Perfectly Imperfect

That water looks cold.

Behind every show I’ve ever done there are hours of writing. I’m not sure how other people prepare to stand in front of a crowd and entertain them for more than 30 minutes but I write down every word I plan to say in advance and try to commit it to memory.

A dear friend proposed the idea of creating this website / blog for me as a way to share the writing itself and to promote upcoming shows. We started the conversation in 2015 and the site was done early in 2016. You may have noticed that it is now 2019.

I have been wringing my hands for 3 years and I’m not even sure what I’ve been afraid of. That Oprah would call and say that she’s so enamored with my one and only blog entry that I must leave my family, job and friends to move to Santa Barbara and write the next great American novel?

I think its accountability that I’m really scared of. I don’t want to start something I won’t keep up because I’m afraid I’ll be just another person who does a HELLO WORLD blog announcement and then lets it fizzle (How many people really even read blogs?). We are all insanely busy and trying to work, pay bills and feed the dog, let alone reading a blog, is no small feat. Hell, washing my face before I go to bed can feel like a tall order.

This fall my business team needed to take new pictures for our business website. Someone had this great idea that we should get a shot of me jumping off of the Indianola Dock. It was an overcast day and the water was frigid but nothing compared to the shock of seeing the photographs of myself afterwards. I’m leaping from the dock railing, in a bright red bathing suit. My team loved the message the pictures convey, but when I looked at them I saw a ripe Jersey tomato with flailing arms and legs. It is the perfect visual metaphor for starting this blog.

I am reminded of when I arrived at the hospital to give birth to my son (14 years ago). Like a lot of new mothers to be, I had a vision of what the birth was going to be like and I had everything planned out. There was a cassette tape with soothing music, essential oils for foot rubs, a special pillow… 54 excruciating hours later I was having an emergency C section and all I cared about was crossing the finish line. I didn’t have the birth I’d expected, but when my husband brought our son to me to see for the first time everything else faded away. It was a perfectly imperfect moment.

I know that there are better and worse times to start something, but I’m not sure how often “perfect timing” is applicable. Many of the things I have attempted have had bumpy starts and even if the attempts turned into something deemed successful, it was persistence and courage that carried me through, not a flawless plan well executed. Besides, the really spectacular missteps make for the best stories.

“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing” Eva Young

So here goes.