8. Getting Organized

"Just as a musician must fine tune his instrument before a performance, to tap into their creativity, actors must learn to fine tune themselves through the process of self-awareness and self-understanding." 

- Bonnie Katz

I think I function best in a state of organized disorder. I like things to be organized enough that I know where to find things, but messy enough that I don’t worry about everything being tidy and perfect all the time.

It’s a delicate balance. When I swing too far in either direction… then steps need to be taken to clean-up and categorize… or to mess things up a bit and add some color or images or scrawled notes on a napkin or throw everything up in the air and swim around in it for a bit.

For my Acceptance Project, I made myself a folder, a yellow folder, to be exact. 

Inside the folder is where I cram all my little notes and ideas and reminders and influences and inspirations throughout the day. I carry it with me most of the time. (Sometimes cumbersome, but I never regret having it with me when I need it.)

In life, I am primarily an auditory learner. I learn and/or memorize by listening.

But in goal-setting I LOVE visuals… like my vision board collage, which I made last year and is the background art for the blog.

Calendar’s are also awesomely motivational for me...

I made this one and glued it to the inside of my folder, so that every day that I post a blog I can feel the joy of writing the blog title in the little empty box. 

Soon there won’t be so many blank spaces and I will have a fun visual representation to look back at when the project is all over. 

In a way, I feel like a child in Kindergarten. But hey! It was fun back then, why not now? 

Little things, like that, help to add joy to the process and serve to keep me motivated all at once.

RE: Ideas

Linear approach? For me? Not so much. This is how I think…

I use this technique called “Mind-mapping.” I learned it at a business writing seminar that I took for the day-job. (Thanks, Skillpath!)

It’s soooooo fun. You put your central idea in the center... and then any related ideas that come to mind become a little bubbles attached to the central idea. And then... you can add bubbles that branch off of your already existing bubbles as sub-ideas or whatever.

It’s a non-linear outline.

Best part about it is that there’s really no wrong way to do it. It helps get all the ideas out on the page without so much judgement inhibiting the flow. 

And at the end you have a pretty picture… or a hot mess… depending on your POV. Ha! 

But who cares! At least all your ideas are out there. Now you can see them all and organize them or throw them away or whatever.

At the moment, I am feeling a little disorganized. There are way too many random Post-It notes in my folder. I have no idea what's in there anymore.

I need to go through everything and edit my to-do list and my calendar and see where I am at… will happen...  soon.

Got to purge some of my notes that I probably won’t use… figure out what items on my to-do list are “top-priority” and what are “I-will-get-around-to-that-later-or-maybe-never”… and check the calendar to see what’s coming up in the next couple of weeks that I might need to schedule/ prep for.

Some recent items that have been checked-off of the to-do list…

• Joined the mailing list at Juilliard (It's in the running. Haven't fully committed to it yet, but it looks promising. Moving forward "as-if" I'm going to add it to the list.)
• Scheduled campus tours at both Yale and Juilliard (Re: NYU... They don't really have a tour that’s specific to the graduate drama department. And the I have done the general tour already.... Re: Juilliard... Still gathering information, but their tour will really clinch it for me. If I walk through the halls and feel at home there... then I'll know I'm supposed to apply.)
• Entered in all scheduled deadlines to the Google Calendar attached to the blog (This will automatically email me reminders as the deadlines approach. Such an awesome feature!!! Never have to worry about forgetting an important deadline.)
• Checked out the performance schedules of upcoming shows this semester at NYU, Yale & Juilliard
• Made an appointment for my 5^th monologue coaching session with the wonderful and talented Kathryn Bild 

Pending items, requiring action...

• Choose my Shakespeare monologue ( I am 99.9% sure that I’ve got my two contemporary monologues and one classical already chosen.)
• Schedule appointment to get updated headshots in October (I’ve already decided that I’d like to get my shots taken with Dirty Sugar Photography. I love their stuff.)
• Save up money to pay for October headshots
• Send notes to NYU and Yale (maybe Juilliard?) contacts and invite them to follow the blog
• Go online to NYU & Yale’s websites to look at the details of their programs posted online to see if there have been any changes from last year
• Reserve tickets to see Clybourne Park at NYU in late Sept/early Oct

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can think of for now.

Gotta go get ready for work. Now I get to go and administrative assist other people’s lives too! ... Talk about a role I was born to play… Ha!

Have a fantastic day, all.

Hugs,

Virginia