Lance-a-lot

The foregone fate of the recent English grad has come to pass: today, I signed my first freelance contract.

Season of Giving!

This holiday season, I have decided to donate my savings to those who need it most, to the worthiest charity of all: Educational Testing Services! All I ask for in return is the simple electronic transmission of my GRE scores to the appropriate parties. I love you, ETS. Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy ALL OF MY MONEY.

Without Fail

Doing Shakespeare always leaves me covered in cuts, bruises, and/or broken bones.
Additional findings: it is impossible to capture bruised hip bones, bruised knees, bruised elbows, and modesty all in one picture.

THAT SAID, the scene I am working on right now from The Tempest is incredibly fun. Good to have some simplicity and levity amidst end-of-semester chaos.

Too Late and Just In Time

My two most intense reactions my most recent birthday:

1. "Oh my gosh, I'm too old to apply for the Rhodes"
2. "Oh my gosh, I'd better start wearing lots of gold lamé"

Mercy Be

Well, this week is one of the biggest of my life. That seems dramatic, but it is true! I am scared and excited. The only really analogous feeling I know is stage fright, which I get very rarely, and usually when I HAVE put in the work. I think I am a master of minimizing the stakes when I have not put in the work.

Perhaps skiing works as an analogy, too. I have only been skiing a few times in my life. I can't really remember if I'm good at it or not, but I will pretend to evaluate it as though I remember it:

I fall down a good amount at the beginning, enjoy the lift, am scared to fall getting off the lift. From getting off the lift to the bottom of a run, I am literally completely terrified of myself. Constantly. I experience no other feelings than sheer terror. I think I'm going to lose control of my body and break both of my femurs or somehow jab my skis into and gouge out my eyes at 50mph and end up in a pool of my own blood and no one will ever help me. I of course make it down, and sometimes do a kind of successful hockey stop or else fall down at the very end. I sort of reflect on the experience as thrilling and do a few more runs until my legs are tired and it gets too scary to be fun.

I am taking some risks right now that sort of feel like I'm halfway down a ski run. Everything is happening so fast. I am so fast. I am not failing, or dead, or broken in a pool of my own blood on the white snow. I probably look just like the other skiiers. I do not run into anybody. But what I am feeling is absolute paralysis by fear while my body is successfully skiing. So we'll see how this all goes. And I have to trust that this is fun and I will get out of it with either a cool hockey stop or a wobbly fall in front of the snowboarders. Either way is okay.

I must remember.

The REAL ME

Comrades,
Can you beLIEVe it? My hair color is now my hair color. BACKSTORY, in 7th grade, I begged my mother for highlights in order to avoid looking like an adult and not a cherub. I received $100 in a Winnie-the-Pooh card and became a blonde. Twelve years and approximately The Cost of Supporting a Family of 4 later, I have decided this is maybe a silly way to define myself.
This is who I really am!

 

Oh, whoops. That's Taylor Swift looking richly dark blonde. My bad!

That's me, in my mouse glory. Sometimes I even wear a bathrobe.
Now just you wait while I grow out all my body hair and transition to Fur Poncho Only.