Welcome In The New

I started writing my traditional “year in review” post, oh, about two weeks ago now, and found it difficult. I found it difficult to get motivated to write, I found it difficult to start, and honestly, I never finished it.

2013 was an amazing year for me. A huge year. I made more new friends in the past year than I did in the past five years combined. I found new crushes, I found new soul mates, and I brought my husband along for the ride with his approval all the way. I was involved in four or five films, and not only had my first paying gig, but my first professional paying gig as well. I got a real agent. I was accepted into the elite of the Second City training programmes. It was a fucking spectacular year.

Truthfully, I think I’m worried I won’t be able to build on my success as dramatically as I was able to in 2013. In my bones, I feel like I will– like I’ll be able to continue to grow and succeed and make myself proud. But there’s always that grain of doubt.

The holidays this year got, to use a British term, “right cocked up” this year. The great ice storm of 2013 nailed us good, taking away our power right up until Christmas Eve, while still leaving us without heat & hot water in the apartment (evidently a trend amongst high rises, I later found out.) We elected to stay at a friend’s place with the cats over Christmas, but it meant a lot of back & forth in the days before Christmas, and two trips (one with squealing cats in the car) on Boxing Day, my traditional “get drunk and never get out of my pj pants” day. Coupled with the fact that I worked up until noon on Christmas Eve, and was back in the office the following Monday, and there wasn’t much of a “holiday” feel to my Christmas this year.

New Year’s Eve was fun and different from anything else I’ve done on New Year’s Eve– I knew I was going to ring in the new year with friends from Second City, as well as with a couple of old friends we’d spent most of our recent midnight’s with on December 31, but it wasn’t until a couple of days before the calendar changed that we confirmed plans to attend a house party of a classmate. It turned out to be a legitimately Epic house party– two DJ’s, a fantastic little band that did covers of Top 40 songs from the past 20 years with only a guitar, a small drum kit, and a trombone, people crammed into the space elbow to elbow, me opening a bottle of champagne at midnight flawlessly (and proceeding to pass it around the group to swig directly from the Moet bottle), and dancing with old & new friends until the wee hours of the morning. Throw in some high school level cat fights, drunk people making out for like 30 minutes in full view of everyone, me being hijacked by a gay guy for salsa dancing for two songs, groping all around, and you’ve got a fun night that makes classmates and friends alike jealous that they missed out.

Right now, I’m being willfully myopic. Forget the goals for 2014; they’re very nebulous right now– don’t get kicked out of Con. Get more acting gigs. Figure out what to do after Con is over. Guy & I leave for England in less than a week, and I’m not looking any further than next Friday at 8pm when our plane leaves. It’s a trip I’ve dreamed of for years, and something I’ve been actively planning for over half a year, with tickets to a show bought in June of 2013, plane tickets bought in October, the cat-sitter in place & GBP purchased since November, and stacks of paper with subway maps, train times, bus schedules from the airport, points of interest, and other details printed on them since December. Writing it down like that, I’m starting to get a little stir of excitement in my chest. I’m going to England, and life can wait until after that.

We have very few cemented plans: we have high tea at Harrod’s the afternoon that we arrive; my sister & I are having our hair & makeup done the afternoon before we go to see David Tennant perform in Richard II; and apart from that, nothing is in stone. I want to visit Speedy’s Cafe one day, we’d like to see Churchill’s Bunker, I’m dying to do the London Eye and surrounding landmarks, I’ve been told the British Museum is a must, and Guy & I are toying with the idea of a small trip to either Edinburgh or Paris just to break up the trip… But we’ll decide that once we’re there.

For now, it’s just “get through the next few days at work” and “get to England safe.” After that, this, our REAL holiday, will begin, and hopefully will return us to Canada with some rest, perspective, and new ambition. And after that, I hope 2014 will be ready for us.

Love to you all.