Alexander Grey, Unsplash, 2018
Last week I completely fell off my usual routines. Barely a social post, no Substack draft ready to publish Monday, and a recycled barre routine (with Mr. Jones by Counting Crows as my warm-up. I’d just seen them live and was transported straight back to the 90s).
Instead, life handed me an audition. There’s something beautiful in that disruption: when the neat structure of your week gets shoved aside for something unexpected. Though to be fair, it doesn’t feel beautiful at first. Your heart’s pounding, coffee in hand, firing off texts to cancel plans, scrambling to line up a reader.
It was the middle of the night when I saw the email from my agent. I couldn’t sleep, checked my inbox, and there it was: new sides waiting. The character immediately excited me. Let’s just say she feels closer to my Yukon roots: small town, dark edges, a little rough, and full of mystery.
The next morning, I got to work. For me, preparing an audition is part race-against-the-clock, part excavation. Reading lines until they stop sounding like lines and start sprouting from somewhere inside my body, mind, and heart.
I ask myself: What do I want? What’s in my way? Where do I overlap with this character, and where do we split apart? And why this role, right now? I like to believe there’s always something magical at play — that a part shows up to teach me what I didn’t know I needed.
I taped the audition twice. First, trying to hit the beats the writer planted. Then again with a little more letting go, trusting muscle memory to carry me. I’ve learned this from dance and writing too. The first round is always clunky, the second smoother. If I’d had more time, I would have tried another action, different blocking. (Blocking being the physical movement in a scene: folding a towel, looking out the window, muttering to yourself under your breath.) But regardless, the essence of me was there.
And that’s the question I keep circling: is essence enough?
Screenshot from my audition.
The competition is fierce in my category. So many talented actresses with tapes that are tight, sharp, flawless. Sometimes being an actress feels like being a racehorse: sweating in the gate, waiting for the bell, trying to explode at just the right second. You’ve got to be fast, exact, perfect. And you don’t always hit it.
Maybe that’s why I keep asking myself: am I chasing the stopwatch, or am I letting myself be carried?
Losing things, finding presence
Lately I’ve been thinking about this outside of acting too, because I’ve lost a few valuable personal items. First, my earbuds, which I was convinced I couldn’t live without. Turns out I can. Then came the real gut punch: my diary (insert many cry-face emojis). That one stung. (I’m still searching for it…I may end up doing a full deep clean of the house after I post this.) At first I stressed, blamed myself, spiraled a little.
But then I wondered: what if this is a blessing in disguise?
Without earbuds, I can’t drown myself in the endless onslaught of podcasts, audiobooks, or videos. I actually have to be selective, sometimes even sit in silence, which, it turns out, is probably good for me. And with the diary…well, the idea that my private writing might be in someone else’s hands makes me half-tempted to file a police report for a missing person. But maybe that’s the reminder: nothing we love is ever truly ours to keep.
It’s not the loss itself that stings. It’s the illusion we could have prevented it. That if we had just held tighter, we’d still have it. If even my diary and earbuds can vanish, maybe clinging to control in art and life is just as fragile.
Maybe what matters isn’t possession at all. Maybe it’s presence.
But how do we get comfortable with presence, with just being, when everything in this culture shouts: push harder, faster, better. And then there’s biology, the animal brain whispering: do more or you won’t survive. Being mortal, knowing I’m going to perish one day, makes me feel like I need to push in every corner of my life. Earn more money. Build a body that resists time. Create something so permanent it tricks me into believing I won’t vanish.
And yet, there’s a strange comfort in losing. In letting go. In realizing maybe what matters isn’t the curated outcome, but the process itself.
Maybe essence is enough.
Chasing formulas vs. flirting with possibility
So many pursuits in life feel like chasing formulas, whether in acting or online. Social media is its own casino — tweak every hook until the algorithm smiles. And yes, I’m getting better at this avocation, but I’m starting to question my process. I catch myself refreshing stats, hungry for proof that what I make matters.
But the truth is, I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m lost in process and when I forget the numbers altogether. Maybe the real metric is simpler: did I laugh? Did I get curious? Did I flirt with possibility, or at least surprise myself once?
Because when we create art only for outcomes like algorithms, timelines, and bookings, we lose the pleasure in the process and even our patience for it. Our culture is so addicted to metrics we’ve forgotten how to honour process. And process is everything. Yet in this culture, so is pushing.
After the audition whirlwind (and teaching two barre classes), I headed to Gibsons with two girlfriends to visit our friend’s dad, Ulrich Schaeffer, author and poet I interviewed earlier this summer. Check out our rich conversation about writing, poetry and heart work here.
Gibsons is a small coastal town in B.C., with mountains and ocean wrapped around its little streets. We wandered the shoreline, cut through the bush, singing a song about a woman named Susan we couldn’t get out of our heads. Later, back at the house, we sat for hours talking about life and art. Ulrich has written over 200 works—so many he can’t even list them all. I told him about the book I’m working on, and he really listened. He asked about my themes, offered a couple of piercing observations I’m grateful for, and in answering him I realized that what underpins all my work is love.
Love is what we keep reaching for when the ground keeps shifting.
Letting go of everything but the essential
And when the ground is constantly shifting, it feels impossible to keep my bearings. But what if that’s the process of letting go? Letting go of everything except the essentials: love, curiosity, humour, the willingness to flirt with life.
Or as poet, DJ, and content creator kitty knorr said in her course Lovergirl (which I’m currently taking), “this is about tapping into a much more embodied version of yourself, a much more fully expressed version of yourself. All of this work is about tapping into your capacity to give and receive love because it feels so good to give and receive love […] generously, freely, without expectation.”
So maybe missing my tidy schedule, and even losing my earbuds and my diary, wasn’t really a loss. Maybe it was just the week doing what weeks do: throwing my life in a blender to make room for new stories. Even as I write this, my dog is staring at me like, lady, process means walkies, reminding me that sometimes it’s just pause here, leash up, go outside.
And maybe knowing this, I can stop acting like misplaced earbuds are a national security emergency.
Maybe the point isn’t to anchor at all, but to drift. To trust that essence, love, and curiosity will carry me.
To believe that flirting with life will always beat gripping it to death.
Question for the comments: Can you feel how much of our culture is addicted to outcomes? What might shift if you opted out? And what’s one small way you flirted with life instead of gripping it too tightly this week?
