I've spent the last two and a half weeks finding a roommate that could move-in with us as soon as our current lease gets renewed on July 1, 2017! Living in an apartment in New York City can be a very interesting process. In only two years of living in New York City, I've already gone through apartment hunting and the other side of apartment hunting: roommate hunting.
I've met a number of interesting personalities as I've welcomed them to our apartment and showed them the available room, bathroom, talked to them about money, etc. The seemingly endless posting to various groups and roommate apps, the waiting, the weeding out, the silent treatment, the eventual rejection and the panic that comes with knowing that the deadline for paying the landlord is nearing and you have yet to find decent prospects.

All is well now. We've found a winner in the nick of time! However stressful and inconvenient these "hunting" situations can be, they provide interesting metaphors for life. I've been in several "searching" journeys by now, in many different forms. One of the common patterns in these journeys are the not-quite, almost, someone who'll say yes and back out soon enough, the waiting but will never actualize, the tempting easy way out (a test in patience, resilience and integrity), and in the nick of time, something or someone comes along that'll check all the boxes or will clear the path. And no matter how annoying, painful, or draining the process might be - to continue the search with an openness. Once the thing sought gets found, all the other options seem to fade away and you feel the huge wave subsiding. Sometimes you get a new wave, too.

I'd run into a couple of annoying things that I didn't want to do but had to in the past week. My idea of a "vacation" or a "break" is to be able to do only the things that I want to do. That idea crashed down last week. Just because I'm on vacation doesn't mean that life is going to stop, and life takes on many forms. The hard thing for me to accept is that at times it will not conform to my ideas of how it should go.

I was lucky enough to work with Todd Estrin this summer to update my head shots. I haven't had one since 2015. If you're in New York City and considering to get a few you should definitely check out his website.

As you may have noticed in my previous post, I've been doing a lot of reading. The two novels I'd bought are currently taking a back seat as I got immersed into reading a number of plays. I've also attended this panel discussion at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting called "The 'Other' Box: A Conversation About Mixed Race in America" and it was very interesting. We talk a lot about race in Group 48 and a number of times I've found myself lacking a vocabulary to articulate my experience. And so me attending these kinds of events are ways for me to equip myself when these kinds of conversations come up.

I've also been reflecting a lot on the kinds of women I've played in the past four years (last two years in the Actors Company and my first two years at Juilliard Drama). As I continue to read plays I've been eyeing the range of experiences and points-of-view that I haven't embodied before.  I've also been reflecting on the kinds of stories that I want and need to tell, including my own.
It's so good to have a summer and a down time to reflect on all these things! I wouldn't have had that space during the school year when I'm busy walking around trying to get things done.