Advice From My Past Self
My past self has been giving me a lot of advice recently. At 37-years-old, I’m in a new-to-me stage of the creative life — one where my choices haven’t quite panned out the way I thought they would and life’s disappointments had dragged me down and threatened to keep me there. Maybe you can relate?
Just over a year ago, In April of 2023, I told my boss I wanted to step down from my role as content manager and back into a part-time writer position. It seemed counterintuitive — letting go of income and influence, stepping off a path that had a clear-ish way forward, a ladder that someone else was building for me. And so, after two panic attacks and a trip to my general practitioner’s office complaining of an elevated heart rate, I took the leap and got off.
Since then, I have floundered a bit. I’ve heard that’s normal. And as I’m learning and letting go, playing and trying to be happy. I’m looking to my past self for advice and reveling in the things she has to say. Let’s be a bit more her again, shall we?
A Two Woman Show
In 2015, my friend Betsy and I wrote a two-woman show together. To this day, it remains one of my favorite experiences that I’ve ever had. I was terrified, of course. I had never acted before, never performed solo or in a group, never written a whole show on my own before, but something in me knew it was the next right thing to do.
Today, I’m sharing some of the advice from past self in the form of a blog that I wrote in 2015 while writing the show. I’m putting it here mostly for me, as I navigate this latest creative transition. But maybe you will find it a useful reminder too — a reminder that “courage starts with letting [ourselves] be seen”, and you have what it takes to find your way through the dark. You know more than you think you do, and you can learn as you go.
So without further adieu, here is some advice from past self.
Just Keep Swimming
Maybe you forgot….but Betsy and I are writing a show.
Every time I remember that, I laugh. I laugh because there is nothing else I can do. I laugh because the show is inevitably going to happen, and at this point, I can’t back out even if I wanted to. It goes against everything I’m about – courage through fear and inspiring others to do the same.
When we agreed to write this show back in September, we had no idea what it would become. Now we’ve written roughly 2.5 songs, 6 sketches, 7 personal essays, a couple of stand up bits, and lots of little notes in margins and at the bottom of google docs that make absolutely zero sense (i.e….”Dan could be our moms”).
We have laughed; we have taken risks. We have made cuts and given edits, and we have most certainly come to value our friendship even more than we did before. And now, we’re in the final stretch. One month until we open, and I am scared out of my mind.
I’m scared because I’ve never written a show. I’m scared because I’ve never been in a show or acted in anything since the 6th grade church musical. I don’t know how to do lighting cues or sound cues or how to stand on a stage. I don’t know how to give to the audience rather than take from them, and I certainly don’t know how to keep my voice from shaking when I get nervous. And I feel nervous!
But amidst all the nerves and fear and swirling doubts, I keep telling myself to “Just keep swimming. Just keep going. Just keep doing it and writing and acting and directing because you know how to do more than you think you do.”
That’s the funny thing I keep learning about creating–you always know more than you think you do, and you learn as you go. You can’t learn without doing, and you can’t do if you’re standing still worrying about about failing and about what other people will think of you of and your show (I do this ALL the time).
The trick is, to just be yourself, to let it flow and become you as you go. Being yourself is creative, and creativity is courage; and we all know what Brene Brown says: “Courage starts with showing up and letting yourself be seen.”
Come see our show! (click to read one of the essays I performed).
A picture of the set. We performed on a stage where another show was running so we had to use their set, which turned out to be perfect. We added a quilt from my closet on the bed along with some personal pictures and trinkets on the shelf. We utilized the folding chairs throughout the performance, moving them around as props for varying sketches and stories.