It's Blog Relaunch Day!!! Welcome to the Sammie/Julie/Julia Project!!!

New Direction...The Sammie/Julie/Julia Project...


Okay, so I'm an abandoner...I began this blog a year ago upon anticipating my move to Fresno.  What I wanted: A courageous tale about a young woman finally reaching her dreams!!  What it turned into: Endless droning about the awfulness of central California and my depressing internal state!! BUT!! I now have a plan. On August 14th, I watched the movie Julie & Julia three, no four, times. Coincidentally, I found "The Juile/Julia Project" actually still in its raw form on salon.com.  Read along with me here: http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html
 
I think Mrs. Powell and I have a lot in common. Well, that is, when she first started her life-altering project. Likewise coincidental, she began on August 25th, 2002. So, eight years later, I link up with JP and for every date she made a recipe and blogged about it, so shall I. Now, the topic will be different. My mother is ill.  Cancer.  "There's nothing we can do." 4-6 months they say. HA! Only GOD has the final say!!  Knowing her, she'll be smiling and kickin 4-6 years from now!!!  Reality sets back in...
 
I'm an opera singer. She wanted to be an opera singer. She wants me to be all the opera singer both she and I were/are supposed to be. So, I have the rest of her life to sing my way into some opera grandeur - whether landing a contract, winning mega opera competition(s), a magical moment when someone just happens to hear me during  "borrowed" time in a Blair School of Music practice room at Vanderbilt! Audition season is upon thousands of singers with the same objective (hopefully without the ailing parent part.) So, applications are going out, new arias and art songs being researched and memorized, cross country treks to lessons are being booked. I'm just going to sing. If they want me, great. If not, don't ask me what I'll do then, but this process is not about that. It's about the one and only opportunity I have to make my mother's final resting pillow a little softer...
 
Aaaaannnnddd..ACTION!! Buona voce!!
 
(The one thing I am keeping from the old blog format...)
Question of the day: Don't you think it's time to relaunch some things in your life?

I'll be switching over to a new blog and hiding this one, so I'll see you at http://www.thesammiejjproject.blogspot/ .com !!!!!

A Tribute for my mother...Donate?

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?team_id=760289&fr_id=22624&pg=team

What to do about the celebrity inside...

There's a celebrity inside of me. But there's a problem. Nobody knows it but me...

I grew up a child in the spotlight, always singing, always dancing, playing the violin/viola. Winning competitions, singing the solos, taking the spotlight. But what has happened since?

You hear famous people speaking of their hard work all of the time, about how they just worked their way, and are in hungry pursuit of their ultimate dreams. Here's where I'm confused about my world. What is my hard work? I mean sure, I've said I want to be an opera singer, and that means getting the voice in place, learning the music, and landing auditions...Well, that would be okay if I were content to trot from opera house to opera house the rest of my life. There is a huge chunk of me that wants more. A greater influence. But am I enough of a person to deliver such? Is there enough substance in me to get to the red carpet? I suppose my next question should comb through my motives in wanting fame. Yes, I say that I want to make an impact, that I have dreams. But why? Just because I'm talented doesn't mean I have A-lister potential! I believe that much of it is the competitive, or admittedly egotistical, part of me that wants to somehow be at the very top of my game. And then there's the whole almost 30 issue. I'm majorly running out of time. And the weight? Oh boy, that's a big one. No pun intended.

I'm in such a weird place right now. Not knowing if I want to stay in Fresno, not really knowing if I want to, or need to, do the practical thing and go back...and then, my mother....I heard weariness in her voice today and I didn't like it. There was a piece of life missing. She said she was fine, but it was unmistakable. And in fact, it may be something that she can't feel yet. But I heard it unmistakably. I'm losing her.

So, where does that leave me? WHAT, once and for all, do I want out of my life??????

Dancer, Singer, Writer, Actress, Education Professional...and at one time I thought myself to be a visionary, but it isn't so anymore. I don't see past today. Is that my fault? Is it how I'm surviving? Will it pass? What can I do about it? Now there's a real question...maybe I need a life coach...

Okay, I'm officially on a search for the design of my world, how I want my life to speak of the things inside of me. I'm looking for an "X" to mark the spot for the etching of my footprints...no more elipsces, incomplete thoughts still waiting as a turn the bend on another venture around the same mountain. I'm done with asking these same questions. However, I do have to give myself credit that I have peeled back more and more layers of myself and am finally reaching the core. Yeah, I'm reaching the core. It has purpose and a direction. I just hope that at last I will begin to see it all unfold and be fulfilled.

Question of the day: What are you going to do about the ______________ inside?

Who would I have been?

I didn't dress up for Halloween this year. No parties, no drunken one night stand. And besides fearing that I'd get robbed and shot by this guy with a machine gun who stopped his car right by me as I walked down the street, no goblins or ghosts. But if I would have dressed up, had a place to wear a clever costume, what would I have been?

I suppose the whole Halloween identity is the only time of year when people are allowed the indulgence of being something they are not, and even, someone they wish they were. Don't we women all want to be some sort of tempting vixen, a coveted princess, an exalted heroine? For me, I'm not sure. I mean, these days, I feel like I'm walking around wearing a mask as it is, floundering around in a city I hate, working a job I'm handicapped in doing well, wishing I was anywhere else. Why did my amazing teacher have to live here? Why not some place beautiful with stunning scenery and plucky people? There is nothing for anyone in this town, let alone ME!!

I truly know what it feels like to live day by day. It's so disarming, so driveless. I'm scared of not waking up in enough time to face the day and even more scared to go to sleep for fear I will actually wake up. They say you design your own life, create your own world, but why do I feel paralysed to do either? God, how depressing it is that I'm even writing this, but you know, it's easy to feel like this. Powerless and numb. It's the excuse for not being productive and impacting. Fat and selfish.

What would I have been for Halloween? A selfless, inspired, heartful...me...

Question of the day: Couldn't you stand to indulge in a better you?

Bleeding Through the Bandaid

I'm bleeding, profusely, from a lifeline artery, and I'm applying a bandaid. Why? Because that's how I've survived the many days of my past 10+ years. My former marriage was a bandaid for fear of lonliness. My divorce was a bandaid for fear of suicide. My disease of debt is layers and layers of bandaids pulling away at my hair folicles. A symptom of the fear of lack.

My best friend told me today that I'm not trying hard enough, that I need to stop making such bad decisions out of fear and do what I need to do. My question to her was the same as it has always been. "What can I do?" "What choice can I make?" I feel so burried under a sea of faulty, choices that I don't really see how making good ones now can really save me. But something's gotta give, right? There has to be a day coming in my life when it flows, when it's moving forward and not aimlessly wandering to and fro. She thinks I'm not trying hard enough. Hmmm...I think she's right. In fact, I know she's right. She is always my voice of reason, one of very few people who can alter the course of my thinking. And further, the singular person on this earth I rely on for sound advice. And today, she spoke to me with an authority I've rarely heard from her. She spoke belief into my calling to sing but slapped me into the reality of how I'm standing in my own way. "Faith without works is dead," she quoted. I didn't fully understand what she meant and I tried to argue, but knew she was speaking the absolute truth with pristine clarity. She wasn't just talking about practicing or even earning more money. Putting myself in a position to be blessed with a life full of what I am called to do. "Be completely you," she said.

And here's my next question, Who am I completely? For whatever reason, I thought I had this one in the bag long ago. But I was wrong. I can't answer that question for anything in this world. I mean, I know my flaws. I know my likes and dislikes. I know what brings me joy, pain. But I don't know WHO I am! Like my voice, I'm all fluff and no core. Bummer... and hence all of the bandaids, self-soothing my way through life. Assimilating to the point of compromising my identity, allowing intimidation to . But then, why am I strong? How have I pulled through abandonment, abuse, more abandonment, heart-break, and coerced independence? Have the bandaids just been holding up that well?

These are important questions that have no immediate answers. The most significant thing about them is that are now the pink elephant in the room. And how big and colorful they are. I'm baffled, but what's good is that I don't feel powerless. Doesn't it make things better to know that although you have a disease, that it's treatable, curable even?

I have a severed artery and have nearly bled out, but I'm not supposed to die on the operating table. I cannot go gently into that good night, nor can I slowly fade away. Then I think about the private rantings of others. Their lonliness, their near suffocation at not being able to get things right. Their tears and exasperation. I'm not alone in any of that. It's so dark, all of it, but I'll close tonight with these most fitting words, the most profound set of words I could ever quote:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, `Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone, and, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianna Wilson (not Nelson Mandela as it is often miscredited)

Question of the day: Are the symptoms of your fears severing your lifelines?

I've got talent button

Image via Wikipedia

Four seasons now, I've watched America's Got Talent and have cheered with the best and booed or at least rolled on the floor booing the worst, of what this show portrayed as the raw best of American acts. As an opera singer, I've shunned participating myself claiming that it would cheapen my respectability amongst legitimate opera professionals and thus was not something that I should do. However, in the last couple of seasons "opera" singers have appeared and even won the title of the most talented act in America along with a million dollars and a Vegas contract. And yes, I've sat in front of the TV and critiqued their woefully lacking technique and the hype surrounding them, but you know, they've actually inspired me...

I have two mothers. One gave birth to me and the other raised me. But what ties these two women, besides their niece/aunt kinship, is the fact that both of them had singing dreams that never came true. Life was not in favor of such things for them. My birth mother, nerves and subsequent mental illness derailed her. The mother who raised me (my great-aunt biologically) lived in a time when this wasn't as likely for her race. And although a chosen few inspirators made it through, Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Marian Anderson, Shirley Verette, etc. she chose the road to feed her young family. And that's why I was born. I was born to link together the unheard voices of these women, to bring them to the stage with thrice the impact.

In my quest towards honing my voice for the opera house, there's been a burning desire within to give my voice, compounded with my mothers, a unique path. And I want people to view opera as more than just a big woman making her ascent in a long blonde wig and horns. How human its stories, how tangible its drama, how real its beauty. It's not just for a social class or race, it's for humanity.

In the tab next to the one where I'm writing this, I've got the AGT audition pre-registration site up. Tomorrow, I'm going to make a 2-3 minute video telling a little of my story and singing Io son l'umile ancella. Lastly, I'll click on the "I've got talen" button to submit...

...and hopefully, in some months, I'll be reporting that, "I'm going to Vegas!"

Question of the day:

What's your story and when are you going to start telling it?

The questions?

Oh boy this is gonna be deep. Not really. It's just that this blog of mine has taken on a level of lameness that makes me ask, "Who is going to be interested in reading this?" "Would I even want to read about someone who thinks he or she is all novel in their carthartic 'figuring-my-life-out verbiage? garbage?" I don't know. I was walking yesterday in the hot Fresno sun and contemplated to no end whether I should just erase it all and start over. Then no one would have to know how uncommitted I am to the initial 90-day challenge I set out for myself.

The other day, my best friend forever began quoting me passages from this God-forsaken blog and I all of a sudden felt very exposed, like she was reading out of one of my teenage locked diaries (the only two of which I had that I had to break into myself because I lost the keys...sigh.) I mean, of course I knew that this is published to the internet and anyone can read it, but because I never had a particular audience in mind, really didn't think what could happen if someone did.

So next question, What picture of myself am I creating by post these rantings? Writing has a way of revealing that speech does not. When we let printed words have their say, they speak the truth loudly and vividly until they become a story...so I suppose, lameness and all, a story is what I'll be...

Question of the day: What story would your words tell if they were written?