Alive and Well

It has been an embarrassingly long time since I have thrown some words out here. Isn't it funny how life manages to get in the way of ...life?
When I haven't been putting hours into a short term art assignment or serving as membership chair for my local elementary school's PTA, I've been stretching my actor's legs into a shiny new discipline: the art of Voice Acting.
You never know how little you know till you know it.
In my first class I discovered:

• How fast one talks when nervous
• Accents sound worse on tape than in your head
• Voice Acting has very little to do with funny voices
• Voice Acting is actually acting

A good voice acting session uses dang near every acting muscle you have at your disposal. It had been a long time since I'd been in a classroom environment. It was nice to flex those limbs once more.
It was the resultant feeling of release that brought me to the topic at hand.
Like many actors, it can be a long time between chances to perform for me. The classroom becomes something of a gymnasium. It serves to bring back that old muscle memory. When I haven't worked out in a while, I begin to question my abilities. This can lead to wavering confidence, which ultimately leads to not putting myself out there for the world to see.
That is equal to death for those of us who have made this our lives.
So when I entered the sound booth in front of ten other classmates to work with the instructor on a piece of copy, I was more than a little nervous. By the end of the evening, I was practically singing. It was like a steak dinner after a week-long fast! I was almost overwhelmed by emotion. Ones that had clearly been bottled, bagged and tagged for far too long found their way to the surface.
The results of my time in the booth were not what was important. I probably stunk up the joint.  What was critical to me was that my joy of discovery was still alive and well. I learned new things about myself. New ways to approach this thing I love to do.
That is time and money well spent.