"get out of your own head. get out of your own way."

Sometimes it amazes me how things can come up over and over and over and over (and over) again when the Universe wants to teach you a lesson. I really do believe that this sort of thing happens when you are not paying attention to whatever lesson you're supposed to be learning; eventually the words get so deafening that you can't ignore it (or be ignorant of it) anymore.

In the past few weeks, the phrase "get out of your own head/get out of your own way" has come up repeatedly. I've had my singing teacher and director for ItW flat out say it to me. I saw The King's Speech (which I loved, by the way - Colin Firth deserved that GG he won for it!), which had a similar lesson. Not to mention the conversation I had with PC about it not that long ago.

It's not exactly a secret that I have this issue.

It's interesting, I've found this post to be the hardest one to write so far. I started writing it before tech week started, and now it's the Wednesday after the show and I'm still sort of stumped as to how to continue. Maybe it's because I don't know how to get enough space between me and this subject, it's obviously something that I struggle with and am having trouble distancing myself from.

I guess yesterday and the day before would be perfect examples of how I can't get out of my own head or my own way. Monday, I had something as simple and commonplace as getting lost deter me from doing something I actually wanted to do. Yesterday, I woke up feeling oversensitive in general, had a couple of things hurt my already raw feelings, couldn't keep it together at work long enough to do any extra hours (I really do need the money), and then got in a car accident on the way home and decided against going to an audition I really wanted to go to.

Now, the accident wasn't serious, but I still ended up in my second snowbank in less than a week. My car is going to need to be fixed. I could have made it to the audition, but instead I curled up in my bed and slept from 5:30 to 11:30. Because instead of sucking it up and going, I just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for days.

My singing is never up to the standards I want it to be because I can't get out of my own head. As soon as I start feeling the tiniest bit shaky or underconfident, I can hear it in my voice - and I'm sure anyone listening can, too. And then that starts the cycle: everyone can hear that I'm not any good, therefore they all know that I'm just pretending and what business do I have singing in front of people anyway? And so on and so forth until I'm a shaky little wreck who can barely squeak out her notes. It's terrible.

MP put it best, I think, when she said, "you have to not care so much." I'm too much inside my head at all times, and I don't let the love of it come through, just the anxiety that someone is listening to me. I hope that with practice that will get better, will instill somewhat more confidence in me.

I kept insisting during the last week of the show, when people were talking about the shows they've done and parts they've played and auditions coming up, that "I'm not a singer!" Because I don't think of myself that way. Maybe I need to own that too, as PC would say, and then I'll have to live up to my own promises?

That's the issue: I'm not really sure what to do about that. How do I get out of my own head (or way) when that's where I live? If that's the only way I know how to think? I understand the lesson, at least intellectually. I just don't know how to enact it, how to start doing what the universe is telling me. Do I have to fake it until I believe it? Am I some Trilby that needs her Svengali to hypnotize her uncouth tone-deaf self into a confident diva? (If so, where do I even find one of those...?) I just don't know.