Countdown going critical!

So getting down to roughly 10 days left till I start my detox. And certainly feeling the crunch. In more ways than one.

The first way is feeding off that "need" to use facebook as communication. Getting this feeling like if I stay on long enough, this person or that person might wanna chat. Disregarding the fact that I have other things to do or that it's 12:30 at night. Thank you to my sister Katie for basically kicking my butt off of Facebook last night.

It's also counting down the days till the next round of fight tests. In this next round, I'll be attempting to test in all 8 weapons tested by the Society of American Fight Directors. This includes unarmed, singlesword, rapier and dagger, quarterstaff, longsword, smallsword, broadsword and shield, and knife. That will be 8 different choreographed fights with scenes which is usually crazy to do all at once. 3 or 4 is usually a big amount. 5 or 6 is being an over achiever. 8 is insanity. Not just for the person testing, but for their partners, the teacher choreographing these fights, and for the adjudicator judging the scenes. And there are 4 of us trying to pull this off this time around.

So if I forget to say it between now and test day, thank you to Ian Rose for dealing with this craziness and choreographing all these fights. Thank you to Oliver Donahue, Jacqueline Holloway, Martin Boresma, Laren Williams and Kathryn Roper for partnering with me in this craziness. And thank you to J. David Brimmer for when you see these fights.

This experience has also brought to the fore front the all of the issues with me still living in New Jersey with my folks. Because all of my partners are in Philly, they have an easier time getting together to practice. Because I work 8-4:30 5 days a week and I have to drive 30-45 mins just to get into the city, I can't practice any time of the day. Because most theatres rehearse during the day, I have a harder time being involved with a production. I could go on and on with this, but no need to make anyone else nauseous from all the complaining. Long story short is that I need to move out of my folk's house and out of Jersey. The question now is where to move.

All of this being said, these are just different reasons why I think I use Facebook as an escape or a distraction. When you don't let yourself think about the things that seem tough, you don't really find out what you can handle. You end up pushing things to the back of your mind. "Oh I'll worry about that tomorrow..." the motto of the procrastinators of the world. And all who've known me for long enough know how much of a procrastinator I am. Hence why I need to take this break from Facebook...don't give myself the distraction and the things that seem tough are forced to the forefront. Time to focus on moving myself forward instead on what everyone else around me is doing.

And mentioning it because I don't just want to focus on the negative, here are some good things I've been doing. I saved some of the money I made from those film shoots and recently deposited them so I can pay for a fight skirt made by Siobhan Richardson from Toronto. I plan on paying for my registration for the Winter Wonderland Workshop within the next week or so. I believe I recently got hired to teach a Saturday drama class for the international students attending the New Jersey United Christian Academy. The film shoot I mentioned is with a production called "Philadelphia: The Great Experiment" filmed by History Making Productions. With that production, I got cast as a principle actor in the role of Armagott Printz.

So good things are happening. It's not all doom and gloom. But those good things do not discount the need for things to change. So, in the next 10 days, Facebook is for coordination for the upcoming fight tests. Once those tests are done, it's off facebook till March. Still makes me nervouse, but I know this is something that needs to change. Only way to move forward right now it seems.

COUNTDOWN TO FACEBOOK DETOX-- 10 Days.