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Mark and Melanie go to New York. So Melanie can study with SITI Company and write her next one-woman show. So Mark can take kick-ass photos and train for Ironman Canada. And so they can live in a 350-square-foot studio without killing each other. Hopefully...
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Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Mark
10 Tools for Having Really Awesome Stuff Go Down in Your Life
OKAY! It's been a huge freaking month. Things were great! Then stressful! Then REAALLLLY stressful! Then scary! Then miraculous! Then scary again.
It's been a crazy ride and for the most part, I've been hanging in there thanks to these practices I'm about to share with you. They help in the good times, they help in the rocky times, they help in the 'floating in mid-air and I can't tell if I'm flying or falling' times. I now give you ten proven tools for having really awesome stuff go down in your life.
Tool #1: Listen to affirmation podcasts at every single opportunity. These are the ones I use. I listen to them every day. Every moment I am on the subway I am listening to them. When I go for a walk, I listen to them. EVERY. DAY. When I don't feel like it, I listen to them. This is quantity not quality. You do not have to feel cool. You do not have to feel amazingly uplifted every moment. You just have to pay attention. And listen to these obsessively.
Tool #2: If you thought affirmation podcasts were dorky, get ready for this one. I talk to myself in the mirror. Every time I see myself in a reflective surface, I say 'I love you' or 'You are awesome' or 'You are beautiful and amazing and unstoppable.' I do this all the time. I do it EVERY DAY. Again, quantity not quality. Again: I don't have to feel cool. (I seldom do. Unless I am pointing at myself in a full-length mirror with both hands, lunging deeply and whisper-yelling 'YOU ARE AWESOME!' so Mark doesn't hear me. Then, I feel fairly badass.) I double dog dare you to do this for a month. It will change your life.
Tool #3: Make an inspiration room, closet, house, garage, car, tent, SOMETHING YOU CAN GET INSIDE OF. Watch this video. Make this room. Have coffee in that room as much as possible and go there THE SECOND The Darkness starts to threaten. Vision boards are amazing and I love them but nothing on this planet is more effective than making your vision board into a three-dimensional space you can immerse yourself and drink dark roast in. Find a space. Make it yours. Sit in there a lot.
Tool #4: Continuously take responsibility for yourself. Check this out. No one owes you anything. No one. You are the sole creator of your life and your dream and if you can understand the power that is inherent in that, you will blow your own mind. This means actively giving up on blame and expecting people to save you. It means being totally okay with the fact that you might have to do everything on your own. (You won't and this is the cool bit of taking responsibility for yourself...help arrives as if by magic!) This doesn't mean 'be really hard on yourself' or 'be a martyr' or 'work yourself like a dog.' It means recognize that the power to make your dream happen doesn't lie in someone else helping you, saving the day, bailing you out, giving you money or anything else. It lies with YOU.
Tool #5: Refuse (REFUSE!) to get sidetracked into negative thinking. How? Say 'no' out loud when a negative thought happens or a crappy belief shows up. Every time. Ask the thought 'Is that true?' with really squinty skeptical eyes and a bit of a smirk. Break the thought into small pieces and look at each one in turn. (This one is great for feeling like a fraud or feeling like you can't live up to other people's wildly overblown expectations of you.) Turn into a really strict but loving parent and think about that negative BS as a really belligerent child. You don't need to scream and freak out, but you need to put that shit in its place. Right now. And every single time it steps out of line. This is tedious going for awhile but it gets easier. Because let me tell you something: negative thinking is POISON. It is so, so damaging and so not worth it. Do not go there.
Tool #6: Let go of outcomes. There have been moments when I've had to seriously contemplate letting this whole London thing drop. Those moments have asked me to look at who I am without this dream and this outcome and ask myself: can I be ok NOT being the girl who took her show to the UK during the Olympics? The answer, of course, is yes. When I did this, something really cool happened. A little breath of space opened up between me and my dream. A little distance where my value as a human being is not tied up in what becomes of that dream. It's a place where I can trust that no matter where I'm led, that's the perfect place. And no matter what happens, that's the perfect thing. My value and my happiness are not tied to this outcome. Powerful, powerful stuff.
Tool #7: Trust your intuition. This is going to be on my tombstone, I just know it. If you listen to your intuition in the first place, you won't be stuck down some wrong path scrambling to make it happen. I got the gut feeling about the Olympics in the fall. If I resisted that feeling and pushed through another run of the show in New York, I know with every fibre of my being that things would not be flowing right now. If I resisted the feeling that I needed to apply for the grant writing job (which seemed very 'off track' at the time) I wouldn't have learned how to write a great proposal (which has seriously, seriously paid off and HELPED my dream come true). I let my gut tell me where we were headed waaay back and kept listening and acting and letting go.
Tool #8: Remember that you are connected to a very large, very powerful, very infinite whole. I don't care if you are or aren't spiritual, everything is connected. You are not a separate, isolated island. You are a unique and necessary wave drawn from a massive, powerful ocean. That is the image I use on a daily basis and to remind myself of my inherent value, power and potential. I am a unique expression of the whole. I play a very specific, very necessary role. I belong here. I am supported. That is how powerful you are. You can drop all the stuff about being alone or afraid. You are an essential part of the SOURCE OF ALL THINGS. Holy crap, are you incredible.
Tool #9: Be clear about where you're going. Opportunities have been coming up that seem sexy on the surface, but might not align with what I actually want for myself. It's been one hell of a job to stay clear about where I want to go as an artist and not be swayed by what other people want or think is a good idea. Which is to say: I've been swayed. And horribly confused and thrown off my legs. And then I've had to drop it, let it all go and refocus.
Tool #10: Good, old fashioned sweaty exercise. I'm sorry if this is obvious, but I cannot think of anything better than running a solid six miles with an earful of songs that make you feel like the hero of your own movie. Goodness goes all the way through that. Now, it just so happens I played my first dodgeball game since high school last week and throwing things at people is also pretty damn fun. Point is: move it.
(Bonus Tool: See your own value. I have now received two grants for this project. Getting those grants and the press that followed triggered a sneak attack of unworthiness that surprised the hell out of me. Those feelings took me down a really weird rabbit hole where I forgot how amazing I am. But here's what I learned: my value isn't tied to grants or opportunities or even my dreams. My value just IS. It's a given. Take a good look at all you are and all you do. See your own value. Your value doesn't increase with successes or validation...just like it doesn't decrease with failure or making mistakes. It's in you right now because of who you are and how you show up in the world.)
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Who You Callin' A Slut?
We live in a weird, weird time. In the same 24 hour period, Rush Limbaugh took women's rights back a good half-century by calling a smart young lady a slut and this series of photographs went Internet crazy. Neither Limbaugh nor Goldstein pull the punch, but what's interesting to me is how massively women's rights are in the public eye. Again. Still.
All I know is I'm alive in one of the strangest historical moments in the history of the planet. It's a time where a four-year-old girl's birthday party looks like a Disney drag show. Where talk shows call us sluts and magazines scream about the top 10 ways to pleasure him tonight. Where I watch zit-free, surgically altered 25-year-olds playing teenagers on TV, having acrobatic, well-lit sex and setting the bar for what's expected of young people everywhere.
Being a woman is fucking confusing, man.
I have been lucky enough to surround myself with women who constantly question the status quo. I have been blessed to meet women in developing countries, to see their private struggles for independence first-hand and to understand how good us North Americans have got it. Our mothers and our grandmothers fought for our independence and our freedom to choose how we live. That bears repeating: we get to choose how to live.
I can choose to have sex. Or not. I can choose to have kids. Or not. I can buy into 'happily ever after' or not. I can take on other people's ideas of what a 'wife' is and does. Or what a female artist is and does. Or not. I can read women's magazines. I can watch romantic comedies. Or not. In other words, I can accept how other people think women should look, talk and behave. Or. Not.
But it's never that simple, is it?
I'm reminded of a conversation where a friend of mine said, 'I thought we were all in agreement about this.' "This" being regular, consistent Brazillian bikini waxing and collective female hairlessness.
Sigh.
A couple of my friends and I just had a conversation about how, even within our group of friends (educated, worldly women in their late 30s), we all assume the other girls have their shit together more than we do. We are constantly comparing ourselves and our lives against other people's to see if we measure up. Even though we know that is insane. One friend's sister-in-law called up and said, 'Listen, I did everything I was supposed to do: I finished college, I got a job, I got married, I bought a house, I had kids. I am MISERABLE.'
And all of this illuminates a major, major problem. Which is looking outside ourselves for validation.
And the whole Rush Limbaugh debacle adds a big-old stumbling block to actually getting anywhere. Which is shame.
All of this adds up to one horrible, isolating thought. Which is I AM NOT OKAY.
It's easy to sit here and criticize media messaging, Disney princesses and gasbags like Limbaugh. It's easy to say I'm okay, you're okay, let's call it a day, okay? The hard part is admitting this: Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut brings back every single time I've been called a slut, felt like a slut or otherwise experienced shame around my own sexuality. The weird mix of horror and vindication I get from Goldstein's images comes from dueling aspects of myself: the part that still craves 'happily ever after' and the part that is relieved to know it doesn't exist.
I love that I live in a culture where Rush Limbaugh can make me spit nails and an artist can make me confront my own hypocrisy in the same day. Where I can see that my reactions to things point to unresolved places within myself. Where I understand, yet again, that the solution is rarely 'out there.'
Because 'in here' is all we really have to work with anyway.
I can't resolve Rush Limbaugh's struggle over female sexuality, but I can resolve my own. I can live, speak, act and one day parent from the perspective of an empowered, integrated woman. I can accept myself and where I am within this 'work in progress' called my life. And I can follow the lead of brave women like Sandra Fluke and Dina Goldstein and speak on behalf of a vision of womanhood that is not defined by shame, but by the fierce strength, powerful brilliance and limitless capacity of real women everywhere.
And more than anything, I can use the gift my mother and grandmother gave me. I can choose.
This post is dedicated to my incredible girlfriends. If you could see what I see...
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Olympic Update: Keep calm and carry on
So, if you are one of the seven gazillion people who liked and/or commented on my recent Facebook update, thank you and I love you!
First, I feel it utterly prudent to tell you that I was tanking like a mofo up to and including the moment I got this news. A half hour before, I had descended into such a now-hilarious state of misery that I was weepy in the elevator on my way to the corner deli while wearing (I shit you not) pajama pants and sneakers. In public. My internal monologue was about what I would do if I had to give this idea up entirely. I may have momentarily imagined myself as a cashier at Target. Did I mention it was raining and dark?
Yes. Comically morose.
I get upstairs and put a pot on to boil. I check my email. There is a message from my mom that says YOU GOT IT, YOU DREAMER followed by about six hundred exclamation points, as is her way. I start to cry. I Skype mom. I cry some more. I spent the rest of the night in a state of glazed-eyed shock watching sit coms on Hulu.com.
I honestly wish I could describe to you how this felt. It was the perfect storm of pleasure and pain. I felt profoundly heard, validated and understood. And in that same moment, I felt all of the loneliness and uncertainty I've been barely holding at bay for several months. It kind of all came rushing in. It was really bizarre and it literally took until the following morning to feel normal.
But then? I felt GREAT thankyouverymuch.
Let's get down to the brass tacks, shall we? Grants are funny, lovely things. First off, you are rarely awarded the amount you request. In this case, I was awarded 40% of my request. Means I've still got about $35,000 to raise (there will DEFINITELY be a Kickstarter campaign coming soon). And I still have to finalize my producing partnerships. We've got two venues interested (both with spaces in London and Edinburgh) and the situation with the booking agent is still up in the air. Then there's permits. Good God.
So nothing is assured, except for this: the cultural capital of Canada has invested in me and I'm officially on the hook for this thing. (Fear! Elation! Final reports!)
The other thing that is assured is that your enthusiasm and support is bigger, more powerful and more amazing than I could have imagined. The incredible response on Facebook makes me feel like you were waiting with bated breath as much as I was. I can't tell you how blessed I feel to be part of a community of that much love.
(While we're kumbaya-ing, let's send some lovely vibes out to Ruth MacKenzie who runs the Cultural Olympiad, shall we? She'll be taking a look at my pitch here pretty quick and sending a mental hug her way couldn't hurt.)
I'm convinced now more than ever that dreaming extra, ridiculously, I-wanna-be-an-astronaut big is really the only way to go. Onward Crazy Dreamers!
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Believe. Especially When There's No Reason To Believe.
Something weird has happened. Like, really weird. My fear's gone away. My doubt's vanished. My belief that the harder I push, the more I'll get? That's not here right now, either. It's probably because I have given up. In the good way. In the way where you surrender the outcomes and tend to the only thing that is actually your business: the present moment.
It's a strange feeling, nurturing dreams and giving up on outcomes. It almost seems impossible to do those two things at the same time. The giving up part takes practice and I think we have 'giving up' patterned in wrong. We think that to surrender means to surrender what we long for. Not true. We think we don't deserve our dreams, that they are stupid and frivolous. Not true. Dreams come from the place that is far below fear and doubt. They come from the source and anything from there is not wrong. Period.
But we get caught up in the outcomes, thinking it has to turn out exactly as we've pictured. And if it doesn't, we've failed. Here is the thing. All of this is unfolding in Divine Time, not your time. It's unfolding in Divine Order, not your order. Your job is not to micromanage HOW it happens or WHEN it happens. Your job is to hold onto the vision. That's it. You don't decide how it shakes down. You just hold fast to your dreams and you listen for instructions. And when it feels right to do the next thing, you do it. There's no rush. There's no pushing. But. There's no hiding or cutting corners, either. No sinking into despair. No obsessing over outcomes. That impairs the process. For the past few weeks, I have received not one whisper of external validation that my rather expensive dream will work out. My pattern in situations like these is to freak out, work from dawn until midnight, spin my wheels, crank out emails until I get told to piss off, blame people, accuse them of not being supportive, become paralyzed with overwhelm, catalogue in scientific detail all the other times I've failed. Not this time. This time, I've been incredibly conscious of taking responsibility for myself and understanding that the world doesn't owe me anything. Means if this is going to work out, I need to not slip into panic mode and wreck the whole vibe. I need to calm down and make clear choices. This is why that Wayne Gretzky quote is so amazing: "Skate where the puck is going, not where it's been." I won't get a different result just by WANTING a different result. I get it by doing something different. Simple, but hard, right? It's not the Universe's job to change my patterns of freaking out and stopping the flow: it's mine. Whenever I feel myself going off the rails into fear, into wanting to control, into my tendency to work everything to death, I go for a run, sit in my magic room, listen to a meditation or this song, watch this kickass video, repeat mantra after mantra. I do not, under any circumstances, go to the Bad Place. I consciously look for how I already have everything I need. How people are already helping me. How I've already received what I ask for. Some people call this gratitude practice and it is. It's just that "gratitude" can seem a little too Oprah sometimes. Look for it and expect to see it, all of it. It's there.And then you have to practice the thing that isn't waiting. It's being still within uncertainty. You need to sit there. You need to get comfortable there. You need to not freak out about that place. You need to stop picking at things and worrying them to death. You need to trust and let go.You have to cultivate the trust before you see the results. You have to do it when there's no reason to. When there's no one there. You have to believe when the whole thing seems ridiculous and impossible and you have to believe in yourself. That this is why you're here. That you belong here and you're needed here. That the dreams and the way to do them all come from the same place. These are the things to work hard at every day. Not the outcomes. The outcomes are taken care of. It's trusting and believing and letting go that are the hard parts. Do it like a workout. Do it because it's good for you, not because you want to. You want to wallow. You want to be rescued. You want a magic wand to make it all better. But that's not going to happen and it doesn't happen like that for anyone no matter how many 'dumb luck' stories or 'overnight success' lines you hear. Those people believed. And they worked at believing. I work at believing.Remember: this fall, I thought I was a failure. I thought I failed and no outside thing has told me since that I am, in fact, a success. I just believe. And you do, too. You believe in me and I'm so grateful for it, you can't imagine. I believe in you, you know. That's why I write these things. Because I believe in you and I know you get down about things. You don't need to get down. You need to keep going. Yesterday, we got one offer from a venue in London/Edinburgh and a second is coming in the mail. Right now, a letter is sitting in a mailbox in Calgary telling me the results of a $30,000 grant I applied for. It doesn't matter what that letter says. It doesn't matter how I get there. I just know that I will.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
F*cking Phoenix Friday
Today, I made a room (closet) totally dedicated to my Olympic dream. It is the coolest place on Planet Earth. I made a video about that room.
And just as I finished the video, an email came in saying I owe my condo management company $1,300 as of last July. A grand for a top-up to the reserve fund, $300 because they couldn't find me to tell me about the grand. All of this I found out by email. Why they didn't send me an email before charging me $300 in bullshit fees and interest, I have no idea.
Because now, of course, they aren't responding to my email.
So, I went ahead and lost it.
And then I went for a run. During the run I had a minor throat-closing panic attack, but mostly I laid copious amounts of waste to Prospect Park. It was like I was spouting kerosene with every breath and lighting it aflame with every step. I was a phoenix and a monster and, as my friend Karen calls me, a fucking colossus.
Last week, it was something different. It was the first and only $2,000 I've made in, oh, A YEAR and it went into someone else's account. This pattern? This Financially Fucked Friday pattern? Needs to go away.
But the Inspiration Chamber can stay.
<p>The Inspiration Chamber from Melanie Jones on Vimeo.</p>
By the way, the quote in my new room that kept me sane today and held me back from spiralling out into the storyline about how I'm always broke and money is allergic to me and why why why why FOR GOD'S SAKE WHY was this: "I skate where the puck is going to be, not where it's been." Big ups to Wayne Gretzky for that one.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Last Night A Grant Application Saved My Life
Stuff is happening. It's seriously, seriously happening. And most of it I can't talk about yet. But I can talk about this: writing grants is one hell of a lot of work. It's a job. And the more I talk about it with other artists, the more I realize a whole lotta artists aren't doing that job.
It is hard, hard work. Time consuming, not sexy, creativity sucking work.
But my grant deadlines (two in the past five days) have moved my project forward faster and into new realms of awesomeness than anything else has. You heard right: grant deadlines are making this thing happen.
'Whyzat?,' you might ask.
The two grants I just applied for are for touring and international travel for artists. The applications require a pretty solid confirmation that you are in fact going overseas to present some art in the form of letters of interest or invitation, contracts, etc. In order to get these sorts of things, you have to hustle.
H-U-S-T-L-E, darlings.
And hustle, I have. I've followed up on every single contact that anyone would give me. I've bought more coffees that you can shake a stir-stick at. I've followed weirdo leads I didn't think would go anywhere and I ended up with a booking agent who has the phone number of the actual director of the actual Cultural Olympiad.
Truth.
In fact, that person is calling the director of the Cultural Olympiad right now about my London dates. It is far to early to even whisper about this but how jolly freaking good would it be if ENDURE was an official Olympic event?! The thought of it makes my heart fly up to outer space.
And this is just the big stuff. The other things my grant deadlines have forced me to assemble are: a bad-ass, super-clear project description, a detailed budget, incredible letters of support, a five-minute audio sample, a gorgeously formatted script, all my press and high-res photos, all the video footage which I had to edit into work samples.
The footage was in Calgary. My friend snail mailed me a hard drive of raw footage. Video was thiiiiiiis close to being put in the 'fuck it' pile. But, I took a deep breath and learned iMovie, Garage Band and iDVD and I cried a lot and now I have a 10-minute 'selected scenes' work sample edited and ready to rock. Boom.
Thanks to those two deadlines (and about 50 hours of work), I will now be firing applications off like a grantastic Gatling gun. I am now unstoppable. Thanks to two hairy, ornery, sleep-losing, wrinkle-inducing, morning-crying, stomach-aching, hug-needing, overnight-Fed-Exing grant applications.
As I rode the elevator up to my place this evening – after running ALL over Manhattan to buy DVDs, burn DVDs, print everything, copy everything, go to pick up a support letter, have them not be ready for me to pick up the support letter, dick around for three hours until I could pick up said support letter and then, finally and with much celebration and armpit sweat, pay 80-gee-dee-dollars to send in my materials – I made a decision. Two decisions, actually, but one of them involves that bottle of Pinot Noir over there.
My decision is this: I'm applying for TEN TIMES my tour budget. Ten times. At least. Know what that is? Half a million bones, compadres. Half. A. MILLLLLLLLIONNNNNNNNNN. Because it doesn't end at assembling the most beautiful grant application on God's green acre. It starts there. And it keeps going until Mama gets paid.
Oh...one more thing. I'll go into this in detail once I get some good news confirmations that this is actually happening, but the number one most frequently asked question about me going to the Olympics has been: "Wow...how did you get that?"
Answer: I didn't "get" it. I made it.
I plan on taking that to the bank.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Fail Inside The Box
I have exactly no time to be writing this. It's a crazy week of work, grant deadlines and houseguests, but something happened last night that so perfectly describes the way of being I rant about on this blog and elsewhere that I had to share.
I've been invited to take part in an Interactive Performance Workshop run by Jeff Wirth, a guy who has been studying, practicing, teaching and writing about interactive performance for around 30 years. He's a mad genius.
He created something called Story Box which is, at its simplest description, a square stage. Performers (interactors) and audience (spectactors) work in the box, in a kind of theatre in the round idea. In last night's workshop, Jeff played the part of the spectactor, giving us interactors various common 'types' or responses we'll come across working with spects (as they're known).
My colleagues and I lined the outside of the box and I could feel the anxiety cranking itself up to 11. Eventually, I'd have to get in that box. I'd have to improvise and come up with scenarios and be smart and think on m feet and guide the scene and make this spectactor person feel good and like they were winning and make them want to play with me and and and and and.
"Fail inside the box," Jeff said. "Don't stand outside the box spinning in your head. Step in. Fail inside the box, don't fail outside of it."
I instantly relaxed.
Fail inside the box.
Not only was I being invited to fail, but I was reminded I would fail either way. Failing inside the box meant jumping in with both feet and learning by doing. It meant I would learn faster (MUCH faster), get out of my own way earlier and cut through fear and anxiety with a much sharper knife. Failing outside the box? Festering in my own anxiety and then slinking away, reminded of all the other times I didn't risk and get better at something that scares me.
YOU WILL FAIL EITHER WAY. But failing outside your comfort zone means you'll learn so much faster.
This is the secret sauce to moving forward in quickly in your creative life: constantly and consciously failing inside the box. Putting yourself out there (in there?) and forcing yourself to learn by doing. I do this over and over and over again. The more I leave my comfort zone, the easier it gets.
And it asks us to do something really subversive in this achievement-oriented, security-obsessed culture we live in: embrace failure. Dive into failure as the single BEST way to learn something and get good at something. (Watch a baby learning to walk and you'll see the power of "failure" in all its glory.)
Fail inside the box. Don't fail outside of it. Happy Monday.
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
The Four Best Things On The Planet (According To Me Right At This Moment)
We're only 16 days in and 2012 has been a big year. Almost everything feels brand new. I started a new (part-time) job – my first go-into-the-office job since, oh, 2007. I taught my first workshop. And then my first webinar. I worked on a real-live off-Broadway production for one of my favourite playwrights. I discovered that off-Broadway was different but not that different (more seats, more staff, more ass-kissing, but other than that...pretty much the same). I discovered that hugely successful people need help, or are willing to offer it, just like everyone else. All you really have to do is call them.
I've been invited to take part in a series of workshops on interactive theatre, so I'm doing that. I've received a budget for my London 2012 Olympics (and the Edinburgh Festival) idea for ENDURE. I have a $50,000 fundraising job ahead of me and I need producing/presenting partners in the UK. I don't have time to be nervous or hesitant or scared about those things. I have to dive in and get things done because it's basically six months away.
I've learned that a show about marathons is interesting and exciting to booking agents during an Olympic year. I've learned that happy accidents and coincidences happen when you're willing to try new things, meet new people and talk about your idea wherever you go.
Mostly, I've learned that the three best things on the planet are:
1. Trusting my gut,
2. Leaving my comfort zone and
3. Taking responsibility for myself.
Amazing, amazing, amazing stuff happens when you have the balls to do those three simple things.
What do I mean by that?
Well, end of last year, I was in a pretty heavy victim place. Poor me, the Extraordinary Alien who can't legally work in a coffee shop. I was so fixated on what I couldn't do and what wasn't going for me that I couldn't see what would happen if I just sucked it up and (as my friend Cathy says) put my big girl pants on.
In late December, I ended up applying for and getting a tutoring job. It wasn't a job I really wanted or had passion for, but it was about owning the fact that if I wanted to be able to pay my rent, I might have to drop the line about how sad it was that my show didn't make enough to pay me and just get a friggin' job already. So I did that.
And then (because I was open and willing) a job I could REALLY use came along. A job grant writing where I can learn, practice and get PAID for a skill I need as a self-producing artist. The job is 15 hours per week and when I got it, I made myself a deal. The deal is if I'm giving someone else 15 hours of fundraising effort, then I commit to giving myself the same thing.
I also decided to teach the workshop and webinar. I've wanted to teach since I started blogging in 2008. But working within my comfort zone of copywriting for dollars, I was never pushed or forced to try teaching. Being in the U.S. and in a position to completely re-define my income-generating life, I figured now was the time. I love it. I am totally addicted.
And about trusting my gut? Well, let's just say that the plan to take ENDURE to the Olympics started out as a secret, private dream – one that was actually met with sniggering and eye-rolling when I told a few people. Something in me knew that the show needed to go there, so I just took the idea underground for awhile and then, when the time was right, I brought it back out and fought for it. Now, we've got more presenter interest than we've ever had for the show and momentum is happening. Because OF COURSE this show should go to the Olympics! OF COURSE.
But I also had to face one big reality. That if I want to take the show to the Olympics, it's my responsibility to get it there. I have a team of support, yes, but they are all busy with their own lives and projects. So the onus of passion, drive and energy is on me. I know that if I build it, they will come. But I have to build it. I have to start.
Okay, wait, there's a fourth most awesome thing:
4. Drop perfectionism like it's hot.
You'll never try anything new if you think you have to be great at it the first time. Teaching the workshop and webinar fall into this category, but this story is more fun...I ran into Rufus Wainwright at the airport on my way home for Christmas. I was horribly nervous, but I forced myself to talk to him. After all, we're fellow Canadian artists living in New York – and I make theatre in collaboration with musicians! So I go over and say, "Hi." And he turns and I say, "Rufus Wainwright?" Only all those Rs and Ws got jumbled up in my mouth and it came out all fucked: Woofer Rainwight. And I made REALLY SPECTACULARLY AWKWARD conversation for awhile, sounding like a total fangirl even though I'm not actually a fangirl, and then he ran away into the terminal.
The end.
(One of my New Year's resolutions is to practice talking to famous people.)
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by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
Creative Kickstart 2012 And Some Really Great News
Okay, three things.
One.
Apparently my New Year Manifesto really hit home! That thing is making the rounds all over the Internet and for that I am both tickled pink and praying to the little baby Jesus there weren't any typos.
I am also really happy this thing has spread as far as it has because...
Two.
I'm running two workshops! My New York friends get to attend Creative Kickstart 2012 live and in person on January 7th for the low-low price of $50. My international friends get to attend the online version on January 14th for $25.
And next year, I'll try not to cannibalize my live events with lower-priced online options. (Insert winky emoticon here.)
This year, I'm cannibalizing FOR YOU, dear friends, because I really, really, really want you to set your year up for getting your creative work done. I think by now you know how life-changing it's been to prioritize my creative work. Lucky for you, it's become my new obsession that every artist I know gives themselves that same gift.
What's wild is this applies not just to aspiring artists but to working artists as well. I know a ton of artists who get so wrapped up in making a living or working their artist day jobs (teaching, admin, marketing, working for other people's creative projects/companies) that prioritizing their OWN work slips through the cracks.
No more, friends. This is the end of getting 'close enough' to your dreams. This is the year you let them come first.
If you need more convincing, how about the whole Mayan calendar thing? No time like the countdown to the apocalypse.
I want you to register* as soon as is humanly possible because I have a New Year's ritual to share with you that you will love. It started on January 1st, but there's still time to make it work for you (it goes until January12th...intrigued yet?).
Three.
2011 ended with a really great and validating surprise. ENDURE was named one of 2011's Most Memorable Theatre Moments by The Calgary Herald!
Delightful times a hundred and all the confirmation I need of the power of finishing creative projects and letting them out into the world. (Which is, really, the only part of this I had control of.)
When I first chatted with him for the preview he wrote, the Herald writer (Stephen Hunt) told me that two of his favourite things were solo shows and running. I almost dropped the phone when he said that because not only do 'one woman shows' normally fill me personally with ovary-shriveling dread, but I wasn't convinced theatre reviewers would give a show about marathoning the time of day.
Happily, I was two for two with dear Mr. Hunt and, once again, convinced that making work about whatever you're passionate about and fascinated by matters. It MATTERS, people. Now, get at it.
*How to register: go to PayPal, click the 'Send Money' link and fire off $25 (for online workshop) or $50 (for live workshop) to collision at melaniejones dot ca. Use an email address I can reach you at and I'll send you this amazing New Year's ritual and also one about MONEY. Yeah baby. Money.
Posted
by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
This Is The Year
This is the year.
The year you drop the weights that have kept you down. Those old not-true truths, the stories about how hard it all is and the ways you aren't up for it. It's the year you put all those on the ice floe and send them out to sea.
It's the year you clean house. The year you remember that it's not what happens but how you react to it. That you are what you eat and who you're friends with. That the way to really free yourself is to look directly at the hard stuff and to forgive everyone involved. Because you want to be free not because they were right.
It's the year you take 100% responsibility for your life. The year you stop complaining about it and blaming other people and start figuring out what you have the power to change. Because as soon as you do that you see that you aren't trapped and never have been. It's the year you cut the shit.
The year you get things done. The year you act on things rather than worrying about them. Or avoiding them. It's the year you act.
This is the year you finish things. The one where you drop perfectionism like it's hot. The one where it no longer matters if you're good enough or smart enough or talented enough because none of that has anything to do with the work of simply bringing something to completion. It's the year you experience how difficult and how satisfying 'finished' is. And how that immediately makes you want to do it again.
It's the year you remember there are no shortcuts and that good things take a really long time. It's the year you cultivate patience. The year you let go of timelines and expectations and the hope that someone will save you or discover you. It's the year you save and discover yourself.
It's the year of small actions and big ideas. Bigger ideas than are comfortable because the only person who decides the size of your life is you. And because up until this point you've been thinking too small. It's the year of thinking too big. Too grand. Too magnificent. Too...impossible.
It's the year of being okay with being uncomfortable.
The one where you stop trying to be cool. This is the year where you look people in the eyes and tell them the truth. It's the year you stop pretending.
This is the year you trust yourself. It's the year you trust where your intuition is asking you to go. It's the year you remember that the path you're on is 100% yours and will not look like anyone else's no matter what. It's the year you stop following other people's paths and follow your own.
It's the year you let go of needing that path to be straight.
It's the year you laugh more. It's the year you're more grateful. The one where you remember that it wasn't a series of catastrophes that got you here but a series of gifts. It's a year of more gifts. It's the year where you notice them.
Happy 2012 everyone.
PS. NYC folks should sign up now for the January 7th workshop. I'll be sending out a free/bonus New Year's ritual tomorrow to those who have registered. Non-NYC friends: Creative Kickstart webinar will be on Saturday, January 14th from 2-4pm Eastern. Registration details coming, but if you want the New Year's ritual as well, email your interest to melanie @ melaniejones dot ca.
Posted
by Melanie "Calamity" Jones
