At first I honestly didn't know what to write a story about. There are funny things I think I could write about, but I feel like they don't hold enough substance. So even though its hard for me, I'm going to write the story about the time I almost moved to California. When my father told me that he had a job opportunity in San Diego I was thrilled. I cried when he first told me, but I think it was just the idea of this big change that was scaring me not actually doing it. We flew out to California multiple times to look for houses and apply to High Schools. Because California is so big there are multiple high schools that are specialized in certain areas. I knew even then that I wanted to do theatre, so I applied to two musical theatre high schools out there. We flew out and stayed with his friends Spencer and Marry who were so sweet. Spencer collects cars and getting to ride around California in his silver mercedes was a perk. I loved staying with them and I loved California. Both schools were amazing and when I got back home I found that I had got into both. The problem was that even though moving to San Deigo was a great opportunity for my father and I it was a major problem for my mother. She works at a law firm and was going to have to retake the bar (its a lawyer test) and look for a new job. She didn't have one already lined up and moving was a big economic venture itself. Not to mention my sister didn't want to go at all. She loves the school she dances at and she has so many friends here in New Paltz. We looked at another dance school out in California and while it was good the tecnique and teachers at our current ballet school were even better. I remember when my father told me we weren't going to go I was devastated. I wanted to go to this new school and have a new start more than anything in the world. I hated middle school and had always dreamed of moving to California. I just didn't understand why we couldn't. Sometimes when i'm having a bad day I think about how much better my life might have been if we moved, but then I remember all the amazing things I have here. I love doing the musicals here at school. I have some really amazing friends in my classes. I love going to youtheatre and broadway artists alliance, both programs that if I didn't live in New York I would never be able to go to. Sometimes people think that moving away will fix all your problems, but it won't. I still would have had to go to school, I still would have to deal with problems with my friends and family, and even though I dreamed I would have this amazing life I really have no idea what it would have been like. Maybe it was better to just leave it as a fantasy. Sometimes I hate New Paltz but its my home, and staying here for high school has made me the person I am today. While I may not love everything about this town I am proud of the person I have become and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

 I can't really think of a defining moment when I had to "grow up." There have been successes and accomplishments, there have been downfalls and tears, but there hasn't been a moment where I've looked at myself and felt like a different person from the three year old in my photo album. I still feel the same, I think sometimes its hard to see for yourself how you've grown up, I think sometimes it takes other people to show you that you really have. When I was fourteen I stayed at my grandmas house for the summer in order to take part in a theatre program. I love my grandma, but she can also be extremely difficult to deal with. See I don't have those old lovable grandmas who sit in rocking chairs with kittens and bake you things. Both of my grandmothers, while complete opposites, are pushy and crazy and difficult, just like I am. I was staying at my grandmothers house. She's my mothers mother, but she actually feels so not grandma-like that I don't even call her grandma I call her Beth. I told her one time its really not a bad thing, I love her just as much as I love my other grandma, but she just doesn't feel like an old woman to me. I call her Beth, or sometimes grandma Beth, or when I'm mad at her Bethy, but never grandma. She's always been Beth to me. I always loved having the fun grandma, when she calls we talk about all the drama on Reality TV, I love having someone to vent to about the terrible voices on American Idol or how awful  the new Bachelorette is. When I come up to visit she always loves doing fun stuff, like going to the arcade and playing mini golf. I like that I have a grandma who likes to be fun, but when I stayed at her house over the summer we ended up getting in a major fight and I left. It was really upsetting, but we got into a huge argument because she told me she wasn't going to take me to this big party that I really wanted to go to, and my mother said I could go, but she was mad at me so she claimed she wasn't going to take me. I ended up staying with my cousins instead. It forced me to grow up because at my grandmas house she did everything for me. I literally mean everything. She would cook for me, she would get me things, she enjoyed waiting on me. In fact at some point I wanted to do some things for myself. I didn't need her to go in the kitchen and get chips for me, I could walk across the room and get them for myself. At my cousins house it was completely different, they were extremely nice to me, but I had to do things for myself. Like I had to make my own food, and find my own rides to things, and do things that I had never really done for myself before. I mean I still don't cook, ovens scare me I'm not sure I actually know how to turn one on, but I learned how to do things for myself that I had never done before. My grandma and I have long made up since, were as close now as ever. She still gets on my nerves sometimes, but everyone you love does. I think we had such a hard time living together because it was two people who always want to be in control constantly fighting for the final say. She came and visited me for my birthday this year and she stayed to watch me open presents with my mother, father and sister. After we opened all the gifts she told me she was so proud of how I appreciated everything I got and that I had really grown up. I was flattered, and it felt weird to hear it from her, but I guess its true.  I haven't really noticed a change in myself, but I'm not the same kid I was three summers ago. I've grown up, sure I'm still bratty and ill still make mistakes, but its nice to know that even though I may not feel it I am growing up slowly day by day.

(I made my picture All Grown Up that weird Rugrats spin off because this blog was about growing up, but that show really makes no sense, they're not all grown up their like twelve..............also I think Tommy looked better bald.)

When writing this blog I really couldn't think of one specific failure. I mean its definitely not because i'm perfect, its probably just that there are so many my mind can't decide on one. I mean I could talk about auditions gone wrong, or tests I failed, but I don't feel like those sum up a failure that changed me. I think a real failure is when you don't do something you wish you had. I hate that feeling of regretting your decisions, feeling like you should have done what you were too afraid to do. For example I go to this program in the city called Broadway Artists Alliance and I wanted to add a new song to my book. I knew I wanted to sing something at these classes that I had never sang before. I looked through countless songs, Lets Play a Love Scene from fame, Paris Original from How to Succeed, Astonishing from Little Women, but I knew that what I really wanted to sing was It Wont be Long Now from In The Heights. Its a fast song, and the note at the end of the cut I was going to sing was high in my belt. I knew I could do it, but I was afraid I would crack or mess up. I didn't want to end up looking like a failure. In the end I decided I would sing lets play a love scene, but I took my copy of it wont be long and put it in my book, just in-case. I was taking a contemporary musical theatre class with Wesley Taylor, if you watch smash you probably know him as the snarky gay guy in Bombshell who makes one sassy comment and walks off camera, but I am a huge fan of his. He was in the Adams Family and Rock of Ages and overall I just think he is a really talented guy. I was going to sing I Can Hear the Bells from Hairspray for his class because its easy and I know it but after hearing a couple other people sing I decided that I wanted to sing It Wont Be Long Now. I was really nervous because I had never sang it in a class before, but as soon as I handed it to the pianist I knew I had made the right decision. I knew then that even I messed up I hadn't failed because I had done what I was afraid to do. In fact it ended up being a really amazing class. He gave me feedback on building up to the note at the end of the song and he actually told me not to look nervous while I was singing the note because I had it. It felt so good to do something that I wanted even if it meant taking a risk, and this time it paid off! I had a really great class AND Wesley Taylor (theloveofmylife) told me that I had a great voice, and of course I had the appropriate reaction of having a mini heart attack. Even though this risk ended up being an amazing story I know that I have taken and will take many more risks that don't turn out so favourably. Sure this time I got really positive feedback, but I am sure I will take other risks that don't go over so well. I think the real thing I learned from this story is that its important to take risks. The regret I would have felt over not singing what I wanted to because I was afraid would have been unbearable. If I didn't have the courage to get up there and sing what I wanted to that would have been the real failure. So in the end I wrote my story about failure on one of my successes, what can I say I guess I'm just good at everything, maybe I should have written my failure story about modesty.

I love New York. I love everything about the city. The constant commotion, the ability to get anywhere you want to go, the ambiguity, the food, the people, the shopping, but most of all the theatre. I love paying 85 dollars to sit in a dark over air-conditioned theatre, to me its all worth it. I love being in shows, I love seeing them, I love just being a part of any kind of theatre. I love staying at my grandparents house and taking the train in. I love walking to 520 8th Avenue or 264 W. 44th street. I love feeling as though even among the thousands of people I fit in. I love being able to go to studio spaces to work with actors, casting agents, directors, and writers, and than being able to go and get food from 400 different places by just walking two blocks. I always said this when I would visit New York as a kid, that you could live here and eat at a different place for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday for a whole year and never have to eat at the same place twice. I always loved New York even from the time I was just a child. When I was 3 my grandparents took me to see Lion King on Broadway, they are theatre people always have been, they see everything: plays, musicals, on Broadway or off they just love the theatre. In fact my grandfather was a failed actor. He was in a couple of not so sucessful movies, the tiger makes out being the one I know, but he did get to meet some famous people. He went to the same vocal coach as Bernadette Peters, worked out for her much better I know, and he did a movie with Dustin Hoffman as well, though he said he was kind of a jerk (depressing I know.) Anyway since that first show I have been hooked. I always loved being on stage and I love seeing others on stage too. There is something so different about live theatre, its just nothing like a movie, don't get me wrong I like movies too, but that feeling you get from being in or performing for a live audience is like nothing else. Its like everyone in that dark cold room is a part of something. The actors, the stage manager, the audience, the guy at the sound board, they are all watching something that takes them somewhere else. For an hour and a half you aren't you anymore, but your someone else. Your bringing these characters to life for everyone to see. I love that feeling of being the one who is able to tell that story. The one who is able to bring someone to life, but I enjoy seeing someone else do it too. For someone to be so convincing that you forget who they are and only see who they've become. I have seen about 30 Broadway shows and I don't remember the details to most of them, I saw 42nd street and literally remember nothing about the actual show itself, but I know the feeling after every show of leaving the theatre slightly dazed still entranced by the characters themselves not wanting to return to my own life just yet. That’s why I don't enjoy waiting for actors at the stage door. Seeing them as themselves after the show ruins the magic for me. I love meeting actors and working with them, but I don't actually want to meet them after the show. I feel like finally seeing someone’s true self can almost ruin the character they have created. I love the stories that theatre can tell and the characters are the main part of that. Without characters people care about the show has no purpose. That’s why I love acting, I love bringing to life a character someone actually cares about. I love watching someone bring characters to life as well. Believe it or not I think I feel most at home when im not at home, but rather being transported somewhere else.

 

A told B and B told C.............

"Ill meet you at the top of the coconut tree."  I wanted to be at the top of that coconut tree. From the first time I read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom I knew I was A. (Not like the Pretty Little Liars A who sends creepy texts and must never go to school because I don't know how she manages to stalk all of those girls all the time for no apparent reason) I was A, the one who told B "ill meet you at the top of the coconut tree." When I was in kindergarden every time I read that book I always loved how at the end A snuck out of bed and dared everyone to race to the top of the coconut tree. Being the truly charming five year old I was I remember being proud of the fact that A was special and therfore more important than the other letters. I remember we had an audiobook of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in our class, it was the kind where you had to put on those really ugly blue headphones that never really fit on anyones head correctly, and I used to listen to it all the time. I listened to other books too, but that one was my favorite. I really enjoyed the fact that A was the center of the novel. Not much has changed since kindergarden, i'm still self centered, and I still like being the center of a story.  I think that my love for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom explains my love of theatre. The way I personified (I used a lit term when it wasn't required I should get some bonus points or something) myself as the letter A is the way I identify myself as my character. I like playing a part in a story, i like feeling involved. For me a good story is one where you can indentify yourslef with the character, where you can feel as though you could be in their shoes. When I was five I felt that way about Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I like acting, I always have and I think I always will. Even when I was five I liked to "play" different parts. In kindergarden sometimes my friends and I would pretend to be different characters from disney movies. I remeber one time  we spent all day pretending to be characters from Peter Pan, I got to be tinkerbell of course, so the entire day we acted like we were the character from the movie. Tinkerbell technically wasn't supposed to talk, but I probably broke that rule because I literally never shut up. I remember how much I loved that and how much fun I had acting as different characters. I loved halloween in elemeterary school because I couldnt wait to dress up as somebody else. I also loved to play house. I always watned to be the mom, I don't know why I hate kids they're sticky, in the end I think it was probably because I liked being in charge. I always wanted to talk on the phone which had a talk button that said phone on it. At the time I was cofused as to why it wasn't spelled fone because being the genius I am in kindergarden I thought phone was spelled fone. I used to call it the "phone," because I thought it was funny that it was spelled wrong. Even then I used to always belive that I was always right, even when I was wrong. I think that even in kindergarden I knew who I was. I loved to talk, I loved to act, I loved to be right. Even if I didn't know it the person that I was then is still the same person that I am now. Sure people change, I know how to spell phone now and I don't get to pretend to be a princess every day (as much as I wish I could), but i'm still that same person I was in kindergarden. Ill still race you to the top of the coconut tree.