2014: The Year of Embracing New Perspectives

Some people actually learn something when close family members die. Others don't pick up on anything at all. Guess they're not reading the signs or capable of picking up on those. An upside to being a creative person is that I actually do know something about signs and can recognize them when they're thrust in front of me.

I was telling a friend of mine about this recently & he didn't give me the sense he thought I'd become a new agey crazy freak type (I already believed in signs before this year so it'd be more like discovering I was one & not knowing it beforehand). Others I've mentioned this to also haven't dismissed me as a kook or nutcase, even some very intelligent people outside the creative industry.

Recently, I went to my first ever yoga class & discovered a few things:

A) I'm not nearly as flexible as I look, which needs to be corrected. I was never able to fold myself into a pretzel but I did have SOME physical flexibility when I was taking dance in high school.

B) I was right in thinking I ought to take it & it would benefit me since there's a mental component where you're supposed to relax, live in the moment and not stress out so much on things.

C) It's apparently not a contest of who's most flexible & you can still participate even if you aren't able to fold yourself into a pretzel.

Now to find the yoga studio that doesn't cost a fortune and where I'm not going to get harassed for being the pretty girl.

Been doing a few other things as well & dealing with heavy shit alongside them. I feel some serious changes and transitions coming in the new year. Part of me is edgy about those but then I remember the saying "life is change." Life isn't a permanent thing & if you can't evolve your thinking, your perspective, etc. you get stuck in ruts and become shattered when inevitable change happens. I realized I didn't want that for my life.

So I've been more amenable to considering ideas and activities I might not have done before, talking to people I might have dismissed before & just being objective instead of letting assumptions take over. I decided to look more at what I was being presented and my observations vs. my stereotypes, prejudices, assumptions, etc.

I've still been networking & it seems my pool continues to evolve from where it was before. I auditioned to be a VJ for ITTV an online TV network that covers major events in NYC, including some of the fashion shows I have been in. Before the tryout, I only knew one host of the network who I'd been in fashion shows with.

I'd heard about their contest for a female VJ & thought it sounded interesting. So many people have told me for years I should consider hosting work & would be good at it. However, not having a reel yet I figured I wasn't quite ready (that's something else going on this month).

When contacting the host I knew on the fashion show & modeling there, he invited me to the initial meeting for this audition. It was a completely spontaneous thing on my part so I figured "Why not?"

I went, met some of their people (who are awesome, by the way) and officially entered the running. Thursday was a private event where we were having the tryout & I put in my best. I will say my make-up was truly awesome since the artist doing it put in over an hour on it; guess now I've got an idea of what being a full time model would be like.

Don't know if I'll win or not & the other girls in the competition were good as well; I even knew a fair amount of them already from other fashion shows. This wasn't one of those catty, mean competitions; I would be happy for any of them winning since no one caused me any problems or was critical toward me.

I seriously still see good things in my experience in the fashion world & have not seen the bad stuff everyone talks about. Again, not to say that doesn't exist at all but I've not been subjected to nastiness or made to feel like the awkward, nerdy girl. I have firmly accepted at this point that I'm not "Josie Grossie" (to borrow from Never Been Kissed).

Got more going on as well, even haters. Seriously, I don't do adult films, have a contract with a major television network & am not being hounded by the media but I have haters so consumed with boredom, immaturity and stupidity that they go to the trouble of bothering people in my circle with nonsense. Who does that?

Just so you know, we consider being threatened, stalked, harassed, and other forms of nonsense that these idiots think are going to stop us from the creation of art badges of honor. It means you matter enough for someone to be pissed off at you. It also lends legitimacy to a career to have people target you for things you do in the course of living your own life. Don't haters realize that for the people in this industry who don't earn paychecks from it that making little threats & engaging in stupidity it means that the target has "made it" if someone hates them enough to create a hate website, stalkerish videos, hack their work, whatever else annoys/pisses off an artist enough to try & interfere with their creation of art?

Haters aren't doing anything to stop the person in question but encouraging their work. So if you don't like someone's work, I suggest you keep your damn mouth shut and not buy the movie ticket, rant about it online, write nasty notes to the actor/model/director/producer/whomever is involved, bother these peoples' families, etc. Detractors just make us more hellbent to do what we want; am I right or am I right, fellow creatives? Haters tell me I'm very much on the right track in what I'm doing regardless of what anyone else says.

Remember that saying "if you're pissing someone off, you must be doing something right?" I totally believe it & anyone with half a brain would agree. Pissing at least one person off should be enough incentive to prevent any right thinking person from committing suicide; suicide just lets the haters win while your continued existence doing what you do will piss them off, raise their blood pressure & maybe eventually give them a well deserved heart attack, coronary, stroke or other medical issue they wouldn't have if they tried living/improving upon their own lives.

I guess you could say my unofficial New Year's resolution was to be more open minded & try new things. Listen to new ideas I haven't considered before, do new things & move in a more positive direction. Enough with the negativity, damn it! I've had enough to cover me for quite some time. I know some of my friends & contacts can relate since they've had their own issues as well.

Nonetheless, the train keeps moving. More plans, more fun in the works & look forward to all of it. Maybe good outcomes will happen, maybe not. I just decided to be zen and follow that statement about the universe having you exactly where you're supposed to be at any given moment.