seasons change

There's a chill in the air. Fall is upon us.

Summer/fall break ended spectacularly with a heartfelt reunion over diner food, a nighttime trip to the Statue of Liberty, a picnic in Central Park, drinks with good friends, snuggles and sleepovers, and gearing up for school. I've just completed my first week of my second semester at AMDA, and everything has gone pretty well thus far. Classes are just as expected, picking up right where we left off with little time for us to get comfortable. I got accepted into the Dialects Elective, where I'll learn how to speak three to four different dialects and accents this semester. I'm really happy about that, since the class is selective. Acceptance was based on an audition, which included speaking in various dialects and accents (and I had no previous experience doing so), transcribing text using the International Phonetic Alphabet, performance in the previous semester of Voice Production and Speech class, and teacher recommendation. Not only am I looking forward to the class for its subject matter, but it will surely be a benefit to me when I enter the professional performing world a year from now. Aside from Dialects, I'll be taking the Composition Elective this semester as well. It's been one of my life ambitions to write a song, but I've always been too scared. And for no real reason, actually. So when I heard about this class last semester, I made sure to make time for it in the fall. I attended the first class this past week, and it looks like its going to be a lot of fun. I also was elected Co-Dance Captain of my class group, and it was quite the honor to know that my peers trusted my leadership. I'll be running rehearsals outside of class and helping to teach and clean up dance routines in preparation for midterms and finals.

Outside of school, I've been happily adjusting to life as an unemployed, full-time student. I've gotten to spend a lot of time with my friends and I've gotten a lot more sleep than I've been used to in recent years. My loan application was declined, which was scary for about a hot second. Then I realized I did the application incorrectly, so I just reapplied and am now waiting on a positive response. With my credit history and guarantor, I should have no problem getting the money I need to get by. Knock on wood, of course.

I'm slowly, but surely, making plans for the holidays. No idea what I'll be doing this Friday to celebrate Halloween, but come Thanksgiving, you can surely find me on Central Park West watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and having an orphan Thanksgiving feast later that evening. Sometime soon I'll be ice skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park, the one featured in a handful of movies. Christmas will be spent in California, and I'll likely be visiting both the North and South counterparts of my lovely home state. And this New Year's will be my first in New York City and my first away from my family. I've got quite the holiday season ahead of me. More details to come in due time.

I've got a whole lot of reasons to be happy right now. My only worry is whether or not this feeling will last. But I'll figure it all out in the weeks ahead. Until then, all I can do is patiently smile and wait.

molasses

Now that I don't have school, for the moment, and a job, I have been so incredibly bored. The days move forward like molasses, and I can't find enough to keep me occupied during the day. I have slept more in the last four days than I have in the last four months, and I've watched so much TV, I swear I'm turning into a potato. Thankfully, with my lack of physical activity, I've managed not to scarf down too much food. Surprised myself there, since I have this awful tendency to eat when I'm bored. The terrible thing is that when I don't have anything to do, my propensity toward procrastination, which is usually close to non-existent, dramatically increases. So I haven't yet started working on my first song for second semester, due the first day of class. Well, that's not entirely true; I've learned and memorized the song and did all my preliminary research. It's just the paperwork I've been procrastinating on. Hopefully I'll get it all done soon.

I'm approaching the end of my sixth month here in New York, and my circle of friends is increasing. The funny thing is, I never expected to have people I could count on this early in the game. But while I wait for school to start again and spend my days here in solitude, I realize that the people I've met and befriended in the last few months mean more to me than I could have possibly imagined and certainly more than I could have hoped for. That makes me so happy. It makes me feel like this is where I belong if it all came so easily. And that's the truth of it all: when it's right, it's easy.

So far, so slow, so not much of an update. More to come as my second semester begins.

catch up

Too much has happened in the last few days, but most of it is too important not to mention. Sadly, all this running around has left me with a vicious cold, my first here in New York City. Ah well, it was coming sooner or later.

First, and most importantly, I quit my job! Well, not officially yet; my last day is this Sunday. I always talk about feeling burnt out - psshh, I haven't stopped talking about feeling burnt out since my junior year of high school - but this time, I finally did something about it. Thanks to my scholarship from AMDA, I didn't have to take out much of a loan to cover the remainder of my tuition. And since I have no debt from college and no personal debt of my own, I decided to be my own age, for once, and live off of someone else's money for the remainder of my time in school, which is just one calendar year. I realized that I didn't move 3,000 miles away from home to be a waitress, get stiffed by European tourists and yelled at by native New Yorkers about the quality of their bagel and lox, or be mistreated weekend after weekend by droves of hangry (hungry + angry) people. I came to New York City to perfect my craft and learn about myself and this beautiful city. So I'm gonna do that now and say goodbye to my first ever waitressing job. It was fun while it lasted.

Final demos are nearly completed. I spent the last couple of days throwing around more money than I could realistically afford to treat myself on a job well done. This included a mani/pedi, a stylish new haircut, a fantastic fall jacket, and a little special something for myself happening this weekend that I shouldn't (and never will) write home about. It was all well deserved, that much I can say.

I'm so addicted to How I Met Your Mother and Heroes. Seriously, how did I ever manage to get through the first 22 years of my life without watching TV? I don't know. Today, I discovered the wonders of HBO On Demand and watched all five premiere episodes of True Blood, a new vampire thriller. I have a thing for the supernatural, I suppose.

Nikki comes home from almost a month-long business trip in Toronto, so Bosco will no longer be my only roommate. As cool as it is to have a dog around, it'll be nice to have a person to talk to during the evenings. Most other people I know will be going home for the week break we have off from school. But seeing as though I no longer have a job and cannot afford to go back to California (even when I had the job I couldn't afford the cross-country flight), I'll be spending my week off at the AMDA library doing preparatory work for second semester as well as exploring the city. I hope to go to the movies, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Bridge, hopefully in time to see the waterfalls before they are taken down next week, and shopping for winter clothes.

The temperature is dropping and the seasons are changing. I cannot wait for winter in New York City.