8.

I'm not happy. And I'll tell you why that is. My entire life, my mother has consistently told me that I'm not going to succeed at anything I do. Every job I get, I'm going to get fired. Every play I audition for, I'm not going to get it. Every little thing she has to make me feel terrible about myself. Then people wonder why I have such low self esteem. I also get "why can't you just ignore it?" I unfortunately got the sensitive gene from my father, therefore EVERYTHING gets to me. You'd think after 21 years of having my mother tell me I'm going to fail and then succeeding and rubbing it in her face, I'd be over it by now. But I'm not.
This is my last year of college. I get that. I get that when I graduate, I have to find a job and pay all my own stuff. Why I don't get, is why my mother seems to think I'm going to give up theatre to sit in an office for the rest of my life. I am VERY appreciative of the office job I currently hold. But I know for a fact, this is not a career path I want to pursue forever. It just isn't. I'm not happy unless I'm performing and it has already been FAR too long. Do I know its going to be hard? Yes. Am I aware that my diet will probably consist of peanut butter and ramen noodles? Yes, I'm aware of that too. Am I willing to endure hardship for the rest of my life so I can pursue what I love? Abso-friggin-lutely.
I don't know why I've found myself in a theatre dry spell. I haven't been in an actual show with a script in nearly two years. I'm hoping that will change after auditions next week, but who's to say. I just want to do a show so I can PROVE to my mother that I'm talented enough for this. I know I am. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not the most confident person in the world, except for when I'm on stage. I have utmost confidence in myself when I'm on-stage. And it is SO frustrating for me to have my mother continually rub in the fact that I've had a two year dry spell. I get it. I don't know why that is.
I'm just fed up with people telling me I can't, and I know its going to happen for the rest of my life, but those people won't be my mother. They'll just be people. People that if I don't want to, I don't have to see them ever again. My mother on the other hand, is a part of my life forever. And as much as I try, I can't just shut her out, and she doesn't listen to my point of view about these things. I know I can do this. I have to know because if I don't know, who else is going to believe in me?

This is just making my heart hurt. I'm going to stop typing now.

7.

Its been a while since I posted here. I tried to start a blog on changing my life for the better, but like this blog, I failed to update, and therefore it fell through. The cloud that has been over my head for about 5 months now finally lifted last week. I'm becoming more active, I'm learning how to love but not make it my entire life, I'm learning how to be a better friend, but I'm also beginning to understand what it is to be an independent 21 year old woman. And that, I think, is what I lost. However, that's not really the point of this blog. My senior year of college is approaching and I am scared out of my mind. Not because its my last year, but because for the first time in my life I don't have a clue what I want to do with my life. Of course I'm going to get my first apartment on my own, and it looks like right now I'm going to be living by myself if I can't find a roommate over the course of this year. And I'm going to have to have a job obviously so I can financially support myself. Here is the problem though. My degree is in theatre. I love performing. Performing is a natural high for me. When I'm on a stage, there is nothing in this world that can touch me, and that is honestly the ONLY time in my life I can say that. I got into theatre because I thought it was fun. I stayed with theatre because the high I get and the confidence I have when I'm performing I can't find anywhere else in my life. Plus I love it. That being said, I don't see myself going to New York trying to be on Broadway right away. That's the scary part. When I got into this, I assumed after graduation I would move to New York and start auditioning and that would be that, but as I've gone through the last three years of school, I don't know that that's the path I see my life going down anymore. First of all, Chicago is my home. Chicago is more home to me now than my hometown. And second, people keep asking me if I'm staying because I know people here and I would be scared to move. The answer to that is also no, because I will know people in New York, and all 3 of my best friends are moving to other parts of the country as of now after graduation, so I won't have that security blanket anymore. I just don't see my life going in that direction yet. Do I think I'll move there someday? Absolutely. But right now, I want to stay in Chicago and start my life here. It doesn't hurt that I'd like to get myself to a professional and financial level where I can feel like I could survive on my own in New York.
That being said, I've had a lot of talks with all three of my best friends about how I feel uncomfortable not knowing what the next step is for me. Maybe I'll discover it this school year, who knows. They have all told me in their own ways that its okay not to know right now what the next step is. Unfortunately for me, miss plan everything down to the last detail, its not so easy for me to just swallow the fact that I don't have a game plan. Theatre is a career path where you can't really "plan" per se. You just kinda have to do your best and hope thats good enough.
A woman I work with, who I feel was sent by God into my life to help me find a more positive version of myself, and I have been talking about "bucket lists." I'm sure all of you know what a bucket list is, (all what...three of you that read my blog?) but in case you don't, it's a list of all the things you want to accomplish before you die...(i.e. kick the bucket. How witty.) I started writing one today. I thought I would come up with maybe 10 things I wanted to do with my life. Oh ho! Not so! Forty-seven things later, and I'm more stuck with what I want to do with my life than I was before...but this time its not because there's nothing to do...it's because there's so many things I want to do. So I decided I'd post this list online, so in case I lose it, at least its always here as a guide. So here it is, so far. Please note that these aren't in any particular order...I just wrote them as they came to me..so I guess in a way they are kind of in order.

1. Visit Italy.
2. Perform in either a national tour or a Broadway show
3. Reach my goal weight
4. Get married (someday. not any time soon)
5. Have at least one child. (again..someday)
6. Be a teacher of some kind.
7. Believe that my body is beautiful. Find a mantra that helps me to believe that, everyday.
8. Learn to speak another language.
9. Run a half marathon and finish.
10. Inspire someone's life.
11. Stay up all night and watch the sunrise.
12. Own a puppy.
13. Plan a big party/event
14. Do some kind of volunteer work.
15. Find my religion.
16. Ride in a limo.
17. Visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
18. Get over my food hang-ups. (My boyfriend doesn't believe I'm a picky eater, but its just because he's inspired me to start eating things I was afraid of eating before.)
19. Become a decent hip hop dancer.
20. Write and record a song.
21. Go to New York for the first time.
22. Improve my photography skills.
23. Regularly practice pilates.
24. Become as good a cook as my Mom.
25. Watch all the movies on my "to watch" list.
26. Let go of my negativity towards myself.
27. Win an award for something I've accomplished.
28. Go back to school to get my masters and pay for it myself.
29. Be completely financially independent.
30. Work at a job I love.
31. Meet Jennifer Hudson.
32. Write in a journal every day for a year.(or blog regularly. one or the other)
33. Go back to gymnastics to get over my fear of falling.
34. Take an elaborate vacation.
35. Learn how to bartend
36. Fall in love without fear.
37. Own a house.
38. Pick up the piano again.
39. Go to New York at Christmastime
40. Do some kind of interior design.
41. Be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
42. Stop being so passive and say how I really feel.
43. Chop off all my hair.
44. Get a small tattoo of something meaningful. (If I can get up the guts to actually go through with it)
45. Public speak to young women about body issues.
46. Be the maid of honor in a friend's wedding.
47. Throw a surprise party for a friend.

I guess I'll end this blog here. I actually feel a lot better since I typed all this out...as per the usual.

Til next time (which will hopefully be sooner than 6 months)
-Bri

6.

I've lost my religion. Now don't get me wrong, I've never considered myself an extremely religious person, but I definitely believe in God, and I definitely feel like I'm not giving him enough time in my life. I was raised Catholic, and while I could probably recite all of the words to a Catholic mass to you if you asked me to, I never felt like Catholicism was really what I was looking for. I always envied Southern Baptists because I felt like their understanding of God was so much deeper than mine. I feel like when they go to Church its not a feeling of "Oh man, it's Sunday I have to go to church", but more like a celebration that God is in their lives and has created them and has given them all of the gifts they have. I had a discussion last night with a fairly new good friend of mine. He said "God loves you so much its ridiculous, He has an incredible plan for your life and supports you every step of the way." This reminded me of a conversation I had with Jarrod over the summer, and a conversation I had with both the guys I met while I was in the Virgin Islands. The sailor I met while I was there reminded me that if God puts me up to a challenge, there will be a reason for it in the end, and that has proven true in the past almost year of my life. A lot of things ended last year around this time, but a lot of things began that I wasn't even aware of. I don't think I give God enough credit. After this conversation I was trying to remember when the last time I had been to church was, and I realized that Christmas Eve was the last time, and that's kind of an obligatory church holiday. I'm not sure that going to Mass will help me rediscover religion, or God, or whatever it is I'm longing to discover in my spiritual life, but I know that something needs to change. I take for granted every single day what I have, and I will be the first to admit that. I try to remind myself daily that God made me the way I am for a reason, and he blessed me with the talents I have for a reason, and that I need to go out and share those with the world. But everytime something brings me down I just throw any sense of God having a plan out the window and think of all the things that I think are flawed about me. But then, everyone is flawed, and thats what makes them special. So why do we all strive for perfection? Why can we not just appreciate what we have, instead of constantly degrading who we are and what we've been given? I think about these things all the time as far as other people, especially the beautiful girls I'm around every day who ridicule their bodies and their talents, but I never take my own advice. My dad said something the other day that has stuck with me all week, "Focus on what you've been given. It's less stressful that way." I've tried all week to focus on the good things about me, and though I still have trouble sometimes, it actually made me feel better to pat myself on the back when I did something good instead of thinking about how I could have done it better. I'm going to apply that rule to this week as well, just to see what happens.

Also, I found this website "100 Ways to Live a Better Life". It was actually really interesting. So I thought I'd post that here for your reading pleasure.

http://www.dragosroua.com/100-ways-to-live-a-better-life/


And so begins this week. Hope everyone has a good one :)

-B

5.

I feel like something incredibly inspirational is going to come out of me sitting here staring at my computer screen and trying to think of something to blog about. I doubt it.

I promised myself I'd journal every day or at least every other. Since I failed at doing so on paper, I guess this will have to do.

Things are decent. I have a lot on my mind and I'm not sure what to do to stop my head from spinning in the way that it is. I think I'm letting past experiences affect my judgment, and I shouldn't be doing that, but how can I not?  I mean I learned my lessons and I learned them well. I got dirt kicked in my face and I stood up and brushed it off but I'm not sure if I'm ready to try that again with the chance that I might once again get kicked to the curb. Its just something I need to think about. I can't go my whole life afraid of what ifs. If I do that I'm going to drive myself insane.

I had my first real coaching of my song yesterday. I"m a little wary of this song because its the highest I've belted since Children of Eden, before I really learned how to sing correctly. So I went in nervous, and preparing for the worst, and everything kind of fell into place. I was also surprised because in my song I'm playing a girl who is pregnant and has just felt her baby move for the first time. I obviously have no experience with this seeing as how i have never been pregnant, but I have never felt more connected, and I actually teared up while I was singing which was something that hasn't happened in a long time, given I've been working on more comedic stuff as of late. It was just really nice to step up to the challenge and give it all I had and succeed.

I have to say goodbye to a very good friend of mine tomorrow. He's getting the opportunity of a lifetime and I'm so happy for him, but I'm also terrible at goodbyes, and he's one of the few people who constantly helps me remember why I do what I do, and he's also one of the very few people in my life that I let in. So I wish him all the best, but I will miss having him around a LOT.

This blog actually turned out to be much more substantial than I thought. So that's a good sign. Maybe I'll actually keep up with blogging, since I seem to enjoy doing it so much.

-B

4.

I just had this on my mind and I thought perhaps blogging about it would help me to make sense of it. Growing up, I never had any close girlfriends, but I always had lots of close guy friends. My teachers would get concerned that I wasn't spending enough time with girls, but I never liked being around girls because I thought they were mean. When I moved to Edwardsville, Chase and I became fast best friends. As long as I can remember all of my best friends have been guys. From Chase, to Brandon, to Jarrod. The strange thing is, I don't have a best guy friend in college. I have a lot of guys I'm good friends with, but there is no one that I know I could call at 4AM if I was worried about something and needed to talk. This is interesting to me because my two best friends at college are girls. One is my roommate, and the other was my roommate my freshman and sophomore year. I love both of them dearly, but being best friends with a girl is so different than being best friends with a guy.

I think this makes sense, because I feel like in conflict and in life I tend to think in a more "guy like" way, meaning if there's a problem I want to address it, fix it and move on. I hate dwelling on things and I hate drama, so I try to fix things as soon as they become a problem. Its just an interesting thing to think about. I sometimes miss having that solid guy friend in my life that I know I can count on to be there for me as much as the girls. I have Jarrod of course, but when your best guy friend lives 8 hours away and is busy pretty much all the time it becomes more difficult.

I always look at everything as a sign. I can't help but wonder if the fact that I don't have that "best friend" who's a male means that maybe I need to learn to depend more on the women in my life. I thought this would get me to some sort of conclusive statement, but it really hasn't. I guess what was really on my mind is that I see everything changing in ways I can't quite grasp or understand right now, which I guess is a good thing. I just have to learn to accept it for what it is.

-B

3.

Two blogs in the span of a week, that's some pretty impressive stuff.

I realized recently that I don't consider all the positive things in my life nearly enough. Last March my boyfriend of three years and I broke up, and every day since then, or at least last semester, I spent time wondering why he had a girlfriend now and I still had yet to go on a date. I'm a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, and so I had myself convinced that now simply wasn't the time for me to find someone. Towards the end of the semester I found someone that I really really liked, and I thought that it had potential to go somewhere, but things were complicated, so it never did. I thought a lot over Christmas break about how it felt to not have someone there all the time. When you get out of a long term relationship I think that it takes a lot of time to get used to not having someone there for you all the time. But as I thought about it I realized, I'm more independent than I have ever been in my life. I would love to find someone, but I'm not willing to settle, and I want to find someone who appreciates me and all I have to offer instead of someone who tries to control me and make me into something I'm not. I love who I am, and I want someone who will love me for the big geek I am too. Not only that, but everything else in my life is great.

Speaking of great, so far I have some awesome stuff to work on in the showcase. I'm singing Die Vampire Die from Title of Show and a chortet called Are You Me? from the Mistress Cycle. I"m not sure if there will be more but I'm so excited to get to do such versatile pieces, and I"m a sucker for a good comedy piece. I'm really excited about all the music in this show, and I think that it's really going to be a great project to work on.

School's busy as always, but today turned out to be the easiest Monday ever considering all of my classes except my Gen Ed were cancelled. I'm not sure that I'll know what to do with myself when next Monday rolls around and I actually have all of my classes at once.

I'm glad that I'm blogging today because I want to remember this high I'm feeling, so that when I'm feeling not so great I can come back and read this and remember what this felt like. I honestly haven't been this happy in a very long time. I just pray that things continue looking up and heading in the right direction, especially with summerstock auditions coming up in less than a month.

That's all I really have to ramble about, I hope everyone else who reads this blog which is probably a total of 2 people are having wonderful days as well.

-B

2.

Like I said I am absolutely dreadful at blogging. I try to keep up with it but I just can't. Presently I'm at work and I have twoish hours left.

I was in a funk all last week and I wasn't really quite sure why. It started Saturday night after my party and lasted until about Wednesday afternoon. I'd like to attribute it to PMS, but I don't think that I really can. I kept trying to pinpoint all week what exactly it was that was bothering me. I think the main problem was that I just get really inside my head sometimes, and I get really negative when I'm inside my head, and that never causes anything good to happen. I also got into worrying about my future. That will continually be a scary thing for me until I graduate and something actually happens. The good thing is, I have a plan, and a plan B and a plan C. Hopefully neither of which I will need to use, but it could happen. I was also worried because my parents have been giving me a LOT of money towards groceries, books, etc. I'm the type of person where I don't enjoy living off of other people's money, and my parents have done so much for me already. I've been desperately searching for a job but no where seems to be hiring weekend help. And just when I was about to give up, the place that I occasionally work gave me a call and asked me to come in today. I couldn't be more grateful. And on top of that, my dad was here today, so I got to see him (in fact we just said bye a minute ago.)

Things seem to be looking up. My love life is still an enigma but I almost think it's better that way. Occasionally it bothers me that I'm not particularly interested in anyone or vice versa, but I think that it's probably okay at this point in my life. Everything else is going so great that I almost don't want to screw it up with a relationship, although I do miss having someone I can call and talk to all the time. School started this past week and it is looking to be a busy semester, but I'm up for the challenge. I'm in another showcase, but the director seems really awesome and we start rehearsal on Monday night. No one will ever be like my Tony 3 cast, but I hope that this cast will be as fun and as laid back as the Tony cast.

Also, I'm loving being adventurous in cooking. It's just such a nice relaxing thing to do, and I feel so much better when I eat a healthy balanced meal versus pasta every night (though I do love a good bowl of pasta every now and again).

Hopefully this week coming up will be funk-free, and the sun will continue to keep shining like it has :)

-B