Money or Dreams

This week has been tumultuous. I’ve been all up and down like a birthday clown coming off meth, and GEE WHIZ has it been fun for the people around me. Props to my boyfriend for not breaking up with me (thanks guy, you’re great), and props to my family for not changing their last names and going into hiding to get the F away from me.
The reason for the moody mood-ring emotional rollercoaster? Why, dreams of course. Splendid Rose-glasses-tinted dreams. The kind that mean you are like a bloodhound on a scent when it comes to jobs and opportunities and real life. The kind of dreams that wait impatiently in the back of your mind whispering:

“why haven’t I been realized yet? What are you doing? Every day you don’t do something valuable is another day closer to death.”

I like to imagine the voice whispering in the voice of Darth Vader, “psssh Paris, caaaaaw, what are you doing pssssh, cawwww with your fucking life pssssh.”
I digress.

So I’ve been temping here and there…whatever it’s boring… I mean it’s not that boring, I’ve worked in some cool companies, made some new contacts, you know the usual…and this week the Temp Agency (which has been excellent and kept me busy) contacted me and asked me if I’d be interested in being put forward for a job outside of the Creative Field. The role sounded like boring admin, but here’s the kicker… the money was excellent.

I had to have a good grapple with myself. I gave up a cushy admin position back in August to pursue my dreams of Film and Television. I’m young, I don’t really have any commitments, but HELLO it’s been exhausting scraping by each month. A part of me was really really REALLy attracted to the offer.

And then Darth Vader exploded in my head.

Literally, the Dark Side was calling me, but in this case the Dark side was the corporate world, the world of 9-5 and boring KILLMYSELF office politics. Stability. Health care. Benefits. All those words which must mean a lot at some point.
But not today, and possibly not tomorrow, and possibly not for the next few years.
It is stressful trying to keep a positive attitude about going after what you love (especially when a lot of other people seem to want it too), but there is also knowing in your gut when something is the right or wrong path to take. Do I want to wake up in ten years and realize that I’m unhappy? NO.

Would I rather keep slogging it out, working for free, getting involved with lots of projects and running myself ragged in the hope that I will get to where I want to be?
I think so.

But it is a tough balance, and on the days where I have to pay my rent, and phone bill, and internet and buy my Transport for the month and still try to budget for food and entertainment… well on those days I think about just taking a day job.
And then I remember that this my life and I only get one shot at it, so I better make the most of it…yada yada cliché, read them in Morgan Freemans voice. So I hoick up my falling down ratty old jeans, eat my stir fry for the fourth day in a row and keep going.

Because one day Money and Dreams might just go hand in hand.

My quest for Fame and the disintergration of ethics in Social Media

I wouldn’t usually use the word “Whore’ to describe myself, (let alone anyone else unless I was EXCEPTIONALLY pissed off), but there is no denying that for the last 3 days I am been whoring myself on all forms of social media for one reason only.

*Gasp* I have entered a reality tv show type competition.

AND oh MAN do I want it.

Twitter (which I haven’t ever fully appreciated and use mostly for posting stuff about the volunteer TV interviews I do)

Facebook (which I over-use for sharing photos and funny stuff with friends and family overseas)

and Instagram (which is mainly just pictures of snow, cut off “artsy” pictures of my face and the Canuck boyfriends dogs)

I am HATING myself all over Facebook and twitter because I am being so annoying and inundating friends and family with ME ME ME-ness.

VOTE FOR ME! I tell them, and I start thinking it is totally normal to start harassing people I haven’t spoken to in a year (umm…hi….i know we haven’t spoken in a while… and we probably don’t have anything in common any more… but would you be a dear and click this link and rate me even though this is a thing you don’t even care about….)

I have turned into one of those spamming douches that people right-click, hide, on their news feeds.

What have I become?

The truth of the matter is that I cringe to ask people to do this. Not because I am afraid of failure (oh no, I’ve taken quite a few knock-backs in my life and I am FINALLY FINALLY learning to dust myself off and pick myself back up) but because social media has etiquette, and begging for votes or views goes against that etiquette. I am like the prim old lady of Social Media.

But it’s not just me and my well-to-do online profile. There are many articles and sources to look for the way one minds their online manners, and you better not fuck too hard with them because a rain of hate will fall down on you. Delete, dust hands of person. Perhaps in real life you will begin to think less of them.

There have been people who I have been close to deleting because of their online spamming. And now I have morphed into one of those people!

BUT whats a girl to do?

I have been fighting for my bit of the TV/FILM pie for a while now and the one thing I do know is that you have to be in it to win it. You have to say “Hi, I’m here and I’m keen”.

There is a high likelihood that I will not make it into the top forty of this comepetition (No! What am I saying – positive thinking/vibes/ooooooohhhhhmmmmmmm – (thats me meditating to the spirit world of reality tv competitions)) but the fact that I made a video, put myself out there and went for it…well who knows who will see it and think, “that girl is cool.”

There is a saying I heard here in Canada which I love and I think about it all the time.

the saying goes:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

So here it is, my first shot at goal for Much Music…. but who knows?!! At least I’m up for the game.

 

 

The Next Five Years

“Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans” is something my father has been known to say on occasion, but which google reveals to be a John Lennon quote/song lyric. Never is that saying truer than it is for the month of February, which at 28 days most years, goes by in a flash. Here we are March 1st and I’m thinking, we should probably take down the Christmas tree.

My Mum wrote a very funny blog earlier this week, about how she feels she is just hanging around in the waiting room of life. She’s 43 years old and all her children have fled the nest, and she’s not sure what the next twenty years will look like. Well funny that, none of us do.

A day after reading her blog, a package I sent myself six weeks ago arrived. During the Christmas break back in Hong Kong, I spent some time going through some of my old stuff that has accumulated in my mothers tiny apartment. I found my old school blazer (which was gigantic on me in year 12 and now sits the way my work blazers sit…ever an indication of aging and thickening) old programs from Musicals I was in, and I found precious newspaper pages on which I featured.

When I was 15 and living in Hong Kong there was a section of the South China Morning post called “The Young Post” and for a period of time they had different groups of kids (I think they started with 9) come in, photograph them in a couple of different poses, and then send then get them to respond to certain questions. The idea was that you would vote one kid out of the young post every week.

I only lasted 3 weeks or so. My downfall week, the question was “tell us a joke”. My parents had a thick book of politically incorrect jokes that used to sit in our bathroom (wildly inappropriate for children, but hey, I learned a lot about sex and sexual interaction from that novel!) Now, I know what you are thinking, I went ahead and did the one about the Nun and the Irishman. WRONG. Because somewhere in the back of my rude-joke-packed-mind I realized that these jokes were hilarious but also WILDLY inappropriate for the young post, I looked up online, “politically correct, lame jokes,” and came up with the following, which I used as my answer:
“What’s brown and sticky? A Stick!”

I was eliminated. Well Fuck.

But that isn’t where our story ends today. The question before the one that ended my career as Supreme Young Person of Hong Kong 2004, was “Where do you see yourself in 15 years?” And I answered the following:

“Wow! I’ll be 30! Well I hope to be working in a creative Job, maybe Acting because that is something I have always loved, living in some far away exotic place, with some really hot guy.”

Well.

This year I will be 25 and that means it has been ten years since I wrote that.

Let’s check in.

I am certainly living in some faraway place; Toronto is NOT exactly close to Hong Kong, and I’m not sure what I would have defined as exotic back then, having lived the majority of my life in Asia at that point. Compared to the busy, loud, crazy city that I consider my home…snow covered everything is pretty exotic. Eh?

As for the job…at this point I’d take any job as the endless weeks of Temping blur into one another and my sent inbox fills with more and more desperate and unanswered emails, (I’m totally kidding, I’m still working towards the creative thing and have actually had a couple of non-creative job offers suggested to me, which I have politely turned down. I didn’t bust my ass being poor and interning for the last 6 months to give up and take yet another Admin job which pays the bills, but kills my soul.)

And as for the really hot guy thing, let’s not even go there. You don’t want to hear me gush about Canuck boyfriend and he’d probably de-friend me if I did. But I think I’m on-track with that one.

But the next five years is going to be pretty huge I’m guessing. There is obviously no way of knowing (because 2 years ago I would have never thought I’d be where I am today), but the one thing I do know is that life is an ever changing thing. You can never get too comfortable with the way things are, for better or worse, and it’s always for the better in my opinion.
I find it interesting that my Mother feels rutted in her life when she is still in the prime of it. I get it that the hands on child-rearing faze of her life has fizzled, but she never gets to stop being our mother (sucks to be you) and she never gets to stop being a part of her already fairly eccentric family. Maybe that’s her problem (and I suffer from it to) there are days when things just seem too calm and normal.

And that is freaky.
The good news is that she has the next generation to look forward to. Maybe not in the next five years, but, thanks to stupid biology, certainly in the next 15. And she’s already threatened to be the grandmother that feeds the grandkids sugar and lets them stay up late and gives them money to sneak out to concerts and will generally be considered “cool” and therefore loved more than me. Stupid ungrateful unborn, un-conceived children.

I guess we’ll just have to see where we’re at, twenty years from now.

Temping, Prositution of the Corporate world

Temping:

temp [tɛmp] Informal
n
a person, esp a typist or other office worker, employed on a temporary basis
vb (intr)
to work as a temp

Turns out Temping is better paid than retail (not by much, but enough for me to go buy those Croc boots which I swear aren’t ugly, just give me a chance to show you) and because I continue to be ignored by the world of Full Time work in an industry that I am dying to work in, I decided to give Temping a go. Since the beginning of the month I have taken on four different assignments, 2 x 1 day assignments, 2 x 1 week assignments, and learned about a whole new world that I never knew existed.

The world of the Temp.

Let me give you a little run down.

The world of the Temp is a place ungoverned by your average 9-5. You wake up at 7.30am with the hope that at 8am, someone (Pimp) will call you and tell you they need you at XYZ location, and the dress code is *blank*. You slap on some make-up, make sure you vaugely know where you are going and sprint out the door. On the train you wonder again what you are doing with your life, but the other part of your brain says “this is the last job, I promise you. We’ll get the money and then move to Florida.” You get to the destination, you make small talk, find out what the client (John) likes and what they need. You settle down, close your eyes, and daydream you are somewhere else (like at a real job). When it’s all over, they thank you plenty of times, and you shuffle out clutching your time sheet. You buy yourself a couple of drinks to try to forget the disappointment in your mothers eyes.

Temping is the Prostitution of the corporate world.

But you know what? I don’t hate it.

My first two assignments were in Film and Television production companies, and you bet your Chihuahua’s left nut that I worked it like I was on the sinking Titanic and had to get my third-class ass on a lifeboat. The one day gig was a bit of a bust, it was a monday and quiet as hell, but the week long gig yielded fun, a bit of professional networking with an awesome Aussie guy who took my resume and some new surprising friendships with girls my own age who worked in the company. Turns out some of them had been in the same boat as me and some of them even got their jobs after temping first.

Actually, when I started to look into it, Temping seemed to be one of the ways a bunch of people I know got their full-time jobs. They’d go for an assignment and the company would say, you know what, why don’t you stay on, or, why don’t you give us your resume to take a look at. It was kind of like a pre-interview. And hell with the number of resumes and cover letters I have sent off, any chance of getting into ANY company as more than just a name on a piece of paper is a big bonus.

So why did I always think there was such a stigma attached to Temping? I couldn’t even tell you. Maybe there is, but now that I’ve joined the ranks I just don’t care. The job market is so tough out there, and lots of people who want to do what I want to do are stuck in menial jobs, frittering away their youth and talent.

I’d rather wake up each day with the fresh and exciting opportunity of meeting someone that may assist with opening a career door for me, than be marking down sweaters for the third time this week.

End Rant

Bullshit Express

I realize that a lot of my blog posts contain wisdom from my Mum. Every time I do it I feel like singing Mama Say’s from Footloose.

I can’t help it. My Mama is a smart lady who pontificates wisdom even from afar. And one thing she has begun to say in recent years, as I have languished and moaned and sighed and swooned about why my career hasn’t taken off RIGHT NOW WHEN I STAMPED MY FOOT AND SHOOK MY FISTS…

 

 

 

Is:

“Fake it til you make it.”

Now, she wasn’t talking in the bedroom, get your minds out of the gutter, she was speaking more I think about life and careers and such. I think. Sometimes her wisdom is loose and malleable to many and all (sometimes contradictory) instances.

But anyway.

Recently I’ve been interning at a place called Rogers TV over here in Toronto. It’s like Foxtel in Australia or Star TV in Hong Kong. They are a cable provider, but they also have their community channels and local programming. As a result of being a big personality, blonde, Australian anomaly (and not half bad at public speaking I suppose) and being around the studio two days a week, I was offered the opportunity to audition for a role as community reporter.

So I went along to the audition, finding it hard to take the whole thing seriously as I was being screened by the Producer and Director of the morning show I intern on and had to fake interview another Producer I was chummy with and pretend we were at an Oktoberfest thing.

The whole thing was a trip into randomness. But it was fun. And they chose me and another girl out of six female audition participants to get our reporter on. So woooh us.

Since then I have probably shot 7 or 8 segments for Daytime Toronto and two Segments for Toronto Speaks. I never know when they are going to air (I honestly think the Producer kind of figures it out last minute) and it is always fun when someone mentions they saw me, or when I go in to work on Daytime and realize they are rolling something I shot.

Keep in mind that I do all of this UNPAID in the hopes that it will lead to that amazing J-bomb of a word…

A Job.

I’m just like the rest of the underpaid (read: Not Paid) over worked, underfed (pahhhhahaha if only) interns out there.

The difference is on occasion I get to hold a Red microphone (which is usually scratched up to shit) and plaster on my biggest ditzy smile and have a cameraperson (usually a big burly dude named Ken who I secretly adore) follow me around to different local community events.

And wow you should see how people react.

Nobody has ever heard of me.

Nobody recognizes me.

Everybody loves me.

It’s amazing what an aura of pretend control, a microphone and a clipboard full of realease forms can do.

Mostly I just pretend that I’ve done this reporting thing a million times. I throw words like “shoot” and “Mike check” around and people are putty in my hands. The first time I ever went on a Rogers shoot (because the way it works over at Rogers TV is they are like: “Oh you’ve never actually interviewed anyone on camera before? That’s okay, go do it right now) Ken asked me if I’d done this sort of thing before, and I snorted and was like DUH. Ken. God. Get with the program. But my hands were shaking like I had had 15 cups of coffee. And I messed up 2 takes. AND it is possibly one of the worst/most awkward interviews you have ever seen in your life.

Fake it til you make it.

But if anyone every asked, I would come straight out and say it. I do this for FREE because it’s great experience and also it’s FUN and also sometimes there are free sandwiches (once. once there were free sandwiches. And it was glorious. And I ate loads. And Ken and I got to take some home.)

Yes. I tweet and Instagram and Facebook a lot of shit about the TV thing. I’m trying to build something like an online persona. But I’m open about all of the things above.

So it’s pretty interesting (in the way horrifying things are) to me when people aren’t honest about themselves and the bullshit castle they’ve built. Theres faking it til you make it, and then there is delusion and believing your own bullshit.

We all bullshit, it’s part of life and its DEFINITELY a part of social media.

But it doesn’t have to be a part of the voices in the back of your head. It doesn’t have to nourish you.

Today on the show we had a guest who was SO into her own bullshit, it was hysterical.

I was behind Camera Two today (the easiest Camera, because…well I’m not that great at Camera and it is a live show) and this guest was preparing herself for her segment, lounging around having had her makeup done by the professional make up artist (also a volunteer) and she starts telling a story, to no one in particular but I guess KINDOF the publicist for the company she represents, and kind of to the crew standing around in the calm before the storm (all unpaid and learning just like me, I should add) and she starts name dropping like we give a fuck.

Nope. Sorry. Never heard of this supposedly famous columnist you know over at some online magazine I’ve never heard of.

Ironically she mentioned that her other famous blogger friend who lives in NEW YORK (ooooohhh my god you know someone living in New York?! It’s JUST like Sex and the City!) was blogging about her and her relationship and BASICALLY wrote an open letter to her and it was SCANDALOUS.

Cue dramatic pause.

Cue all of us shrugging like…whaaaaa the crazy guest talking about?

TV will do weird things to people.

This lady was on the show to talk about hand creams. And maybe if I google her, she will turn out to be a big deal.

Buuuuuuuut. I didn’t really care.

I just wanted to check my focus and find out what the chef was cooking to see if we’d get yum free food after the show.

You know.

The important stuff.

 

 

Here it is

It’s Thanksgiving in America this weekend, and while I am not American, nor do I live in America (North of the border YO!) I think it’s an important time of my life to take a deep breath and think about what is important and to say THANKYOU Universe and Science and World for letting me take my little gulps of air and to have blood thrumming all over my body in this thing we called life.

Because someone I know kind of died yesterday.

I didn’t know this person so well, he was a friend of my Mum’s and I met him and did a play with him when I was 14 years old. I knew him as a backdrop to my adolescent self-obssession, and later as an adult, as that guy who always posted a word of the day on Facebook (dang Facebook wall cloggers!)

And though I am saddened for my Mum who is sad, and I quietly mourn the loss of anyone who passes away at a time when they are too young (47), I am not a Sympathy Vampire, intent on packaging this loss to gain attention for myself, or make a statement about how this affects ME ME ME. I just note his death as a time to reflect and to take stock in a busy world.

Thank you…

Sometimes I think I’m not normal. Does everyone spend as many hours in their own head obsessing about things like I do? Do people beat themselves up as much as I do, for the passing of time and the apparent non-achievements they think should have come more easily by now?

Does everyone have this restless demon rolling around inside their ribcage, and a voice in the back of their brain that constantly cries “run away! What’s over there?! Look at all those people doing more fun stuff than you! Flee, jump, swim, out out OUT! What would Tina Fey do??”

Or is it just me?

I think it’s safe to say that most of the time I put on a very confident exterior. I just seem to get on with things. I move countries. No big. I settle in wherever. Whatevs. People have used the word brave to describe me before..

But the ugly truth of the matter is that I am a roiling rack of insecurities, fear and uncertainty. I second guess every single move I make, and it is exhausting. There is no harsher critic than yourself. And I have begun to realize that perhaps that level of  self-criticism is too hard to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Maybe it’s my oldest child syndrome forcing me to be an overachiever, or the small child in me that was bullied badly in those early years who made a vow one evening in the bathtub (I’ll show you, I’ll show all of you! I’ll get so famous and then I’ll pretend I forgot your name!), but enough is never enough. Up until this point I have never been working hard “enough” I have never made “enough” money, it’s never quiet as bright and sparkly “enough” I’m not thin “enough”.

I’ve come to realize that people don’t often talk about painful things, or things they think will put them in a lesser light. The population is afraid to look weak, or maybe we’re all just Keeping up with the Kardashians. And as a result, everybody secretly thinks they’re sucking way worse than everybody else.

That they aren’t “Good Enough.”

And that’s how I feel sometimes.

Like when my visa was screwed up, I felt like I hadn’t been prepared, and when I couldn’t get it fixed and felt like a goldfish lost in the ocean, I felt like I was failing at life. As the dollars in my bank account dwindled, and my stress levels rose, I wondered how all the other 24-year-old wannabe’s out there were doing it.

Because no one ever said to me “You know what Paris, this week I feel like I’m really fucked and sucking at all this reality.” And so I thought, “oh, it’s just me that sucks then.”

The truth is, I’m less financially secure than I have ever been in my life. I’m finally getting some TV experience and I love it, but after applying for hundreds of jobs, there is still nothing paying coming my way. I have two degree’s behind me, and I’m starting to think I should have taken four years of work experience over the higher-learning. I wonder all the time about whether I should pack in this North American adventure and head for the hills (aka either of my parents houses). I’m trying to decide if I’m making any progress, or if I’m a seagull trapped behind a glass door, continuously bashing its head against a barrier it can’t see and the thing it craves.

I’m thankful for:
My Family, who are far away, but who I love and who I miss. The older I get, the more clearly their cracks and lumps and bumps become apparent to me, but the same goes for me, and they seem to still like me anyway.

My boyfriend and my friends-wherever they may be in the world.

My ability to read and write, two of my greatest loves in this world.

Being healthy. That’s a big one, one that I know you are supposed to be thankful for, but which I never truly appreciate.

The safety I enjoy by being an Australian Citizen, for the ability to live in countries of my choice, and live in peace.

It’s not a long list, and it’s not detailed. But for richer or poorer, those are the things that matter to me. I could specify, and I have private lists that go on and on. But those are the main things, and even when I am staring down the barrel of a potentially stressful few months, or stuck inside my own head over analysing the little things and driving myself crazy, I remember (somewhere in the recesses of that other part of me that is actually pretty practical and on top of things) that I will be okay. And that my life is a tiny blip compared to the age of the earth and the stars.

End Rant.

24 things they don’t warn you about before you turn 24

24. You can’t handle your alcohol like you used to:
When I lived at College for 3 years, my liver was a hardened criminal, used to taking no shit from no bitches, and handling, on average, 7-8 drinks a night 6-7 times a week (sometimes we didn’t drink on Sundays…sometimes). Now my liver is a Pussy, and it has made the rest of my body soft and weak. Stupid age.

23. Some things that were cute when you were 18, are not cute now you are a hop skip and a jump away from being thirty:
Like losing all your stuff on a night out (oh darn, you lost your phone again? WOOPSIES! You fucking moron) or getting caught in the rain with no umbrella (YOU CHECKED THE WEATHER ON YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE YOU LEFT!) We’re too smart now to do dumb things like this. Or, we’re just too dumb and evolution needs to sort that out.

22. People are going to start settling down, and shit:
Check my blog from Monday where I detailed the stuff I don’t know about weddings. But weddings aside, people are getting engaged, their moving in with each other, they’re not going out as much any more because they’re saving for things. WTF mate.

21. Your health is more important:
But I WANNA eat that cheesecake at lunch and still get frozen yogurt after my dinner of pizza and mozzarella sticks. WHAT THE HELL IS A CLOGGED ARTERY AND WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT IT?! You’re also going to get fat as fuck with your metabolism peaking out on you.

20. People are going to ask you what you do…all the time:
When I was 18, people assumed I was at University. I didn’t know people that weren’t. I might have asked them what they were studying if I was trying to be polite or trying to make out with them, but I didn’t really care (it was just the pre-hitting on them move). Now people ask me all the time what I do. What shall I tell them? “I WAS working in retail (which I hated) and then I found out my visa had an error on it so now I’m just interning and mindlessly cruising the internet. Is this the part where I ask you and you can tell me even though I don’t really care?”

19. At first paying your own bills and doing your own laundry was exciting and fun. Now it isn’t.

18. There are people younger than you, more successful and more famous than you. And you should feel bad.

17. You won’t live forever:
This shocked me. I went to my first funeral this year and where I used to think 50 was sooooooo old, now I can’t help thinking my friends mum died SOOOOOO YOUNG. I’ll be fifty in 26 years. That’s not enough time to do all the things I need to do! Maybe i’m not invincible…

16. Every year – things seem to speed up and go a little faster:
I can’t believe I just had another birthday. Didn’t I just have one last month? See number 17.

15. All that talent you displayed in High School – when people told you how unique and creative you were…
Well there’s lots more competition now.

14. Your parents protected you from a lot of the crazy out there.
It’s going to rattle tins at you on the corners, it’s going to knock on your door and try to tell you about jesus. Someway, some how, each year the crazy is going to try and seep into your life and you are going to become more and more aware of a) how scary it is and b) how not difficult it would be to join those ranks.

13. Cliques and Bitchyness didn’t end in High School:
Best to have a “Fuck it” attitude and just be you. Cos Heyoooh, if you don’t like you, no one else is going to buy into your crap.

12. You should have done a degree with the title of a job in it:
Like Accounting or Law. Your wishy washy arts/liberal/science degree ain’t gonna get you no where easily. Having read all of Jane Austen’s novels is not something you can put on your resume.

11. You’re getting too old to accept some of these new music types:
Skrillex.

10. There are lots of lame things you need to do to survive:
Like taxes, keeping your eye on your bank account and getting health check ups.

9. People are going to judge you on what wine’s you drink:
“I drink to get drunk” is no longer an acceptable or funny answer.

8. Some of the best paying jobs sound boring as shiiiiiit:
Account manager for a paper company. Sales and Marketing Division leader at Do You Hate Your Life Yet LTD.

7. Your tastebuds are changing and things you used to hate you might start to like and things you used to love might make you go “Meh.”

6. You can’t believe everything you see on TV:
BUT BUT! Everything always has a happy ending!

5. You are going to lose touch with some of your best friends:
As everyone’s lives adapt at a different pace and people move all over the world. But don’t worry because there are always amazing new people to meet, and you never know what they are going to bring to your life.

4. You are going to make mistakes, and you are going to be okay:
I used to think I had to have all the answers all the time, but now in my period of waiting and watching and applying and sighing, I realize that I’m allowed to fall down and make mistakes and take this moment of question-mark-ness. Now I realize that if I fall, I just have to get back up, and if I fall again, I’m just going to have to get back up again. That’s the journey.

3. You only have to answer to you – when it comes to life decisions:
I used to think I had to keep up with the crowd, do cool things, impress my parents, reach a certain status. Now I’m starting to learn that I couldn’t be something I’m not, that that is where my life path is. See #17. When I die, I’, hoping that in the split second before I expire, when my life is all laid out in front of me like a patch work quilt, I tried my best as a person to be good and love those around me, but also that I tried my best to listen to my heart and do what was in it.

2. If you want something, you have to ask for it.
No body is just going to hand you your dreams and ambitions. It’s a hard, slippery, scary path, but you have to walk it because nobody else is going to walk it for you. Remember in school when if you wanted to join a sports team or do the play, your parents had to sign something, or they could call the teachers and complain if you didn’t get in? Now it’s you that has to make the fuss, ask for things, fight for yourself.

1. You are going to have SO much fun!

And those are my 24 things. Some are rude, harsh, cynical. Some are sappy and some were just me scrabbling. But there they are laid out for you.

Enjoy.

Six Feet Under-standing

Today I finished watching the fifth season of a little HBO show they like to call ‘Six Feet Under’. I began watching Season One earlier this year with intelligent and sort of cineophile-ish Canuck boyfriend. When he began explaining the premise of the show (that it is about a family who own, operator and live at the premises of a funeral parlour) I was intrigued but hesitant (the fact that he has not once been wrong in suggesting a film to me is besides the point.)

What began in the early part of this year ended today, and to his credit, Canuck boyfriend watched the entire thing again from start to finish with me, without missing an episode. We would discuss at length this emotional, fantastic show about love and loss and everything in between.

I haven’t watched many shows from start to finish without missing an episode, and especially with the same person in the room for every viewing experience. I think the last time something like this happened I was in Hong Kong for Christmas, and my Mum and I downloaded the first and second season of ‘Archer’ a wickedly funny animated adult-ish show about a spy agency. I was supposed to be heading out later that evening, but Mum and I downloaded them all, started drinking Bailey’s in the afternoon and couldn’t stop. I have never laughed so hard, nor snorted Milk so far across a room before.

But watching ‘Six Feet’ was different. Not only are the characters so real that you miss them and hope for their safety and well-being, but the way the show progresses is in a linear narrative structure, so each episode reveals something new about the characters and deepens their journey. And while I’m sure that each episode has its stand-alone qualities (each episode begins with a death and follows a similar structure, jumping from story lines that ensnare the different characters) after watching 5 series of this show in order…I can’t imagine just flicking on the TV and catching a re-run, or skipping to episodes I think I might like better.

After five series you believe in the struggles of the Fishers (the main family) and their community, and you have also watched them grow and develop, make up and break up, so you feel like you know their past and where they might be headed.

The whole cast and crew of this show can not be commended highly enough. They take you on a roller coaster of emotion, and although I am extremely late to the party on this one (the fifth season ended in 2005) I feel that the messages and struggles within the show are relatable to each of us today.

Whether it is David’s struggle with accepting his sexuality and wanting a family, Nate’s fear of commitment and responsibility, Ruth’s fight for independence and self-image after years of playing the role of wife and Mother, or Claire’s desire to be heard, to not be forgotten about and to be loved, we have all been there, we have all felt at times like a David, a Nate, a Ruth or a Claire. This show reminds us that life is not always pretty. It’s intense and interesting, but it ain’t always sunshine and lollipops.

In a TV and film landscape where producers and film studios are still trying to feed us glittery images of a Utopia that doesn’t exist (well…maybe it does…on the backlots of LA studios) this show is refreshing a sad and unflinching when it comes to dealing with pain.

‘Six Feet Under’ says:

Hey you know what? Sometimes life sucks. But you’ll get over it.

Everyone always said to me that the last episode would stay with me. After the tumultuous five seasons, I couldn’t imagine where the writers could take us after all the hurt we as an audience had endured. But they really took it to the next level and everyone was right. The last episode was amazing.

I would recommend that people commit to the 70 or so hours of viewing, just for the last ten minutes of episode twelve, season five.

I wish sometimes that life was documented like a TV show (I’d definitely want mine to be HBO). Things happen to us in increments sometimes, just little tiny pieces of the days and nights and they add up to make big things, to change lives for the better or for the worse, but always clumping together to form hours and days and months and years. And it’s hard to see them in big picture form. Sure, you’ll remember the big ones, the day she said yes, the day you signed your name on the deeds of the new place, births, deaths, awkward school reunions…

But what about the moments of interaction with a family member – where you learned something unique about them just for a split second, where you saw them in a different light for just a moment? In TV land the character could narrow their eyes and the music could come up, but in real life those moments go undocumented. They just happen and without realizing them, or having the remote control to go back, freeze and re-watch, we are unable to perhaps identify significance – or appreciate that nuance to the extreme.

The underlying message that I took away from this incredible show is that life is short and hard sometimes, but beautiful.

I’ll try to keep that in my heart on the days I wonder what the fuck I’m doing with my life

You don’t get it…I’m an ArTIsTe

Pursuing any kind of career is hard (unless you’re Bruce Wayne). Because of my interesting life, I know many interesting people (yay ME) from all industries scattered across the globe. Some of my best friends are medical-types, educators, health-related people, business savvy wizards, nine to fivers and of course creative types.

Each industry has its ladder to climb and no ladder is less challenging than any other.

But sometimes I wonder, if the Arts industry actually has a ladder? Maybe its more of greased up lightning rod you’re trying to climb? Or maybe where the ladder is supposed to be, there’s actually just an empty space with an artwork tag that says “Ladder” and four creative types (one in tattered jeans and some kind of slouchy headwear) are standing around describing how “post modern” and “eclectic” the ladder is. And just like in the Emperors new clothes you nod and agree and leap in the space it theoretically should be, only to fall flat on your face.

Are we still following?

Good. Lets move on.

I’ve had some experience trying to get a foothold on that elusive ladder…probably I’ve had more experience discussing how I should probably try and look for that ladder. Bitching about not being an academy award winning screenplay writer when I haven’t written a screenplay since 2010, and wondering why there are people younger than me who are more famous.

It’s a tough industry. I know a lot of talented creative people who gave up on their dreams to try for different careers. I know many creative people struggling to make what they love a priority and a full time gig, while busting their arses doing something else to pay the bills.

My Mother is a perfect example of someone in the latter category. Two nights ago she opened her new Directorial offering “My Big Gay Italian Wedding” which is completely sold out and pretty much was when the tickets first went on sale. She has had rave reviews and write ups. She is a Theatre DAHHLING in Hong Kong, and yet she, and her extremely talented cast and crew, are doing the play more for love than any other reason. There just isn’t money in it.

For the amount of time (and talent) that these men and women poor into a project, it would be nice to think that they could make the leap from teachers and bankers and general managers (who act and sing and direct on the side) to full-blown Artists or Creatives or whatever you want to call yourself.

But the truth is, that funding in the arts and for creative enterprises is limited no matter where you go. Part of the reason I didn’t go back to Australia, and have decided to stay in North America, is the possibility and opportunities here. I was fortunate enough to work on a TV show when I was finishing my masters in Sydney, however the opportunity of a second season for that show dried up because of the way the Television industry operates down there. It is simply too expensive to make home-grown products. Most episodes and series are imported from the states as it is cheaper.

Lots of my young, energetic creative friends have moved to LA or New York to try and break into industries there where the market is bigger. And what a shame that they do. The UK, Australia, Hong Kong…these countries are losing some great talent to places that seem like Creative Mecca’s.

That’s not to say that there aren’t people battling it out on home ground, doing what they love, trying to see what happens. Some guys I worked with on the previously mentioned TV show, used crowd-funding to get some cash together to make a reality of a creative project of theirs “The Weatherman”  which is going ahead in the next few months. But I know that for them it has been an uphill battle. I read some of their scripts while we would wait around like goons, and it is really funny, great stuff. Why shouldn’t it be made? And why shouldn’t they reap the benefits?

The Arts and Entertainment industry is often hard because it’s so competitive. It seems as though people are sometimes reluctant to help one another get that crucial foot in the door. It seems like once you’re in, you’re in, but that door is like the room of requirement at Hogwarts. You have to chant and chant what you want and hope that it materializes.

There is an element of being in the right place at the right time, of knowing the right people, of working hard, but for some it isn’t that easy. It is a difficult struggle to keep going, keep interning, keep writing, keep putting on shows, trekking to auditions practising, learning, all while trying to live everyday.

SO what am I getting at?

I guess I’m saying we all need to support the arts more. Go to plays, see up-and-coming bands, read each others work and give encouragement and feedback. And I guess I’m trying to say, keep going. If you are a creative person and thats what you want to do with your life, then go for it. Maybe things won’t turn out exactly as planned…Hey! That’s life and its a part of the journey, but Mama says:

If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.

So stick that up your ladder and deal with it!

Paris