Hola, L.A.

Finally booked my first commercial in LA!

With this guy: http://www.dga.org/multimedia/honors-03/pages/aboutpytka.html

He’s known to be “abusive” to his actors (great!) and also a very busy director.

I’m grateful for this first break and hope others will be soon to follow.

It’s a Hallmark holiday commercial and it shoots sometime next week.

YAY!!!

In three days it will be two months...

Two months seems like enough time to feel settled but it’s not.  Or maybe we’ll never feel settled.  I went to Las Vegas this weekend with a bunch of super accomplished and wealthy people and couldn’t help but feel like I’ve been moving too slowly for too long.  There are things I want to do and I seem to wait on them.  I hesitate to even write them down for fear that I won’t do them…and everyone will know I haven’t done them.

I went to a Kundalini yoga class tonight and I can’t even explain how weird and random everything you do in it is, but the effect is always the same: you feel light, calm, happy and clear.

So, one of the things I WANT to do is to take class every morning and start each day feeling light, calm, happy, clear and see what happens after a month.  Maybe I’ll start to do those other things I want to be doing.

But immediately I start to create an infinite list in my mind about why I can’t actually DO kundalini everyday (too expensive, i can’t stick to any schedule, things come up at the last minute and i’m always rushing, aaron will think i’m being obsessive, i am being obsessive and on and on and on…) and then I think about something the teacher said today…she said the opposite of being a being full of light is being a being full of worry.  And I am SO full of worry.  My mind literally whirs with worry 24/7.  And I don’t know what all this worry is yielding either.  It feels like nothing.

Earthquakes aside...

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind.  I went to NY, then Boston, then home, then attempted to put my nose to the grindstone.  Joined the Y (love it!), started an exercise program (6 days a week!) and committed to running the Lake Tahoe Half Marathon in late September.

Aaron joined the Culver City basketball league.  I saw my oldest friend Chelsea (24 years and counting!) and made some preliminary plans to purchase yet another car.

Wait, am I leaving out Joshua Tree? or did I already write about it?  We went camping there, two nights.  First night: Jumbo Rocks, site 13, set back from the rode with a huge mountain to the north that the moon rose over, majestically.   Second night, site 16 at Hidden Valley.  A gorgeous, very private campsite with tons of rockclimbing, a beautifully flat and romantic tent side and many, many bees.

Returned from JT ready to rock LA but found ourselves discouraged again by Wednesday.  Why is it so hard to keep that magical camping feeling throughout the rest of our lives?  That feeling that life isn’t that complicated after all.

And finally, we’ve been meeting with an amazing counselor, Randi, to work on processing our grief and shock about our move from New York and everything that precipitated it and are learning really, really valuable things about things we never even planned to talk about.

I love LA, I hate LA, I love LA, I hate LA.

Yesterday I spent the whole day at the Western Conference Track meet where my cousin Cait qualified for regionals and came in 4th overall for Triple Jump. I loved every minute of it and wished I could have triple-jumped back in time to the beginning of college and have made the wise decision to play a sport.  In the end, I just think I would have gotten more out of school that way…

Ah well.

More Mairead, Molly, Martin and Mrs. McGovern time today, which is always fun.  Chrissy is another “old” friend, 13 years and counting (give or take) and I love how BOLD Molly is.  What do bold girls get, Molly? Nothing.

I’m forgetting one other important event.  I watched The Business of Being Born, a documentary about “normal birth”, or birth without tons of medical, pharmaceutical and surgical intervention and it made me so high and excited about giving birth I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.  Netflix offers it “instantly” and I highly recommend it.  I had never seen a baby born before and certainly never imagined it could be like that.

I felt the earthquake, knew it was an earthquake and still tried to tell myself it wasn't an earthquake.

Now, two hours later, I’m still trying to convince Aaron (who was in the Valley and didn’t feel anything) that I’m not making it up.

I did some googling and confirmed that it was, indeed, an earthquake.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/us/19quake.html?hp

And just like that, a blog flatlines...

I was doing really well and then…I went to NYC and left the camera at January’s apartment.  So, I’d like to be posting photos of my cousin Maura’s wedding but instead I’m just typing.

It’s hot in LA, and very relaxing.  Not much doing on the work front, not a single agent-generated audition.  I’ve been actively submitting myself for things and having little bites here and there.  Just yesterday someone asked me to audition for a film that shoots in San Diego but they’re only doing local hires so…no dice.

I’m confident things will work out here, even if it’s not how I think they will.  If I’ve learned anything at all in my 31 years, it’s that where you think you’re going is only tangentially related to where you’re actually going.

Everything is happening perfectly…

Auditioned for the Groundlings LA professional school yesterday

And just found out I GOT IN!

Hooray!!!!