I Used to Act

I limited myself to acting for the majority of my life, it wasn't until I explored my curiosity that I discovered new creative outlets.

I have been acting since I was in the 6th grade, I preformed in: Christmas plays, one acts, competed in districts, was in a sketch comedy group throughout college, and preformed in the spring musical at my high school. I love acting, getting to practice being a complete different person was one of the few things that could keep me focused being the high energy ADHD child I was (this is still how I am today). Once I started acting, it consumed my free time; I would practice songs, accents, write down or think about character profiles explaining why my character acted a certain way. When this time in my life inevitably ended around my sophmore year of college, I experienced grief. I love preforming and I didn’t know how I would scratch that creative itch that I already missed.

This is me and my theatre director after my first lead role!

It wasn’t until the Christmas break of my sophomore year of college I read a legitimate book (since Diary of a Wimpy Kid doesn’t count), and it happened to be the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This book series holds a close place to my heart because of how much this series means to a man I look up to, Jake Pizza. Jake and I became really close from the sketch comedy group we were a part of, but he was also the only creative person that sparked creativity in me. He would go back and re-read the whole series over the course of a summer, I never understood what that was about, until I experienced it myself. Reading this masterpiece of fiction opened up my mind to the creativity reading produces in the reader. This still is a big motivating factor in why I love to read, the feeling of reading a exemplary fiction for the first time. I found out creativity is not just expressed through action, but words being read on a page have just as much, if not more, ability to express oneself creatively.

Jake and I after our first show together freshman year! (The hair was rough, I know, but I was a freshman so it makes a bit of sense)

Ultimately, reading this book led me down a path, over months and years, to starting what you are reading right now! I started this blog to practice expressing myself through writing; while not every blog has been as clean as I would like them to be, some are outstanding and even resonated with some of you! Success for these is in completing them, but the cherry on top is when I get texts from you all about how much a post resonated with you and where you’re at! I am currently listening to Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, and a quote he shares amongst the gold he gives the reader comes from John Lennon, and aptly summarizes the creative journey I have been on,

‘Im an artist, if you give me a Tuba, i’ll bring you something out of it.’

This is my goal of exploring my curiosity of what being creative outside of the method of acting looks like, that I can take a Tuba and make something out of it.

Because I am an artist.