The Flashback to my Childhood.

I am the perpetual NSYNC fangirl.

always have been.

there was a point in my life where you could ask me trivia questions about any of those 5 men and I would have the answer off the top of my head (birthdays, favorite food/color/number, etc.)
I have this memory from when I was in junior high: me and some of the girls celebrated Lance's birthday in the gym-locker room.

I was/am that girl.

So when the rumours started flying last week about the NSYNC reunion on the VMAs....

you bet your sweet ass I was giddy and emotional and thrilled.

No media outlet could confirm it 100%

and silly Lance made comments trying to kill the rumours. 

BUT

TONIGHT

right smack dab in the middle of Justin's 

INCREDIBLE performance

There were my boys. All looking fierce and sounding as cool and smooth as ever:

I screamed.

I giggled.

I cried.

Its true.

And then I proceeded to watch all sorts of videos from when they were popular and every ounce of fangirl in my body floated to the surface. 

Its been a magical evening.

<3

What I do.

I was chatting with someone yesterday and he was lamenting the studying process for the LSAT and said something about it not really being what he wanted to do. I said "Then why are you doing it?" and he said "It's the fallback plan." His real love is music, and he said for a while he was seriously pursuing his music career, but he got tired of being perpetually broke. The financial instability became too much for him and so he's now applying for law school. And then he asked me what my fallback plan would be... you know, if the "acting thing" doesn't work out.

And I struggled to find an answer. I said.... "Uhhhhh..... well I don't know... work in a coffee shop and get lots of tattoos and also work front-of-house in a theatre; house managing or selling concessions or something... I guess..." And I searched my brain for a better answer but couldn't. Even my fallback plan involved working in a theatrical setting.

I'm gearing up for a few auditions in the next weeks. One tomorrow at SLAC, one at HTC on the 14th, and one at Good Co. Theatre sometime soon as well. And as I'm prepping and working and thinking about each potential job I'm reminded of how lucky I am to have found my passion. It's not easy, it's not stable, but it's all I ever want to do. I don't want to teach, I don't want to take some desk job and hate my life because it's monotonous and boring. I want to be on stage, or backstage, or near a stage. I want to be contributing to the world through something creative and alive and bright and meaningful. And that's what theatre does. And that's what I get to do when I'm part of theatre.

Today I saw a trailer for a production of CLOSER that is being put on by 5 of my favorite humans ever. It spend a lot of time talking about the process of creating theatre and how thrilling it can be. And then my beautiful friend Kelsie Slaugh wrote a blog post (HERE) that really really inspired me to work harder and keep pushing forward in this business. This life is a tough one, and it involves lots of sacrifice and rough decisions but it is EXACTLY what I want to be doing.

This was my favorite part of Kelsie's post:

"But there is a reason why we compromise, a purpose behind every sacrifice!

I cannot fathom any other choice. Theatre is my art, and without it I'm not me. It's this bizarre life-blood that beats throughout the veins and arteries of anyone that is fortunate enough to fall in love with it. It infests you; changing your cells and morphing you in a way that you can't recover from. It is humanity and earth, enveloping and changing all that it touches. It is me and you and everyone and everything in-between...

This passion is indescribable. 

So here we are, the crazy-theatre-humans, gladly making the sacrifices, because we can't do anything else. I can't do anything else. We're in love with this art form and always will be. And that's just how it is. 

...and I'm so grateful that's how it is."

The Summer without AC (AKA: The Sweatiest Summer of my Life)

I try not to complain. I have been blessed to live rent-free in a beautiful house this summer, I have a car that runs and gets me to and from the TWO jobs I am lucky to have. I was able to perform in an incredibly fun musical in Park City.

But. All of these awesome things have been happening during one of the HOTTEST summers on record here in good old Utah. We've been living with temperatures floating between 85 and 110 since June, and it's still cookin'. And as lucky as I am to have had a room and a car and jobs... I've been doing all of it without the luxury of Air Conditioning.... and I've never been stickier.

Phil's house, old, beautiful.... HOT. I'm on the second floor at the back of the house with an awesome window facing east- so my room cooks in the sun almost all day long. Two fans and lots of sleeping naked or nearly naked, or escaping to my mother's house, is how I've managed to survive.

My car. Good ol' Leo. A Lexus, a classic.... HOT. Leather seats, and a heating/ac system that shorts out if i push any of the buttons to turn on the fan. Driving around with windows down and wearing skirts/tank tops as much as possible when driving anywhere.

The OG. Steady income, great co-workers... HOT. The AC in our kitchen has been on the fritz since May. Apparently it's working and blowing air into the kitchen at 63*, but because it also cycles air from the ovens out and replaces it with air from outside in... the kitchen is consistently at a sweaty 80* or more. My glasses are always sliding down my nose and I have a perma-sheen on my face whether I'm working hard or not.

Its been... exhausting. And I have a hard time knowing when to shower anymore because if I shower before work I'm just going to get gross and sweaty at work, but once I come home I'm going to sweat in my bedroom even if I'm not doing anything, and if I shower between working at OG and driving to SLAC, I'm just going to get sweaty in my car on my drive.

I've learned to be oh so grateful for the the little things. Water-bottles, tower-fans, body-spray. I can't imagine having to live in a climate/location where Air-Conditioning isn't an option for anyone. But I know people do it, every day, all day, and they don't know the difference. It's why I've tried not to complain to much, because I realize even at my sweatiest, I can still go sit in a coffee-shop, or at a friends house, or even walk through the market, and cool off.

On the upside- I've found an apartment in Salt Lake and will be moving at the end of the month. It's a one-bedroom, basement apartment, with full AC, and it's darling. My boss at SLAC owns the house, and her son lives upstairs, so I have great neighbors/landlord. AND Buster can come live with me! Also, I'll be transferring to a different OG, most likely Sugar-house. Fingers crossed that their kitchen is not sweltering.... :P

let me give your heart a break...

i've been patching myself together for so long i don't think i even realized i was doing it.

and now that i'm working on focusing and fixing and growing

my band-aids are being pulled away and i'm still a little wounded underneath.

things aren't fully healed yet.

growing is hard.

What's in a name?

I follow a blog called the "This Is Me Challenge". I've mentioned them before, they give challenges for bloggers/scrapbookers to help tell the story of them. This week's challenge was:

WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND YOUR NAME?

Margaret: 

Derived from Latin Margarita, which was from Greek μαργαριτης (margarites) meaning "pearl", probably ultimately a borrowing from Sanskrit. Saint Margaret, the patron of expectant mothers, was martyred at Antioch in the 4th century. Later legends told of her escape from a dragon, with which she was often depicted in medieval art. The saint was popular during the Middle Ages, and her name has been widely used in the Christian world.

Saint Margaret of Antioch

I don't know if I've ever looked up the meaning/history of my name in that sense before. I love that it means 'pearl', and that Saint Margaret escaped from a dragon. That's pretty damn cool...

Really my name is a family name. My great-grandmother Goertzen was named Margaret.

 Grandma Goertzen was (i've been told, she passed before I was born) kind of a grumpy woman, and she was not a fan of my grandmother. In my great-grandmother's eyes, Nadine (my grandma) was the woman who stole her son away and converted him to 'that awful church'. My dad tells stories of his angry, not very-nice grandmother, and how she was always slightly rude to his mom. Which is so crazy to me, my grandma is THE most sweet wonderful person, I can't imagine not liking her.

Anyways. When my parents were expecting me they didn't know if I was a boy or girl, and had discussed a few different names. Because my due-date was Christmas Day they had thought of Nicholas, which was a name they obviously fell in love with since that is what they named my brother 4 years later. But when I arrived, and I wasn't a boy, they had to decide on a different name. I've been told I was named Margaret as sort of a peace-offering to my great-grandmother, and to keep the name in the family.
I like to joke that Great-Grandma Goertzen decided she would watch over this girl who was given her name and make her the rebel of the family- because... I kind of am.

I've gone through alot of nick-names. Very few people actually call me Margaret. And it's taken me a long time to actually love my full first name. I always felt that my full name (Margaret Elizabeth Goertzen) sounded like an old woman. But I've grown into it, I think. I like how traditional and beautiful it sounds all put together.
My mother wanted to call me Maggie from day 1, but they started calling me Meg first and that ended up sticking when they realized my initials spelled my nick-name. I went by Meg nearly my whole life, and a few years ago started going by Maggie and Love it.

I also am called Mags, Margie, Margarita, Magdalene (by Tia), Megert, Meggie... pretty much any variation on Margaret, Maggie, and Meg that you can think of. Except for Megan. Never call me Megan.

We are capable of finding, saying, feeling so much more.

cause really what's the point if we're just coasting on the surface?

This summer has been... strange.

I finally got my Lexus, named him "Leo" (because he is a classic, he has expensive tastes, and has never won any awards). Less than two months into our relationship Leo decided to develop some health issues and needed about $2600 in repairs. He was in the shop for about two weeks. I had two rental cars, one that I ended up crashing into a deer, and one that i managed to keep in one piece. Lesson being, I'm not allowed to have nice things. :P

Been living at Phil Lowe's house all summer, taking care of his cats and keeping the house secure. It's a sweaty existence, no AC in either my house or my car. This house is old. And stinky, the cats struggle with their bathroom manners. But it's a place to live. And he's kind enough to let me live rent free for the time being since I'm house-sitting while he's gone for the summer. I'm very ready to move to Salt Lake, however. Ogden is... exhausting. I have only a handful of friends up here anymore, and the people I'm closest to all live in SLC. I feel a little suspended in time (*cue xana-music*) up here. Like I'm just treading water and not getting anywhere. So I'm working lots, and trying to re-build my bank-accounts, and hopefully this fall I'll be a resident of the SLC and starting to feel some progress.

In the mean-time, I'm using this month as my re-focusing month. I've been journaling (you know, in a paper and pen kindof journal), and trying to get organized. I'm taking a look at some choices I've been making in my personal life and trying to stop selling myself short. Its not an easy process. Somewhere along the way I stopped believing that I deserved something fulfilling and real, and I've been putting on a smile and coasting casually through some things that are less than I deserve. I'm struggling to find a way to separate myself from those things and find the things inside myself that are healthier, more satisfying. It'll happen. Every day is a step forward and I'm adjusting little things. I want to lose some weight, I want to throw out some junk, I want to set a budget and stick to it, I want to tell people how I feel about them and be honest.  I want to stop playing silly high-school games and putting up with bullshit I don't deserve. I'm tired of coasting.

So I'm trying to put myself in gear.

we are capable of finding, saying, feeling

so much more.