New Robe

I'm going to blog again. I'll keep it short and light, and i'm not going to try and update on Everything from the last blog until now. either you already know most of it or it'll come up.

I bought winter clothes online during the Target black friday sales. i can't imagine shopping on black friday, but from the comfort of my own home with free shipping - that i can. the first part of the order came in today, and I am thankful for it: teal fluffy house robe with a hood and pom poms and it is the most amazing mood lifting snuggly perk ever. I've had a difficult day following a challenging night, and i have not felt happy in the past day until a episode of Glee and this magically comfortable robe. and $7.00 leapoard slippers to match ;-). Teal as a favorite color snuck up on me, didn't expect it until i kept ordering items in teal above all else. It must be from my love of the ocean with summer sunlight bouncing off if it, creating that dreamy deep blue-green.

I have counseling tonight. It is hard to want to blog b/c I have to admit I have an anxiety disorder of sorts, and it affects my mood, my life, my relationships, and my work. and no one wants to hear about un-successes. but it's my life so i'll write about it. counseling is difficult but i need it to heal, and thankfully i have a loving fiancee who is supportive and willing to work hard alongside me.

I also have bible study tonight, which i'm looking forward to. this is my version of book club, my chance to meet with my friends, catch up, and pray together. it's the highlight of my week sometimes. so, dispite a panicky & difficult morning i am looking forward to a hopefully productive evening.

and then, back to the most amazing teal robe ever :-).

summer 2010

wow it's been way to long since i've updated. i guess things have been to up in the air to feel motivated to report on their happenings. but i want to get back in the swing of things because alot of fun stuff is coming up this summer.

so, well since my last post i am no longer in the restaurant industry. actually, the entire month of may, save for two really awesome paid makeup artistry gigs, i was not in an industry. i had some money saved up from work (i still do), and i used a month to just decompress and come back to me. cause after 4 years of school and stressing over life, and then one year of waitressing and trying to make something happen, aka essentially 5 years of what felt to me like workaholicism... i had My Month. My month to travel home, to travel with my boyfriend kevin, to hike, to read, to set my room up more, to run and play guitar and to evaluate why i'm here and why i do things and where up and down are. in may, i would run in the morning, then go and take a seat at my favorite coffee shop, bricks and scones, and job hunt. that's how i found my recent paying gigs, a music video, and an assistant for an art department crew. i also found some awesome non-paying gigs that i helped out on for the connections, and i've made such a wide new circle of connections and friends! after finally getting my fill of healthy downtime, on my terms, i WANT to work. motivation is back on track :) and i needed a month of decompressing after 6 months in the worst fitting job of my life to figure it out.

so since Noe, i've traveled home for my birthday and seen my friends and family (that was awesome!!! seeing my family is always wonderful, everyone seems like they're doing well). i've worked with Funny or Die productions, with Cirque de Soleil (more on that gig in a future post!), and i'm currently applying to work for cosmetic counters here in LA for steady work and a relationship with a good makeup line. fingers crossed and prayers that the main HR's of nordstroms and macy's approve my application so i can invterview!!!

kevin and i have been working things out well and having good long talks over hookah, and fun times watching arrested development and hiking and traveling. it's been good. saturday we went to laguna beach to visit my friend tayler at her graduation party, to visit my friend david who's been in OC since graduation, and kevin's grandmother graciously opened her home to us as a place to stay. laguna is awesome! on sunday morning we took a long walk along the beach, which was actually a mountain climb-like excursion looking at anemones and shells and crabs and rock pools. kevin brought his guitar and played while i soaked in what sun what coming through the june gloom overhead (gloomy or not i still got some sun!).

the weekend before we took a roadtrip up to santa cruz along route one to attend a blues festival. SO beautiful!!! we saw elephant seals (a must see along route one), and the coastline, and it was amazing to see. i took tons of pictures sticking my head out the backseat window to get a better view. we were going to hike in big sur but the trail was closed. then we visited kev's friend paul pham from college, and then his friend paul wilson from santa barbara and his fiance mari opened their home to us for a place to stay in palo alto, where we played bocce ball and a trivia game called 'loaded questions'. the blues festival was amazing, definitely renewed my love for the blues and guitar music i grew up with. sometimes it takes a crush on a cute guy to spike your interest in something :).

and that's a nutshell update. next week kev and i are traveling one last time to Yosemite National park to celebrate our anniversary, so stay tuned! and in late June i'm attending the International Makeup Artist Tradeshow. so exciting!!!!!!

peace & love, sarah-laine

new boss, new shoes, new business

hi! thought i was due for a new post. it's monday, a new week, and i'm already beat. i worked all this weekend, and i made decent money at noe but i can feel the work i put into it. oy! there's a new manager at the restaurant now, russel, and he seems professional, so far so good. it'll be interesting to see what kind of changes he decided to implement. he seems like he prefers things to run smoothly and efficiently, and i can't argue with that! we've been understaffed this weekend too b/c two bussers are sick and one of our cocktail waitresses had a family emergency... so i pulled double duty on saturday bussing and serving, and triple duty sunday bussing and serving on both sides. but it paid off and i'm happy i was able to help.

today i'm going to get new running shoes, because my current ones are from high school and i can feel the effects now that i run everyday. even on mornings like today after such a full worknight, i know i still need to run because if i let too many days slide i'll feel the effects. i think that level of exercise keeps everything in check, even when it's hard to feel motivated. once i'm running i remember how much i enjoy it and it's worth it :). the only trouble with running every morning is that is sets my day back about an hour and a half, so if i want to run before i actually need to be somewhere i need to get up early. that's nearly impossible after getting home at 2:30 am from a bar. so it's not a perfect system, but i'm feeling healthy.

and this weekend was big because i bought a start-up makeup kit so that i can do free lance makeup artistry on the side. i've had friends ask me to be their makeup artist enough times to know that it's something i can offer to people, and with the tax return there really was no longer an excuse to not make the investment in a palette of foundation colors and some basic shadows and glosses that can work on anyone. (up until now i've asked people to bring their own makeup and i just put it on and make things look good on film). now i can charge for materials and service, and the people having the photoshoot can relax and focus knowing they look good :). i bought a Kehoe palette from Naimie's Beauty Center, the coolest and most legit hair and makeup design supply store in the valley :). my makeup design teacher Alicia from USC showed me the awesomeness of Naimie's, and i'm very greatful for all the insider knowledge they have there. that range of foundations, along with a few eyeshadow colors and some eye pencils and some replacement brushes, pretty much completes what i already owned as far as a makeup kit. the next step is to organize my kit, and organize my business!! so, if anyone needs a makeup artist, i'm your girl :). (and i can do hair too.)

performing for the love of it

so today i just finished performing in devon feldmeth's midterm directing scene, from one of my absolute favorite plays, Brilliant Traces. and it was a joy. i mean, the play has heavy themes, and i know i didn't even begin to fully embrace every deep layer that's in it... but i got close, and we had a great run. there was one moment where the whole "the truth is in the text" stuff REALLY clicked in, where my pain became about the words, nothing in my life as sarah, just my words and my life as rosannah... and i got MAD. like, madness mad. and (my scene partner) trevor's heart broke in front of me, again because of the words... we were so committed!!! and the good work was only just beginning. thank you to devon for directing us so effortlessly into something so cool :). i may have graduated, but there's nothing wrong with going back and working with friends. it's awesome actually!

no one will ever see the piece again, i may never work with the brilliant and talented trevor or devon (i hope that Not to be the case, but still), and only a small room of 15 students witnessed it... how ethereal our work is! but i know that i can jump into that turbo-charge kind of energy, with work and commitment and understanding of text, and the more i do it the more confident i am.

and later tonight i have my acting class... i have a mock audition for a pilot, for a comedic lock-picking badass hyper-intelligent rogue character named melissa. she's AWESOME. but i missed last week and chad says it's a challenge. so we'll see how it goes. i'm just hanging at home, i'm going to practice that, then clean for a bit, then make some dinner, then head over. when i have a life so completely filled to the brim with busy-ness and errands and work and commitments, its weird to come down to a calmer day with more time i have control over... a little peace and quiet is cool, i can get used to this. i know i shouldn't, i love being busy, but this is refreshing.

so, i'm doing my art, i love it and i hope i'm always doing it and that's the big picture, the point to remember. like in jersey boys... it was always about the music. for us... it's always about the stories. and i'm more and more confident about marketing that to other people so they can Use my work to help bring Their art to life!!

so exciting. i'm on the brink of some awesome times, i can feel it.

tax season

so i finally faced taxes... completely painlessly. my friend chad moseley works for a firm and he said he could help me out for a deal... and since i was a student for half the year it was simple. he was typing away into the company's program, and i may never fully comprehend how he did it, but i got the gist and i definitely know how careful i need to be with deductibles for '10.

the return was mindblowing and surprising, again because i was a student. thank you obama, thank you california, and thank you lord almighty. here's another huge leap in the fight to beat the bill monster :). i really really really think i've learned my lesson with credit. with this and what i have saved... it should only be a few months until i can start saving towards supplies for mailings to managers and agents, workshops (once i sense that people are looking for newbies again), classes at a good improv school, and a real savings account so i don't get into the same pickles i've been in this past year. and maybe later on... saving for a makeup kit to start working as a freelance makeup artist. i'll also have to save some for new headshots if an agency signs me and decides i need new ones, which often happens so i hear.

acting. is. expensive. whew! but i can't morally spend on any of these things until i start going on at least some real commercial auditions, and booking something. it'll happen when the time is right, i'm sure. and hopefully that will be sooner than i realize :).

good luck with tax season everyone!

Time to Blog.

i'm sitting in Bricks and Scones, nearing the end of my metered parking... wait, nope, just paid the meter, i'm good to write for a bit. anyway, so i'm here reading blogs like my mom's blog, Dragon's Lair Farm, and Mary Kay Wiles' blog, Wearing Black in Paradise.... and i realize i miss blogging. i had an elaborate and intimate livejournal blog, which is all under lock and key b/c i used it more for journaling, but i loved doing it. it's healthy to write, to write often, and to be a little accountable for your life in a 'what do i have that i'd like to write about?' way.

so here i introduce my blog: dragonflies in LaLaLand. why this title? because i've always resonated with dragonflies, they're beautiful and weird and mythic little bugs, they represent change (an ever present constant in my life), and my parents both use dragons either as a farm title or on guitars... so it's only fitting that i'm the dragonfly. and i live in los angeles, i.e. LaLaLand. this place is nuts. but i like it. i'm a city slicker yet i love the ocean, and i am an actress. so LA it is for me for now, until called elsewhere.

i graduated from USC last June (after a community college summer session), so the past nearly nine months have been wonderful, fantastic and blessed, and yet at many times bone-wearingly challenging. i've learned A Lot. still learning, really, but today i can look back and realize that i've learned alot. i've overcome alot of anxiety and mild depression too, with help from family, friends, and therapists, and staying spiritually well. i'm clearer now, and i hope to stay more positive and healthier and clear. running helps, a healthy regularity to my day helps, and being productive helps. also, i'm so happy for spring & summer to be near, life's always a little easier with sunshine and a beach trip just around the corner.

today was my first day in a long time that i have had entirely to myself, and i needed it for personal reasons (as my dad says, to lick my wounds), so i went to the beach. it was freeeeeezing, but i stuck it out and absorbed everything healing and beautiful about ocean air and sunlight and sand. i can't let myself get sucked into the temptation to do this every free day i have (oh how sweet that would be!!), so i won't, i'll appreciate the chances i get. today has been awesome so far.

what does an average day look like? well, recently i've been waking up, playing a little guitar, going for a jog, then heading over to Chad McCord's Actor Studio, where i am assisting with emails and office tasks as a workstudy situation in order to take classes. i figure if i can't audition this season (for paid work i mean, i'm unrepresented and non union and not a triple threat), i can be in class and get connected with people who Are auditioning and Are in it, so i know what to do when that ball finally starts to roll faster. which i hope and pray it will soon. but trying to push a boulder uphill without the financial backing is impossible. which takes me to my next part of my day, Noe. Noe is the in-house restaurant at the Omni Hotel in downtown, where i was hired back in november b/c my first after college job at Karl Strauss was not helping me keep up with the bill monster. I waitress and cocktail waitress, i work nights, nearly every night actually, with a few nights off here and there which normally i can swiftly fill with a class or a workshop. tonight, for once, i can't. and that's OK. i'm learning to relax and let my schedule be open for unexpected things, like a text from my friend Tayler who's organizing something for tonight.

anyway, that's been my life recently. practice art (music or acting), exercise, office work (insert auditions here), & waitressing (or acting class or casting workshop). around all this i am always working on something, like a scene for my friend Devon Feldmeth's SOT directing class, and sides for Chad McCord's class. so the muscles are staying limber and working. this is good.

it's a lot, really. but it's cool. right now, at this stage, this rhythm is ok, it's balancing and i'm paying off bills. However, if this is my life in five years, come smack me and remind me that i've dreamed of film sets and telling stories for way too long to be here. it's not a rut yet, just a rhythm. i can honestly say i really have no idea where i'll be in five years. maybe teaching, maybe acting full time, maybe writing, or producing, maybe i'll join the circus... i doubt the last one, but who knows where i'll be. and that's ok too. i'll know when i'll know, then there i'll go.

peace & love,
sarah laine.