kerryingon

You guys. Internets. Friends. Strangers.

I have fallen off my Most Awesome Week Ever horse.

Fallen off, yes, but now? Getting back on!

The good news here is that somewhere right around week 35 is when I finally began to settle into my life in this beautiful city. I don’t know what happened except I just decided I should accept living here as a gift that lots of people don’t ever get. I challenged myself to start referring to my apartment at home and the house I grew up in as “my mom’s house” or “the NJ house”. I reminded myself of the great lesson I was taught in the fall of 2010 by basically a complete stranger, that home is within. Home is wherever I am, wherever the people that I love are and the inner peace that lives in our souls. And even more shockingly, after recently being on the west coast for awhile, I found myself (hold on to your hats now) actually missing my city.

Who would have ever thought?

The other good news here is that I am definitely not recapping 12 weeks in full detail. I like y’all way too much to do that. But you best believe I’m gonna give you some mega highlights! Shall we? We shall:

• Weeks 35-37 found me back in rehearsals & performing in my first play in NYC since 2008.
• Week 37 also saw the birth of the beautiful Miss Ayla Harper & all of a sudden one of my best friends and her amazing husband became parents.
• I saw many shows including: the amazing production of Newsies at Papermill in NJ, Bring It On at Center Theatre Group in LA, Jersey Boys (finally), Zoe Kazan’s debut play as a writer, We Live Here, the LCT3 show All American and The Book of Mormon (again). I started to actually audition for theatre again & took my first Musical Theatre class in years.
• I met Kristin Chenoweth. Strange but so important.
• I took a really great weekend business intensive and had a breakthrough realization that I want to be on TV. The very week I decided to focus on that, I managed to get myself auditions on Law & Order: SVU and a new Nickelodeon pilot. Without an agent.
• One of my best friends returned from being away on work & we got to watch her television producing debut. Two more got engaged. Two returned to the business with flying colors. My friends are amazing human beings & I’m so proud of them.
• I formed an acting accountability group to keep myself on track & keep myself surrounded with awesome, like-minded folks. I’ve decided to buckle down and get legit reps here & got myself in front of eight agents last week.
• I spoke up & asked for what I wanted several times despite knowing it could really burn me if it didn’t work. However, this technique of bravery seems to totally work.. like personal-emails-from-CEO’s-&-offers-for-meetings-type-of-“work”.
• Traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sausalito & San Diego with one of my best friends to see more of my best friends. And my second best city.
• I blindly emailed a manager I’ve been wanting to meet since I was 11 the night before I left for CA. She emailed me right back & a few days later, we had a great (but intense) meeting. LA does not mess around.
• I made two mega life decisions. They were “woke up one morning & just decided it” kind of things but really, they were a long time coming. And they feel so good.
• Life Coaching rocks, Voice Over rocks. Henry pup extra-rocks. Making every decision with Love rocks.
• & everything else that I am surely not writing about here. Girl’s gotta have some secrets, no?

Don’t get me wrong, dear hearts. There have been various things in the past 12 weeks that were not so fancy, lovely, beautiful & exciting. There were tears, there was struggle & there were lessons to learn - but that’s not what we’re here to focus on, are we? We’re here to see the absolutely incredible joy that is life and splash around in it like puddles of awesome. Truth is, once you start seeing it, it’s impossible to not jump in.

Might keep up, might not. You’ll have to wait & see ;o) Sending you Love & gratefulness always, xx.