I arrived at the voice intensive believing that I had to push myself through a concrete wall in order to reach ‘belonging.’ I understand something different now. Now I understand that all I have to do (all I’ve ever had to do) is let the breath drop in, and the doors will open for me.

For the last month I’ve been in Toronto studying voice, movement and Shakespeare for 9-12 hours a day at the National Voice Intensive. It was the most rewarding, paradigm busting, and transformational 4 weeks of my life.

I moved to Vancouver almost 4 years ago with a dream. I wanted to be an actor and writer. I remember journalling on the plane ride over: I was filled with ambition and, in retrospect, very little fear. And then my ex-partner and I landed, and emerged into the city on Granville street on a Friday night – a street the city actually shuts down for the bar scene on select nights. My stomach dropped.

We keyed into our new home. Some of the floor boards in the apartment we’d rented blindly from New Brunswick were broken, the sink leaked, and the kitchen hadn’t been cleaned. Our mattress hadn’t arrived yet, so we wrapped ourselves in a small blanket on a questionable mattress left by the landlord, and tried our best to sleep.

A paradigm was set: this was going to be hard.

And it was. It has been. For 4 years I have parked myself in coffee shops for a large duration of each day (or at least when I wasn’t cleaning tables as a hostess, catching people who’d missed their payment as a receptionist at a gym, or editing yoga articles… okay, that last job was awesome) working feverishly towards success. Things have definitely moved forward as a result of this work… but I think that success has come in spite of, instead of as a result of, my phobia of joy.

What do I mean by a phobia of joy? I feel almost obliged to apologize to my ex partner for this, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to become overwhelmed with panic when I wasn’t working. We’d both sense it coming on, and an exasperated argument would usually ensue: I’m never going to the movies with you again.

Yeah. I was that person.

I felt guilty every time I did something leisurely. Time away from work was a sacrifice to my ambition. Time off felt like a slap in the face of my ‘potential.’ I felt a never-ceasing obligation to push, push, and push some more.

And so I arrived at the Voice Intensive as a breath-holder, and with a massive desire to ‘get it right’.

I believed there was a formula I must perfect to be a success, and I arrived determined to ‘fix’ what was broken.

I did not perfect my formula. Something better happened.

One of my instructors – Brad Gibson – did a class where (to put it in the simplest terms) we were instructed to voice the sensations in our body, and then verbally find a metaphor for that sensation. This was not an intellectual exercise. It was a body exercise.

I don’t remember the exact metaphor that came out of my mouth, but I remember – 10 minutes later – sitting in the circle and breaking apart the metaphor I’d come up with. I thought: “It’s not completely right.”I mean, it was right in that moment, but it didn’t feel right now.

And then it hit me.

There is no formula that’s going to work 100% of the time for me. I am not a math equation. I can’t predict how I’m going to feel in the future. I can’t box myself into a set identity that behaves ‘according to plan’ 100% of the time. All that I can do is feel what I’m feeling in every moment, and hope that I’ll somehow make sense as a person.

If that makes any sense of at all.

So with the constraints of ‘identity’ starting to loosen their hold, a bigger realization punched me in the face a week later: the point of all of this is joy.

We can’t hear our own voices, and if not for mirrors and cameras we wouldn’t be able to see our own reflection. All we’d have is sensation. All we’d know was what made us feel good.

A year and a half ago I agonized over my answer to the following question: Why do you want to be an actor?

I want to tell stories

I want to give a voice to those who have none

I want to explore the more uncomfortable parts of human psychology

While all of this is true, it didn’t feel right. I was missing something. I was missing the real answer to this question:

Joy.

I want to be an actor because I love it, and maybe that’s a good enough answer.

I was afraid of this answer initially because it felt selfish. I felt like I needed a BIGGER reason to do what I do. But now, I think I was wrong to believe that. Maybe that’s the key to relationships and all the rest: joy.

I shared something I said on the last day of the intensive at the top of this blog post about belonging. I think joy is the key to belonging too. It doesn’t feel good to believe that I don’t have a place in the company of other people. It doesn’t feel good to let fear run my life, and whisper doubts into my ear.

Joy feels good. So moving forward, I’ll be practicing joy.

I say a practice, because I know I’m not going to change over night (and I wouldn’t want to! That’d be scary as hell). All I can do is be gentle with myself, and remind myself – whenever I forget – what I have learned over this last month.

Hard, deliberate work is important…. but it’s also okay to enjoy the adventure. It’s okay to feel good.