Introducing….Helen 2.0! … re-inventing relevancy?

It has been a long while since I’ve posted on my freelance and kitty blogs.  I have, though, been highly distracted—since January I’ve been grappling with a maternal genetic legacy:  osteoarthritis of both hip joints and two surgeries within eight months.  At age 50.  Yep.  Surgery totally sucks…but the aftermath has been worth the journey:  While I am still recovering from my second surgery that took place August 26, I am back living in the land of the moving!  And, oh, how I’ve missed ye…  I am up to about 25 minute walks, and I look forward to snow shoeing this winter and hiking next summer.  And last weekend  I returned to, more or less, a normal workout at the gym (focusing, though, on upper body and treadmill walking). And all this is good.  Very very good.

It is the beginning of the autumn season and the Jewish New Year.  So I find it interesting that, during this season of introspection and renewal, it has also been a time of personal emotional and physical healing.  I’ve given a lot of thought to this next phase of my life…what do I truly want?!!  Good is, indeed, good.  It can be sufficient.  But for the remaining 30 to 40 years I may be blessed with, I am at a point in my life where I believe I can have more than sufficient.  I want great.  I want fabulous.  I want stupendous abundance in all areas of import.  It’s time for reinvention!!  To indeed live up to the promise of Helen 2.0, a gift I’ve been given with the renewed gift of mobility.

So I’ve been asking myself…where is my love, my joy;  what are my passions?!  How can I reinvent being relevant…to me?!!

Where do I begin my reinvention?  Since my late 20s, every few years I seem to have this need to reevaluate.  Wasn’t it Socrates who said that an unexamined life is one not worth living?

First order of business:  to reevaluate what I’ve been doing here, in Colorado, since I relocated west of the mighty Mississippi in 1998.  Of course, for the short term I will fall back on the meat and potatoes that have been the focus of my creative and educational pursuits (as well as helping keep the lights on!):  short-term or one-time Percussion Lady programming and performances for seniors, tykes, children, adults; Golda Meir performances for adults and school age children; and online educational writing and curriculum development.   And, thank goodness, I’m slowly booking gigs for the autumn season and am now contracted for two (!!) online educational writing gigs.

I absolutely enjoy all of these things, but they seem, at times, so disparate. Is there any way to tie them together into one umbrella of joy and passion?  Which items stay and which go?  How can I refresh what I do in joyful, value-added ways?  

To help me on this journey of self-relevancy, I have come across two readings I am finding of high value:  Breaking the Time Barrier: How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential by Mike McDerment and Donald Cowper (http://breakingthetimebarrier.freshbooks.com/) and The Irresistible Business Challenge by Melissa Cassera (http://melissacassera.com/)  Both have gotten me to think that I am much more than an educational consultant or performance artist.  

Oh, the future possibilities for Helen 2.0!  A Wikipedia post about me…giving a TED talk…having a following interested in my writing and performing…animal advocacy…writing a regular news-worthy newsletter and publishing an article in a national rag…being interviewed on television for my performing and acting…accepting my academy award for best supporting actress…

I can certainly dream big!  I am not sure of any of these answers, dear reader, but you get to go on the journey with me if you so choose.  I hope you do.  However any of this goes, I promise to document the way via my writing.  

And for the immediate now:  a minimum one post a week to either my freelance or kitty blogs.  It is now the time to take myself and my writing more seriously and yet more joyfully.

Yep.  

To conclude this reinvention introduction.  A suggestion I read from Melissa Cassera is to connect my personal/professional musings to the larger cultural zeitgeist … make it trend-worthy.  Two thoughts, then:

So in my 50^th year I get to reinvent my present and future for the next 35+ years.  I want this last third of my life to surpass my wildest expectations…and when it’s my time to return home, I hope it will be mercifully quick as it was for Joan Rivers.  She certainly did live life on her terms, to the fullest.  And, she was a staunch supporter of the State of Israel, to boot.  And that is what I want.  To live my life to the fullest.  To truly be fully used up before I die.

And… during my three-week convalescence earlier in September, I had the chance to catch up on DVR’d shows and currently trending topics.  It is much to my chagrin that A&E has been so shortsighted to cancel Longmire…a wonderfully written show with colorfully complex characters (notwithstanding opportunities for area actors like myself to audition for day player roles!).  Although I do not know really how to feel at age 50—am I really just 40, or do I sometimes feel 55+??—I am, I guess, of the demographic that advertisers do not value?  Strange...  Within the next one to three years I anticipate having much more disposable income based primarily on my re-evaluation of my value and passions… I certainly will apply my disposable income to those who value my tastes and preferences.  And I am hopeful Longmire will find a new home, and I will follow the show there…Yep.  Indeed!  

#LongLiveLongmire, #JoanRivers 

The Year in Review—Looking Ahead

Today being the last day of 2013, as a creative freelancer I find it only fitting to evaluate my year with an eye toward 2014.  And what a difference a year makes!  

Financially, I have turned myself around and will continue to put forth these same efforts and energies in 2014.  Last year at this time I was continually in the red by $200.  Looking at my checkbook, I have a comforting cushion of black.  The turnaround occurred in early March, when I received payment for a series of gigs for the Pikes Peak Library District.  And it has continued to build as I slowly began work for an online educational writing entity, A Pass Education.   And I it looks like I will have some regular work the first quarter of 2014 with a second online entity, LearningMate.

Which will be helpful, indeed, since health-wise I am confronting what seems to be a genetic legacy:  osteoarthritis in my hips.  At the relatively young age of 50, I will face my first hip replacement (the right one) on January 31.  Since I am healthy and in shape otherwise (thank goodness!), I am told the recovery will be short-ish, three to six weeks.  And only a four inch scar.  While I am wrestling with the seeming unfairness of it all, I do look forward to walking normally and hiking once again this summer in the beautiful Colorado Rockies.

Creatively, 2013 has been mixed.  I thought I would be doing more regular creative writing for both this blog and my kitty blog.  Being honest, I lost steam midyear as I was grappling with regular trips back East to help my sister manage the ever-increasing complexities of aging parents.  This all came to a head when my father died at the end of August…  Rather than beat myself up for the lack of writing focus, which does not serve me, I look ahead to the possibilities for 2014.  

I did, though, return to regular acting and taiko drumming classes when my finances turned around. I have also slowly begun to again incorporate yoga and the space it creates back into my life.

And…I got a surprising creative boost the early part of December:  an email from a casting producer from America’s Got Talent inviting me to audition when they visited Denver on December 7.  (These city visits, btw, are auditions for the producers of the show—not the celebrity judges.  At least not yet.)  After speaking with her, I prepared a 90-second “best of” Percussion Lady (a little drumming, singing and storytelling)—which got me a second audition with the executive producers that same day.  A long day it was, indeed, at the Colorado Convention Center.  It was an amazing seven hours in the company of talented, creative individuals.  Maybe I will be invited sometime the first quarter of 2014 to audition for the celebrity judges.  Or, maybe not.  But the experience provided me with the jolt I needed to refocus my creative passions.

AGT Denver Audition - December 7, 2013

Looking ahead to 2014:

I must and I will incorporate more drumming into my life!  More taiko!  Maybe even purchase a “walking drum” so I can play and walk at the same time while creating my rhythm of the machine…  I may even participate, again, in the Colorado Performing Arts Jamboree in January. 

I will also continue to focus my energies on attracting paid work that fulfills me—Percussion Lady and Golda gigs and educational writing.  Hopefully after my first hip surgery, I will have more energy that is free of pain to focus on taking Golda on the road…to the Philly area, to start.  

I am also looking to attract TV and film auditions that will provide juicy, meaty roles that pay—maybe even get my first SAG credit.

Midyear, I also look forward to resuming my efforts as the volunteer coordinator for the Intendence Film Festival.  I think it’s time, and my left-brained qualities do come in handy.

And, of course, I look forward to more writing for my own benefit…

*******

Perhaps 2013 needed to be the transition year it has served to be.  To help clear out the cobwebs of my psyche and intent in order to allow me to embrace the possibilities that await in 2014. 

Summertime…and the Living is Busy….

As a freelancer, there is always this fine balance between doing the work and finding more of it…  I spent a good part of June working on two contract jobs—making decent coin—for A Pass Education, an online entity that contracts with educational publishers and school districts.  I accomplished this while maintaining a civilized performing schedule, auditioning, prepping and leading a workshop at the Intendence Film Festival (held in Arvada, CO, the last weekend of June).  

The work, the busyness, was great.  Yet, at the beginning of July I looked at the tsunami that was my office knowing that I needed to balance the checkbook, wade through the piles of files and begin the work of looking for more gigs!  Arrggg!  So I’ve taken nearly a week to do all this while thinking about the future—which is always in flux and never guaranteed.  Now what?  Do I resume research on a homecare business (finding live-in aids for the elderly)?  Do I complete that WIX website dedicated to all things writing related?  Work on my next kitty blog post?  Prep for my next visit back East in August (two weeks this time!)?  And what about that short story I began at the turn of the year—oh, the ending still  escapes me!

And while I crave creative pursuits (I have, among other things, resumed my taiko drumming classes in Boulder [CO] at least twice a month), I also require regular chunks of income to maintain my oh so elaborate lifestyle.  All kidding aside, knowing that I have chunks of income coming in the pipeline provides some sense of relief.  And just this past Monday I began to think about additional writing contract gigs.

Ask and ye shall receive:  On Tuesday I received an email asking if I’d like to extend, for another week and a half, one of the two contracts I just concluded for A Pass Education.  More good coin!  Of course I said yes…I need this income now to help pay for my monthly health plan costs, which I’ve recently reinstated—another to-do item that had been on my list for several years…

I love keeping busy and enjoy exercising both my right and left brains.  Now I need to relax, ask—and receive!—a recurring role on the new Hallmark series that will hopefully soon begin production somewhere in Colorado …

Streams of Income

I’ve chosen this life, this freelance life.  And with it the responsibilities, joys, aggravations, anxieties and freedom to express the whole of who I am.  Perhaps you can describe this lifestyle as pieces to a puzzle, designed to baffle or to test ingenuity or resourcefulness.  Last week, though, on an audition (ahem, interview), I likened this more to a mosaic, the disparate parts of colored stone, tile and glass coming together to create this wonderful, beauteous whole.

No matter how I describe this life, I’ve realized—over the last months and years—the following for me to work and play at my optimum:  These puzzle pieces or mosaic bits must overlap. The streams of income and creativity need to flow effortlessly…

I’m finally at a point, after much MUCH effort and focus, back in the black, financially.  While I have yet to be comfortable in this place and still have concerns dropping back into the red, opportunities are now coming to me more often than before.  I feel less anxious, which is a good thing.  For example, this past Friday I was not only paid for my first contracted assessment (test) writing gig (yeah!), I received an email from that organization inviting me to be a part of another educational writing project—which started this past Monday.  And I also booked a twice-a-month rhythm and drumming gig at a local nursing home.  Tributaries…

Of course, I continue to focus on my other “water sources,” both here and back East:  Percussion and rhythm programming for kids, families, teachers, and seniors; Golda Meir performances; and acting in TV and film.  

And I have a new project I’m researching and hope to have as a viable current flowing soon: homecare health aid consultant.  I am now developing the model and business plan to help families find long-term home care for their elderly relatives, so they can remain in their homes rather than transfer to a facility. I’ve been successful finding home care for my own parents, and the Internet, Skype, and Craigslist is a beautiful thing.  I begin the writing of my plan this week…

Wouldn’t it Be Nice….

…to have an extra four to six hours in any one day to check off all those things on the “to do” lists?  Yes, of course.  But with only 24 hours (and 7 of them in a prone position), I do what I can. 

Doesn’t seem to be enough time…a common complaint.  Two weeks or more go by before I realize I haven’t posted to either of my blogs (this or my cat blog), and I need to practice more rhythm and drumming.  I can be hard on myself for not working on the creative stuff that emboldens my life with color and creativity…or I can be kinder, take stock of where I am and move forward with more clarity.

(And, besides, today is the start of two very VERY busy weeks of performing.  Springtime is a..bloomin, even if the outside thermometer does say 16 degrees!)

Ultimately, I prefer the latter.