my brilliant niece

Lucy's amazing. and yes, i know, i'm totally biased, and i don't care. i spent last weekend in San Diego for Lucy's b-day. while there i went over to a friend's house and played with her two boys, they were not nearly as interesting. Lucy is just bursting with personality, and she's just a happy and witty and clever and sly and warm and funny little girl! we had tons of fun playing with stickers and playing doctor with stuffed animals and reading books and going to music class. she loves to dance and watch "Pre-School Musical" on Sesame Street!! (an artist on our hands perhaps?) she definitely marches to the beat of her own drummer. she loved my prezzie (wooden vegetables and fruits) and we had fun playing grocery checkout with her new cash register. she quickly learned how to use the credit card. she's so curious how things work (like her engineer Daddy perhaps?)

i was worried that she would be afraid of me given that she really doesn't know me. she was shy and just wanted to observe me at first. but she warmed up eventually and included me in her play. it makes me feel so good when she wants to play with me. i could play all day long!

i love being Aunt Jamie!

back to my first love

i started back in scene study last night with Scott Freeman. i took class with him at The Actor's Center. it was awesome. totally awesome. it really sank in that i'm in a totally different place than i was three years ago. the rest of the class are great actors and beautiful and young. there's a little bit of envy that these young people are so confident and pulled together in a way that i wasn't at that age (24-29ish). however, i don't envy the highs and deep dark lows that they have yet to encounter. i've already gone through all that and it's out of my system. i feel resilient. it's like i've been inoculated.

i'm in a really great place. my basic self-confidence is so much healthier than it was even 6 months ago. i know i can dive deeper into my work, make my work more sophisticated, smarter, scarier, sexier because i'm holding back less. and i'm just starting to become more efficient in my work which helps me to not get so overwhelmed with the amount of work i have to do and helps me to act on impulse instead of acting on analysis.

i felt like i was massaging latent acting muscles and prepping them for a great workout and it felt amazing. the class runs late 6:30 - 10:30pm, but i could have staying there working all night...