Experience #33 Two Days of Firsts

There’s something about live entertainment that draws me in. I love the rising curtain and the anticipation of what will unfold on a stage where anything can happen. Pair that with my fascination of acrobatic feats, and it is no surprise that I wished to add Cirque’s Holidaze show to my list as a nice way to wrap up my experiences for the year.

The show was truly spectacular with my favorite act being the gingerbread boy who flipped endlessly through the air with the aid of the gingerbread man’s feet. When I thought he couldn’t possibly perform any more flips in the air, he’d return and complete even more than the time before.

From the balancing, to the jump roping, to the juggling, to the flying through the air, my date had me thinking about what I’d do if I were to perform in a show. I think I’d want to be the acrobat who twirled high above the audience on what appeared to be extra-long curtain sheers. Maybe it has something to do with my fear of heights and not being acrobatic in the least that attracts me to this particular performance. Who knows, maybe I’ll attempt it one day.

The trip to New Orleans was filled with firsts outside of seeing a Cirque performance though. For the first time I tried oysters. They were charbroiled (raw will never touch my lips. I draw the line there.), and I didn’t spit them out. That was a plus. I’m not saying I’m rushing back for more, but hey, I can at least say I tried them.

I also rode a streetcar for the first time. Even with all my excursions into New Orleans, I’ve never had occasion to ride one of the trolley cars. It’s much slower than the New York subway, but I suppose the South does do things at its own pace.

I also wandered into Faulkner House Books for the first time. It’s the smallest bookstore with the biggest reputation among authors. I’d love to be tucked away in a cozy bookstore like this one and sell people books all day. But for now, I couldn’t leave without adding books to my Louisiana books collection.

I also shared a cab with strangers, who ended up not being strangers. I walked through Santa’s Workshop and through Armstrong Park. It was certainly a great two days to wrap up an adventurous year. I look forward to what the rest of the year will bring.

Experience 31 and Unwanted Experience 32

Sometimes what I’ve learned from my experiences about myself has been more important than the actual experienced. Take for example this latest experience. With everything I’ve done with my children, I’ve never taken them to a live show outside of Disney World, so I figured it was about time.

Andrew saw the advertisement for the Phineas and Ferb Live show and asked if he could go. Andrew never asks to do anything, unlike his adventurous sister who constantly asks for things. I immediately purchased tickets to cash in on this rare occasion (Like the same day he asked; I didn’t want him to change his mind).

So Wednesday my two children and my godson piled into my car and headed toward Baton Rouge. (I will mention at this point that I’ve never actually driven to Baton Rouge. Usually someone else drives me. I promise this will become relevant at some point in this story.) From the moment we started down the road, I realized my complete inability to handle noise stimulation.

Two hours in a car with screaming kids, nearly two hours at a show where kids are encouraged to yell in participation, and two hours on a return car trip home plays havoc with my anxiety levels and makes me want to run towards an empty room in the middle of nowhere.

Surprisingly, my children remained quiet during the show as they watched attentively. It was the screaming kids around us this time causing the noise. I suppose my three had exhausted themselves in the car on the way to the show. Their one constant complaint was of wanting a snack, which they couldn’t eat in the River Center theatre. They sold the snacks, but you couldn’t bring them into the theatre, which didn’t make sense to me and definitely didn’t make sense to the three who kept asking for them. Cara’s only comment on the whole experience was that next time she wanted tickets in the front row because she wanted to be able to go on stage like the other kids that were able to dance with the characters. My first thought was how could my kids be so different? Andrew would have hid under the chair in mortification at the mere suggestion, and my daughter wanted to be onstage dancing so everyone could see her.

It was on the way home that my noise threshold reached excess. My GPS and I have a love hate relationship- it loves to get me lost and I hate it. Anyway, I ended up lost. (I still don’t know exactly where I was.) The kind police officer who gave me my first ever speeding ticket was ever so kind when he explained how to return to a place that I was familiar with. The kids, sensing that I was moments from a breakdown, remained quiet for ten minutes, the first time of the entire journey. (Maybe that had more to do with the police officer than me though since my yelling for quiet hadn’t made much of an impact before.)

After dropping my godson off, my children sensed my stress and did what they always do in that situation. They decided it was about time I laughed. My son succeeded first, but then my daughter said, “Raise your hand if you want boobies when you’re older.” That was it; the car was filled with laughter instead of quiet tension.(She always manages to come up with something that I have to wonder what is going on in that little head of hers.)

My children are great, though the next time we go see a show, it will have to be a much shorter car ride. But I’ll have to pay for that unwanted ticket before there is a next show. Sigh.

Experience #30 Become a Published Author

When I was in fifth grade I discovered a book’s magical ability to swallow you into an entirely different world. I devoured book after book, reading my way through the public library’s stock. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I wanted to create those escapes instead of just read myself into them.

My first story was nothing more than white paper folded in half with a red and blue marker title. (Not unlike what my daughter comes up with today). After several such “books,” I wrote what I believed to be my masterpiece. In seventh grade, I received an ivory Brother typewriter for Christmas and then I commenced the slow, tedious task of typing my great story without typing lessons. I surrendered to the arduous process, and an aunt took pity on me and finished typing that first story, all 128 pages.

Thrilled when she handed me those three neat and bound manuscripts, I preceded to share the story with anyone and everyone, anxiously awaiting their feedback. Was it so horrible that I should give it up or was it the best thing they’d ever read and I was on my way to becoming the author I dreamed of becoming?

That manuscript truly had a long way to go before it would be considered good by my standards today, but the process isn’t so different than what I’m doing right now. My book, Muddy Bayou, is now available to the public, and I wait anxiously for people to read it, wondering if people will deem it good or horrible.

Except of course today the stakes are higher. I’m no longer the eleven-year-old that didn’t understand what it took to become an author. I’ve always been the storyteller though. Even before I knew to write the stories down, I’ve enjoyed entertaining people with stories.

And a storyteller isn’t a storyteller without an audience. For years, I’ve kept my audience confined to a small few, but if there was ever a time to go for that dream, this would be the year. This year when I crammed everything that I’ve put off doing my entire life into one year, including putting my book out there for a wider audience, is the perfect year to take such risks.

I anxiously await your opinions, but I’m already working on the next story I will tell. I won’t take so long to share this one with my audience though.

My new website has a special page for you to leave your opinions once you’ve finished reading the book. So let me know what you think by leaving me a message and sharing your opinions with others who may want to become an audience of my storytelling.

Experience #29 Dating Etiquette

"Can we still be friends?” I’d like money for every time I’ve heard that this year. Just how many friends does a girl need though?

When I made my list way back last December, I was newly single and not ready to change that status just yet, but I figured I would be at some point. Dating is a foreign concept for me. I started dating my ex-husband when I was seventeen years old, and at that time dating still meant asking my parent’s permission and being home before curfew. That time is a long way off, but some things have not changed. After a year of dating , I’ve decided I don’t care for it much. Why might you ask?

1.       Dating is a game of numbers. Apparently, the more people you date the better. One date told me, I needed to date as many people as possible to figure out what I wanted. In theory I suppose it’s not a  terrible idea if you’re not quite sure what you like. In practice though, I’d say differently. My cousin has about eight women he’s dating at any given time. It seems to be his number. He claims he’s looking for the right one, but he does admit that he can’t keep them straight sometimes. So after trying to keep the names of his dates straight, I constantly think on my own dates if I’m one of eight or whatever this guy’s magic number seems to be. I like to know my odds, and the guessing that goes along with the game does not work for me either. It’s difficult to impress someone who can’t even keep your name straight.

2.       Dating requires a certain flair for dishonesty. Is it so difficult to tell someone, hey I don’t see a future with you, but we can have a little fun tonight? Or how about I’m dating everyone who’ll tell me yes so I can figure out what I want? Or even better, I’m really not interested in a relationship right now but this was fun. I haven’t met too many people who enjoy being single, but the way this game is played, many will be single a very long time or otherwise they will settle for whoever comes along that doesn’t play by these rules. Which brings me the last reason I haven’t taken to dating.

3.       Patience. I have none. Zilch. I don’t like games where I have to follow someone else’s rules. I’m not impressed by messages that pop up on my screen that say hey beautiful or even worse, hey sexy by people I don’t even know. I don’t want married men approaching me when they have supposedly already found Mrs. Right. When I find Mr. Right, I don’t want him to have Mrs. Right waiting at home. If you want to get my attention, find out who I am first because none of those things impress me. (Someone actually told me he never read a book in his life after I told him I was a writer. Really? Was I supposed to be enthralled by this?) I don’t want to wait around for someone to tell me that they just aren’t interested at this time when they’ve clearly shown it through their behavior.

Because when it’s all said it done, I already know what I want. I’m not looking for a bunch of people to be small pieces of my life, I’m looking for someone to share my entire life. I know that may come as a shocker to those people who think I’m missing the romantic trait, but I do think love should be like a country song (The good love ones of course). I do think one conversation can decide whether you’re interested in a person or not. I don’t think I need to date eighty guys to figure out what I want; I just need to meet the one guy that figures out that I’m the one and he convinces me of that (or hey, it’s the twenty-first century, it can work the other way around, too).

I’m not saying I believe in the fairy tale version of love either. I think the reason why first marriages fail is because people learn the hard way that love actually takes work. Not the day to day compromise of living together but the actual love that comes so easy in the beginning requires effort to maintain.  I also believe that if you play love as a game and you win, you might not be satisfied with the prize forever if it was simply about the winning.

So I will do it like I do everything else,  my own way.  It does mean I go on fewer dates, but it also means that the ones that I do accept actually mean something.

Experience #27 Hello Web

It’s amazing how productive I can be when I tell myself I have to complete my list of 33 by the end of the month. In January I was worried that I wouldn’t get this far, and now the year is nearly over. I will admit that I’m worried that I won’t finish, but I haven’t entered into panic mode yet, so for right now, nothing crazy happening. (Notice the use of yet. I should probably not be left unsupervised if December 31 comes around and I haven’t accomplished 33. I am a perfectionist after all, and not completing a list will ruin perfection. You can’t mess with perfection.)

Back to being productive though. For the last few years I’ve said I wanted to have my own website. It’s what writers are supposed to do. At least that’s what I read in writer’s magazines and writers have told me at writer’s conferences. It’s one of the things that I didn’t place high on my list of priorities though, mostly because I know nothing about website creation. This goes along with one of my perfectionist strategies that has worked well for me: avoid what you don’t know to prevent a meltdown when you fail. Obviously, this strategy does not fit in well with the adventures of 2011. Along with this year’s adventurous spirit, I’ve also decided that I need to get serious with writing.

Hence, my very own website is born at jessicatastet.com.

I’d like to say it was easy or fun, but it was neither. I only confirmed that I know nothing about website creation, and lack of knowledge is not something I admit to easily. Not being website savvy meant spending hours reading about how to do the slightest adjustment, and many moments of frustration when it just wouldn’t do what I wanted. (I must add that I’ve come to the conclusion that this perfectionist personality trait may need to be left behind along with some other traits that just don’t work anymore.)

It’s all been worth it though. My site is up and running, and I’m quite proud of how it turned out. I’ve even posted a sample from my upcoming book, Muddy Bayou. To find out more about the book, keep checking my blog and website in the next coming week.