You Would Have Hated It
plus a video peak into my past life as an actor at the end
Looking Back
I’m not big on regrets. Of course there are things that I wish I had done differently, but as woo-woo as it sounds, my spirituality reminds me that my life has unfolded exactly as it should. I am on a soul journey, not an ego journey, so the events of my life are keys specifically made for unshackling myself from past karma — keys that unlock the doors of liberation.
Like for most of us, however, there are turning points in my life when, should I have chosen differently, my life would be in an entirely different place. It’s easy to romanticize what could have been — especially when the decisions would have most likely created a life and version of myself that look nothing like where I am now.
That One Thing
The one decision I go back to every once in a while was what I chose to do after college.
I was a theater major at UC Santa Cruz, and theater was my life. (A possible foreshadowing of the future was that before the start of every production, we were asked for our schedules to make sure there weren’t conflicts with rehearsals, and every time I said I had a “class” at 4:30. It was Yoga.)
When it came time to start to think about what to do after graduating, I decided to apply to grad school for acting, but I wasn’t banking on that being my path because the schools I was applying to were, at the the time, the top 5 acting schools in the country.
At UCSC I was very well aware that I was a “big fish in a small pond,” so to speak, and that there were thousands of students like me trying for a spot in programs that accepted only 10-15 students.
After going through the process of auditions, I got called back to the second round of auditions for NYU and the American Conservatory Theater (ACT).
A few months later, I got a call from the director of the program at ACT offering me a spot in the following year’s cohort! It was amazing, and one of the few times in my early 20s that I felt proud of myself.
So now the choices were either A) move to LA to try the whole Hollywood thing, or B) go to ACT in San Francisco.
In LA I already had an agent, and I had been a bit player on an episode of “Days Of Our Lives” (my line was “Nobody’s poisoning you!” Too perfect.). I had grown up dreaming of being a famous movie star, so it would have been the obvious choice had I not gotten into ACT.
In San Francisco, I had the possibility of training with master teachers, and making connections in the theater world, which would have opened many doors. I would still try to make a go of it in Los Angeles after graduate school, but I had truly fallen in love with stage acting, and that path felt just as exciting.
