Back to life

SPOILER ALERT:

I didn't get cast.

But here's the more important stuff. Because it's not about the end result. It's about how we got here.

I had a great callback yesterday. I felt like I did "my best", but more importantly I was completely honest about myself. And I think I did great work. Of course after a final callback there is this vast pit of worrisome things one could start thinking about. Like I realized on the subway home later that I skipped a line. Or "do they think that I can't manipulate my passaggio in the high belt, or do they just attribute that to early morning singing?" You can spend hours thinking of itsy bitsy tiny thing, and that can make you crazy. So instead you try to just "let it go".My problem with "letting go" is that I fall a bit in love with a character when I spend this much time with them. Granted it's been a little over a week, but hey, a lot of love can happen in a week. And I really and truly fell in love with this project and the story. So I would have been nice to be cast. But these things, as they often do, aren't always about who was "better" or "worse", but about who is "right". And just like dating or falling in love, it's not a check list of things (though there may be some "must haves" or "can't stands"), it's more about an unnameable quality of the person... some essence. So you can't beat yourself up for not being someone you're not.

Isn't that a horrible irony of the actor's life? One would think being an actor means being able to be anyone. And really, all I can do, is be myself.

I did send an email to thank the writer for the opportunity and he sent me a lovely note back complimenting my work, and then an even lovelier note to tell me I was not cast, and the why's. (Which is unusual. Usually I just wait until the show opens and is running and then I say "well I guess they didn't cast me!") But

There was a moment, waiting outside, when I heard the girl who was going in after my appointment singing, and she had this fantastic jazz pop voice, kind of Joss Stone-like, and I immediately felt totally intimidated. (And I rarely am wowed by other people's voices, just as an FYI.) And so I did what I always do, which is remind myself "Just be you. You are amazing and wonderful and talented, and can only be you. So just be you." And I ha

d the briefest moment of panic of thinking "But who am I???"

You'd think at this stage in my life I would have this one figured out... I do know that I am becoming a phenomenal runner, something I never thought possible. That my body is capable of amazing things. That I have a huge passion for "Real Food" , and perhaps an equivalent passion for a great hamburger and a pint of beer. I am learning to understand that I am a beautiful person, something I accepted about my inside long before I accepted that it was true from the outside as well. I know that children love me (I'm like baby-crack), and so do animals.

But I know I'm horridly insecure, and that I worry a lot that people don't like me. Or resent me. Or are thinking bad things about me. Or that they're judging me. I worry that I'm "unloveable, unloving and ice cold", as was once told to me as a teenager.

I believe I wrote about how the other day, the DBF observed "I thought your blog was going to be about running". And it is...

But the title is, "Anna Lise Is..." and the main objective is to write about who I realize I am, all the while pushing my body to its physical limits... testing the physical and stimulating the emotional and spiritual at the same time. And if I did more Sodoku on my phone I could be stimulating my intellectual as well. :)

Anyway, so on to some actual running.

I had a 3 mile run scheduled today. I actually was excited to get out of bed and get out there. And I started my 3 miles, and was having a grand old time, and enjoying a really quick pace. And when I got to Mile 1, I turned around and headed back home, and only about a half a mile in did I realize, I forgot to do my loop. There is a small lake at the tip of Central Park called Harlem Meer. It is a mile around.

It is a mile from my apartment to the park, so it's a perfect little 5K to leave my house, run to the park, run around and then run back. But for some reason this morning I "forgot" (?) my 3 mile run was a 3 mile run and started running it like a 2 mile run, so needless to say, by around mile 2, averaging a very fast 7 minute pace, I got reeeeally tired. But I finished. There's another park between my house and the Big Park that is also almost a mile to run around, so I just added a loop, but it was a pretty pathetic loop. If I hadn't been really powering through my first two miles, I think i would have averaged a pretty quick pace, possibly just at 8 minute mile. But sadly, my brain checked out and I don't have a good analysis of my pace.

I did learn how awful it can feel when you push yourself too much to soon!

And, I did get a nice congratulatory message from my Nike+ at the end of my workout, from Tiger Woods (for my fastest recorded mile). Do you think Tiger is still on the new Nike+ adapters they're currently making? I doubt it...