned-travel-buddy and other dear friends in Seattle, to a road-trip-partner-in-crime in Portland, high school best friends in Los Angeles, college soul sisters in North Carolina and Dallas, an almost sister-in-law in Atlanta, the coolest of cousins in Austin, Richmond Theatre loves, church friends, and brunch buddies, and, of course, the most wonderful new roommate who has stuck with me through the best and worst times of the past 10 years, I could not be more grateful to have loved ones scattered all over the country. Who needs Central Perk when the whole world is your coffee shop??

 

It's taken a lot of time and reflection to get here, but I've never felt more content relationally than I do at this exact moment in time. And if the next ten years bring as many more beautiful people into my life as the last decade has, I will be a blessed woman, indeed!

30 'til 30 Day 2: The Dream Job

After two GLORIOUS weeks of winter break, I go back to work tomorrow morning. Like any good teacher, I had a whole list of things I wanted to work on over break. Take a wild guess as to what percentage of those things I actually finished...

So to inspire myself to at least try to tackle at least few more of the things on my list before popping my Tylenol PM tonight (the only way I can fall asleep on the last night of any break),  I figured I'd make today's post about one of the proudest accomplishments of my 20's: landing my dream job.

Apparently, I always knew I'd end up a drama teacher. Since starting my job, I've run into two people from high school who reminded me that even back then, I'd predicted that this was be the gig for me. Given that I knew what I wanted to do so early, you'd think I would have ended up landing here a little earlier than 28, but I took the scenic route.

JMU now has a distinct track in their theatre program for students seeking teacher certification but when I started there in 2004, there was no such concentration. To get an education degree, I would have to major in a "core" subject (I picked English), stay for a 5th year to complete a Masters in Education, and add on a theatre endorsement along the way. I figured out pretty soon that with all of the required education courses I needed to take, I would only be able to minor in Theatre, giving me only 15 credits (5 classes) of study in the subject area I really wanted to teach. So I made the bold move to drop the education requirement and double major in English and Theatre, figuring I could always find an alternate path to certification later.

When senior year rolled around, I looked into programs like Teach for America, which offered certification in exchange for teaching in an inner city school, but was lured by the glamorous life of a $150 / week plus housing theater internship instead. And then the West called. And so on...

My life as an intern and my westward adventure will most certainly be posts for another day, but as they relate to my current career as a teacher, I am SO thankful that I took the time to make each and every stop I made along the way.

And boy were there a lot of stops. I remember working on a job application once after moving back to Richmond and crying because it asked me to list every employment I had held in the past five years and it took me over an hour just to list them all. But looking back now, I see how each and every work experience I had in my early and mid 20's built me for the work I do now. Even the four months I worked at JCrew after moving back to Richmond helped build my future teacher wardrobe. More significantly, I learned so much about my work style and personality through the plethora of jobs I held before this one. I discovered that sitting behind a desk as an arts administrator is not for me. Even though the job can be great some days, it can also be much more tedious than it appears: it's the independent contractors, not the salaried employees, that get to do the fun stuff at most theaters. But freelancing from one independent contract to the next was way too much stress for me, and in my case required me to constantly be working a second (or third, or fourth), job as a waiter, nanny, etc. Though the constant change in creative projects was fun and exciting, the hustle was downright exhausting, and it turns out I'm not freewheeling enough to not always know where my next paycheck is coming from. And don't even get me started on tax season with 1099s!

That's not to say that now that I'm a teacher I never deal with financial stress or exhaustion. I am convinced that drama teachers work more unpaid hours than any other position in a school. During the weeks leading up to the musical this year I worked between 12 and 16 hours a day. But if there is anything my past work history has taught me, it's that I would rather work 70 hours a week doing a job I am passionate about than put in 40 hours at a job that I hate.

I talked yesterday about how lonely the start of middle school was for me. Seventh grade was a little bit better, but it wasn't until I was selected for yearlong drama in eighth grade that I actually felt accepted by my peers. Finally, here was a place where people weren't overwhelmed by my deeply felt emotions or irritated by my loud personality. In drama class, my personality could never be too big for the stage, and my emotions were an asset that helped me connect to characters. The other loud, emotional kids became my friends and cast-mates and together, we told beautiful stories.

That is the environment that I hope I am cultivating in my classroom. When I get overwhelmed with rehearsal schedules and booster meetings and making sure I'm giving the expected number of formative and summative grades per nine weeks, I think back to my middle and high school drama years and remember what really matters. I certainly don't remember what kind of assessments my teacher gave.What I do remember is that I was encouraged to be myself,  to value the stories and lives of others, to think critically, to work with others, to make brave choices and good theatre, etc.

There are lots of things broken in public schools and I have had my fair share of frustrating moments even in just a year and a half. So much is asked and expected of teachers, but at the end of the day what really matters is that I am teaching my students how to be good humans. I've always believed that theatre is capable of that, and I have seen the seeds of it in my classroom. When we focus on trust, and listening, and building an ensemble, we're not just developing skills for the stage. We're developing skills for life.

A final anecdote: During teacher work week last year, I was sitting in a professional development session, feeling quite overwhelmed and rather incapable of processing the information overload that a new teacher feels that first week. My high school drama teacher, a bit of a legend who just started her 45th year in the county (!!), must have noticed the deer in headlights look on my face, because she leaned over and slipped me a note that read simply, "Don't be overwhelmed or discouraged. You've got this. Most of this is bullshit."

So on nights like tonight, when waking up at 5:30 AM & facing a classroom full of loud, emotional teenagers (see what I did there), for three back-to-back 90 minute classes feels like the last thing I want to do and there are still exams to grade, and competition one-acts to consider, and Shakespeare units to plan, and oh-my-gosh-how-is-it-almost-11-already... *deep breaths*....On nights like tonight, I look at that note, taped to my mirror at home (because I'm afraid to post dirty words in my classroom until I have a little more tenure) and I remember not to beat myself up. This really is my dream job. I've got this.

Now on to those Shakespeare lesson plans.

30 'til 30 Day 1: Big Moves and the Voice of God.

Today, I am moving from an apartment in one neighborhood of Richmond to a row house on the other side of town. In the past 10 years alone, I have moved seven or eight times, depending on how you count it (I moved in and out of my parents’ house more than once after college). I have moments where I envy those who have managed to spend more than three years of their twenties (my personal best) in one spot. Now more than ever, I feel the urge to nest, to settle in and have furniture that matches and framed pictures on the walls. It’s killing me to pack everything up once again, knowing that it will be months before all of my things have a place again. But I’m also feeling the excitement of discovering a new place, even just a few miles away. I’m excited for new neighborhood walks and bakeries (the best gluten free muffins are just a block away from my door!) and new roommates to relax and watch SNL sketches with. While I hope this move is the last one I make for a while, I am looking forward to the new experiences and people ahead of me.

In one of these posts, I’m sure I’ll talk about that time I moved 4,000 miles to a city where I knew no one, probably the most formative experience of my 20's. But today, in honor of my not-so-big move across town, I am gonna throw it back 20 years to my first major move, which brought me from Florida to Virginia in 1996.

Picture me at 10 years old, tall and skinny and rocking a poofier version of Mary Lou Retton’s haircut circa the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (a detail that is irrelevant to the story, but too hilarious not to share). After changing elementary schools twice for various reasons (Florida public schools were not exactly centers of scholastic excellence at that time), I was finally in a class and a school where I was making friends and blossoming into the creative, bright, and not too socially awkward girl my parents always knew I could be.

And then ish hit the fan. I remember walking into my parents room one night to find them perusing real-estate catalogues for houses in Richmond, Virginia (remember those things people used to look at houses before Zillow). The cat was out of the bag. My dad had an opportunity to be an FCA state director in Virginia and my parents were selling our house and moving us north.

As far as states go, Virginia and Florida could not be more different. I remember gawking at  the “old timey” (Colonial) style of architecture (“Whoa, look at that old timey McDonalds!”) and lack of huge neon signs and billboards as we drove to our new house. No one in our neighborhood had their own pool like they did back in Florida and we definitely couldn’t wear shorts year-round anymore. “When I used to live in Florida...,” became my constant refrain as I shared with my new classmates all of the things that were new and different to me.

Remember, I had only just started to figure out the whole making new friends thing. Unfortunately, telling everyone how different your experiences are from theirs is not really the way to win friends and influence fifth graders, especially in a class where you are one of only a few students who has not attended the same school since kindergarten. Also, the Mary Lou Retton haircut was growing out by then (turns out that detail was relevant to the story!), so you can picture how that year went down.

And then I started middle school. You know that time when kids are SO kind and understanding and never make fun of the weird new kid whose hair still hasn’t figured out what it’s doing.

I’d come home crying most afternoons and my mom would give me a big hug and tell me to that it was ok, and that my family and Jesus loved me very much.

One day, I snapped back at her.

“Yeah, well Jesus can’t talk to me or be my friend.”

“Of course he can. Jesus is the best friend of all. He’s there when no one else is.” was her calm, gentle reply, “You just keep praying and reading your Bible and you’ll hear his voice. It’s a quiet voice, but you’ll know when it’s talking.”

“Yeah, right, mom. That might be how God talks to you, but he doesn’t talk to me, OK!”

Then I probably stormed off crying or something. Puberty was right around the corner.

But wouldn’t you know it, that night I sat down to read my Bible and the first scripture that I came to was Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.”

For the serious theologian, Jeremiah 29:11 is like a frosted flake of scripture, sugary sweet inspirational fodder taken out of context and imprinted on every candle holder, graduation card, and pewter bookmark that you ever got from your great aunt Betsy. I’ve heard whole sermons preached on its overuse and misinterpretation. But to my lonely 11 year old soul, it was the breath of God himself.

Skeptics call it coincidence. Mystics might call it intuition or the call of the universe. Non-believers call it baloney. For Christians that moment when a verse, or a song, or a word from a wise friend pierces your soul at the exact second you need it most--that is the voice of God. And that day I heard it for the first time.

Moving to Virginia was not my plan and it did not feel prosperous or hopeful, but God’s word promised me a hope and a future, and I, with the faith of a child, pressed in to that promise. A week or so later, I would hear the Point of Grace song “Jesus Will Still Be There,”* on the radio and know again with absolute certainty that those words were for me, that God was speaking, reminding me that he was on my side.

Eventually, I made some friends other than Jesus and my Mom. But there would be many times in the years to come (especially through the many moves and transitions of my 20’s), when that too-familiar lonely feeling would strike. I think because of my childhood, I’m especially susceptible to feeling excluded and friendless. But no matter how lonely I got, I always had somewhere to turn, believing and trusting that God was still there for me. Because of this, I have been able to make bolder choices. To wander the path less traveled. To move across the country (and back), knowing that I would not be left alone in unfamiliar territory.

I would be lying if I said that I’m not a little nervous about the move today. Even though it’s only 10 minutes uptown, it’s still a transition, with all of the stressors therein. But for the first time in a while, this move is a move towards friendship and community. Jesus will be there, as always, but so will two awesome single women with whom I am so ready to start my 30’s!

*Do yourself a favor and check out the 90’s Christian girl band awesomeness in this video. All those shadows and windows in that under-furnished room. What could it mean???

30 'til 30: The final countdown

Time has a way of flying by, doesn't it? I can't believe it has been over two years since I have taken the time to write anything public about my life. I've journaled privately here and there, but I have  mostly been busy tackling that whole adulthood thing I was pondering back in November 2013. The biggest moments: I quit my first grown-up job and started a wonderful new adventure as a high school teacher. I found mentors and made great new friends in the education world. I caught up with old friends on the west coast, New York, and Carolina. I interviewed for grad school in Texas, almost moved to Arkansas (!) and had a South American adventure in Ecuador. I faced my fear of commitment and worked on learning how to compromise and give in a long-term relationship. I also learned that no amount of compromise can fix a bad relationship, and two good people can still be wrong for each other. So I accepted a breakup and realized that singleness really isn't so bad after all.

 Like all of the life I've known so far, 2014 and 2015 brought both tears of pain and tears of joy, equal shares of anxiety and glee, excitement and disappointment, stress and rest.

And now, here we are on the first day (er--night)  of 2016, and the official countdown to turning 30 has begun! For the past year, I've thought a lot (probably too much) about the idea of 30. For some reason, 30 has always been a deadline kind of year. The internet is full of 30 before 30 bucket lists. I even have my own little countdown going on Instagram, though I promise you won't see me bungee jumping or trying to visit all 7 continents in the next 30 days. 

There is an expectation that comes with 30. At 30 you will have it together (or at least look like you do on social media). I certainly expected that I'd be married and ready to start thinking about babies by now. In fact, a majority of friends my age either: a. are married, b. own a home, c. have a kid, or d. all of the above.

It is easy to fall prey to the attitude that I am behind the curve, to get discouraged by thinking about the life I thought I would have by now, instead of being thankful for the incredibly blessed life I DO have already.

So, instead of a New Year's Resolution (which I never can keep anyway), I'm making 30 day resolution to stop worrying about where I'm supposed to be by the time I turn 30 and own the three decades of memories and accomplishments I have made so far. 

For the next 30 days, I will be sharing a different kind of 30 before 30. Each day (hopefully) from now until January 31, I am going to write a blog post about a moment that shaped my story. They may not be as easily celebrated on Facebook as a wedding or the birth of a child, but I have had some pretty significant life experiences, and I want to take the time, before the next decade begins to reflect on them here.

30 moments that shaped me. 30 moments that brought me to where I am today. Which, I am finally starting to believe, is exactly where I am supposed to be.