I Believe in Pink

I’ve always been someone to follow my dreams. I am moving to California in the Fall to pursue acting, where I fully intend to become rich and famous and marry a gorgeous celebrity who will inevitably be perfect for me just because I have a feeling. Yet there is one particular dream that has frightened me with the impending question of “what if I can’t.” That dream is of writing… well that, and being a musician… but that is not the point of this blog. The point of this is that I want to use words. I want to use words to move people and to move myself. I am constantly searching for something to change my life. I use list after list of suggestions for movies to watch, books to read and music to listen to, and the one thing that most consistently manages to effect me in all of these mediums is words. There have been so many times that a book or a film has completely captivated me and changed my world, changed how I spoke, changed how I thought and changed how I believed. So this is my exploration into the written word. My voyage through language. So first, an introduction. I am an observer of human activity much more than a participant. I tend to be reserved and when I do immerse myself in a social situation I usually do something that thoroughly mortifies me and leaves me wishing that I had let things be. My first observation will be one that may turn away many potential readers, because they will determine that if I don’t do certain things then my life must be a bore. Day after day I go to work, working overtime and killing myself for money. I work with several others who do the same. However there is one difference between me and them. In fact, I would say that there are three types of people in the restaurant business. Those who need to support a family, those who have no ambition and are simply counting down the minutes until they can go out to the bars and those like me, who are passionately striving for something. Unfortunately, in my current situation I am the only such person in the bunch, and that leaves me to sit back and observe the behaviors of these people who I will never understand. People tell me over and over again that I am naïve and innocent. I resent this fact because I am these things by choice. I have not led a sheltered life, I have felt pain and rejection and depression. However, I will never understand how, seeing all the havoc that is caused by drugs and alcohol people can go out of their way to overindulge and then dare to tell me that I am naïve. I am not naïve. I am just smart enough to recognize a pattern when I see one, and break it when I need to. Looking back on my career thus far I can’t believe myself to be naïve, yet I guess that is my naiveté in action once again. I am an aspiring actress from the Midwest, and I think the thing that people consider to be my ‘naivete’ is in fact, merely optimism. People tell me over and over again that there is a lot of competition in the industry. This is true. However, this is also the advice given by laymen, who believe that the only successful actors in the world are those who are famous. Turn on the tv and radio, or open a magazine and every single person you see or hear has booked an acting job, because you are seeing them. People seem to minimize the importance of film. They ask “what can a person do with a film major, they just watch movies.” The importance of the film industry can be proven by this alone: I dare you to find a major at any university in which a student can get the degree without their teacher showing or assigning one piece of media. I am an actress in the Midwest and I have managed to work for Hulu, VH1, the Discovery Channel, the largest casting agency in the Midwest. I only graduated three months ago. Sure I was behind the scenes on most of these projects, but those production jobs have led to several smaller acting jobs. I guess the determining factor for me is that if I consciously choose to be naive, I can’t be naïve. Ultimately, naïve is the word that pessimists use to describe optimism. This has been a post of introduction, but I know there is an underlying bitterness to it. This post could be considered my disclaimer, because there will be quite a bit of frills and fluff in my posts. I like bubbles and bright colors, my favorite band is still Hanson, I believe a relationship should start and end with love not indifference, I often get excited over small things, and I would rather stay home and read a book than go out and have a night that I will barely remember, but why on earth should that mean that I can’t be taken seriously?