better care

I’ve decided to take better care of myself, to not flounder on my pursuits. I don’t know why, but at times I have found that I am easily swayed, persuaded as it were, into thinking one thing about myself when I know just the opposite is true. Either I am more gullible than I realize or I am relying too heavily on the suggestion that Libras are indecisive, and as a result I refrain from making an outright personal decision.

Line items currently up for grabs:

getting a tattoo

writing more

going to Rome

singing without performing

experimenting with more ice cream flavors

falling in love

letting go

and right now, sleeping

12:43 AM 9/02/09

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But for summer

I’m thinking that if
all my intentions are pure
all is for the best.

Of course illusions,
though they appear to be real:
are most often false.

Leaving me to muse
about dreams and memories
of choice and regrets.

And yet not one sticks.
My heart rests easy tonight
clear, fulfilled and near

to capacity.
It seems odd to want nothing
more than to rest, sleep.

This first day like fall:
dark cool, summer all but lost
forgotten and free.

visualize your dreams

Let’s take a moment to rewind to January where I am having a conversation with one of my closest friends. Kristin and I are making plans for 2009, in our own way we’re challenging each other to make this new year about reconnecting with activities that resonate with us personally. For Kristin it’s all about dance, she dreams of reinventing herself into a Triple Threat: dancer, actress, songstress; I hope to sing, write and get back into photography.

Baby steps, I buy myself a digital SLR and start photographing myself and Tigger in a self-portrait series. Kristin leaps, enrolling at a studio run by a former dance instructor. She signs up for tap, ballet, belly dancing and three months into it her class performed at a local nursing home. 

In late January Kristin tells me about one of her fellow students, Mary Elizabeth. An accomplished opera singer, who has mentioned to Kristin that she will be offering voice lessons at the end of February. Further discussion reveals that Mary’s husband Jay is an acting coach. This news is like a gift: we are on our way. We start lessons: acting and singing for Kristin, just singing for me. Kristin now closer to achieving her Triple Threat title, and with the addition of this blog, I too am striving to fulfill my dreams for 2009.  

Coincidence? Perhaps.

I have firm belief that certain things happen for a reason. If you take the time to visualize what you want, that act alone can open a door, crack a window, offer an opportunity for your dreams to find you.

my inner voice

When I was in JHS, I attended a school for the gifted & talented. Back then my talent was voice. I sang often, mostly in church and on my own around the house, with my mom’s encouragement. Throughout my childhood schooling I was tethered to my own voice, even if I was a bit shy back then. In college, I discovered the power of my voice through creative writing and photography, I still sang in the church folk group, and throughout my 20s and 30s my creative side sang in the car and at karaoke, wrote poems and short stories and captured friends at parties and beach landscapes.

In recent years, I haven’t had much interaction with my creative side–unless you count my participation in the results of other’s endeavors. Caught up in the weeds of a traditional, and sometimes non-traditional work culture, my direct connection to all things creative (writing, photography, singing) went into hibernation. This past new year’s eve as friends and I celebrated at a karaoke bar in Philadelphia I had an epiphany: I realized that some thing missing from my daily life was my other self. Something I seriously needed to reengage and tap into: my inner voice.