Chatty Cathy Goes to Yoga

All right folks, hold on to your seats, cause I've got some news for you!  Chatty Cathy is coming to life!  

That's right - I'm preparing to film my next short: "Chatty Cathy Goes to Yoga".  I am so excited about this project that I may wet myself.  It's scary and exciting at the same time; I'm taking this very modest little short that I wrote almost a year ago and turning it into a short film for the web.  "Chatty Cathy Goes to Yoga" (CCGY) is a more ambitious undertaking than my last short, Chugging Gone Wrong for many reasons: it's longer, I have to rent a yoga studio to shoot at, I'm using union actors so I have to go through the union, and it's also dearer to my heart.  I'm lucky though, because I have some really dear friends helping me to produce it.  

The funds I need to produce this short are modest, but I've decided to use Kickstarter to raise funds for my project.  Kickstarter describes itself as, "a funding platform for creative projects".  Basically, I set up a page for my project with a financial goal, and then offer various rewards if people donate.  My goal is $250 (like I said, modest), but I'm hoping to raise more.  The catch with Kickstarter is that if you don't meet your goal, you don't get the money and no one is charged.  So I wanted to start with a small attainable number that I knew I could reach.  If you visit the Kickstarter page you can take a look at all this information, and donate yourself.

It's hard for me to tell you everything about this short concisely, because I've been working on it for so long. It was born out of this blog, and my journey over these past two years, and my love of yoga.  Making Chatty Cathy Goes to Yoga wouldn't be possible without you, Readers, and so I want to thank you.  And I also want to give you the opportunity to be part of my process.  If you can find just $5 to donate, it would make a world of difference to me, and then you can see for yourself what happens when your awkward heroine (me) ventures into the world of yoga.

In case you didn't get it above, here's the link to the Kickstarter page.  Please check it out and share it:

In which I pose new questions to myself

I had to cancel a job at Dreamworks this week.

Yeah, that's right, that Dreamworks.  Don't get excited - I didn't book the voice of their next heroine, I was scheduled to be figure modeling.

Yeah, that's right, that figure modeling.  If you were wondering what I have been doing for work since I quit the restaurant, that's your primary answer.  I've also been acting and modeling for regular old photo shoots, you know, with clothes on.  But I'm not ashamed to admit that I've been modeling live in classes at schools and animation studios, sometimes in the nude.

This is kind of a weird thing to admit publicly.  I've certainly never been ashamed of my body, as many (most) of you know.  And perhaps this is part of my quest to accept my body no matter what it look like.

I guess this is about self-love.  The whole thing.  The whole question: what I'm writing about on the micro and the macro level.  I want to love my self fully, whether I'm feeling bloated and sluggish or strong and fit.  I want to love my self fully, up to the point of admitting that figure modeling is way more fun than waiting tables, and I enjoy doing it.

Does that make me an exhibitionist?  I prefer not to go there.  I prefer to think about the fact that I'm joining the ranks of people - particularly women - who worked with and inspired Matisse and Van Gogh and Picasso and Da Vinci and Basquiat and Renoir and Degas and on and on.  (Based on the artists I came up with you can probably guess just how many times I studied Impressionism in French class.)  I've joined a time-honored profession, while doing something creative and challenging.

Because, let me tell you, it's hard.  A figure model need to be comfortable taking off their robe in front of a room full of strangers, and coming up with visually dynamic poses they can hold for as long as 25 minutes.  You'd be surprised what parts of your body can twitch.  A figure model needs the mental focus to observe the twitching of their arm but not to move it.  A figure model needs get over the fact that some people, from some different points of view, may see their genitals.  (You'll notice this entire discussion is neutral-gendered; although I haven't met any, there are male figure models, and I wouldn't want to alienate them.  Also, that way I don't have to write the word vagina in my blog.)  In short, a figure model needs to be fearless.

And fearlessness is what it's all about.  I'm not saying I don't fear anything; fear in the proper dosage is a healthy thing.  I'm just saying that I don't want to live my life based on decisions made from fear.

So why did I cancel the gig?   I'll just say that I wasn't feeling well and leave it at that (I wouldn't want to be gross or anything).  Having to assess my ability to work in that way was a new experience.  Working in a restaurant if I didn't feel well, no matter what my ailment, I'd try to power through the shift.  In this case though, I had to ask myself some serious questions:  Was I physically able to pose for two hours?  Would worrying about being sick affect my ability to do my job well?  Figure modeling has a whole new set of rules.  I haven't explored these waters, and it feels like I'm navigating blind.

So I was bummed not to work at Dreamworks.  But hopefully I'll get more work there - they were very understanding.  And who knows what the future will bring?