year of fun

To be totally honest, I had no idea what my fun activity was going to be today as of 7:30pm when I finished work. As I walked to the back staff room to clock out, a co-worker approached me. She told me that, for each show, she does a funny video that she plays during the last week of performances when everyone is hanging around the theater after the show and asked me if I would like to be in this one. Apparently, she has been filming people lip synching to Kelly Clarkson’s Stronger. Each person does an assigned line and acts however they want. She will piece it all together over the song and voila, funny video.

Normally I would be very nervous to do something like this. The idea of being on camera in something people will see would make me very self conscious not only about my acting skills (or lack thereof) but also how I look. Now I love clothes, fashion and looking cute. Those things make me feel good and confident, however there are parts of my body that I don’t think look right–knuckles, knees, feet–that I think are ugly and super noticeable. In fact, one could probably argue that my efforts to dress cute could be a way to camouflage those parts of my body I do not like, but if that is true, it is certainly is not conscious. I don’t spend that much time thinking about this. And those parts of my body probably aren’t as noticeable as I think they are. But the thoughts bubble up when presented with a task like be in this video where you lip synch and look a fool because it is funny and we are all doing it to celebrate the show.

Despite all this I agreed to do it. To which she replied, “Great! We could just do it right now.” Ok…

My assigned line: “Doesn’t mean I’m over cuz you’re gone.”
My action: I’m singing in to the pay phone in our lobby (yes, we really have one) and by the time I get to “gone,” I’ve slammed the phone back on the receiver. Very dramatic.

She had her phone playing the song, so I would get the timing right, and we went for it. Two takes. Nailed it. And I only needed the second take because the pay phone started ringing in my ear during the first and I got scared it was calling someone and hung up without lip synching. Since we filmed my line immediately, I did not have any time to get worried or self conscious. I just did it. I let go, and it was really fun. I’d like to think writing this blog and generally opening up more has helped my confidence as well.