Who Are You?

Last night I was with some friends and a wise woman said to this little girl:

"You know what if someone went up to you asked 'who are you?' do you know how you would answer them?'

She thought for a second.

"I would tell them I'm a dancer."

This girl is twelve and already she knows who she is and I think that is fantastic.

When we're younger we know exactly who we want to be when we grow up but somehow along the way we forget and we struggle to find ourselves again.

When I was a little kid I remember I wanted to be an actor or a performer or really anything to do with being on stage in front of a lot of people. I wanted to be on a stage and sing or make people laugh. I had a small taste of that when I was ten years old and I did The Wizard of Oz. I had two roles in that show. The first was being one of the Munchkins that Dorothy meets after her landing in Oz and my lines consisted of part of a song and two or three sentences. My second role was being one of the soliders in the Emerald City. It was really cute how we did it. We had the general, who was the tallest of us, bark orders to the other soliders and each soldier would relay the order down the line till they reached the shortest soldier namely me. And then I would act out the order. So I did a few military marching steps before collapsing on the ground and telling them my feet hurt. This got a few laughs and then I got to argue with the general and I convinced him, and the other guys, that if they didn't obey my commands then I wouldn't march. Silly I know but it was a great scene. Right after that I got to attack the Cowardly Lion and him and I had a lot of fun doing that scene. And I enjoyed hearing the laughter from the audience and when the time came for the curtain call I was filled with joy.

(Me in high school rehearsing The Manhattan Project's Alice in Wonderland)

The reason I didn't act again until high school was because our director was a horrible woman and she ran the theatre like a dictator. So I steered clear for a long time. And I still had that urge, that need to be on stage again. So I tried out for UIL (University Interscholastic League) speaking events and it just wasn't the same. But along the way to high school I found out that I really enjoyed writing. In the 6th grade I met a fantastic woman and she was my English teacher. At one point the students were asked to do a writing prompt and the work had to be a thousand words or less. I was writing my paper and when I noticed I had already written about five pages I went up to my teacher and I told that I was well over a thousand words but my story was no where near complete. She smiled at me and said:

"Then keep working on it. And promise me something? When you publish your first book please dedicate it to me."

And I did.

But that is another story for another time

There were times were I really couldn't remember what I wanted to do with my life. Everyone I knew wanted me to be something else and a lot of them didn't support my ideas or dreams. And I was lost for a bit and I really didn't know what I was going to do but then I found a kindred spirit that wanted a lot of the same things I did. I will never stop trying to make those dreams a reality. Casanova Cupcake is so much to me. And now I'm doing my burlesque classes, which are great by the way, and I feel like I'm reconnecting with that part of me when I was a little kid. I really think that he'd be proud of me.

So I guess if anyone were to ask me 'who are you?' I think I'd answer.

"I'm Jay. I'm a performer and a writer."

So, if you don't me asking, Sprinkles, who are you?

Icing kisses,

J.S.

P.S. here is a hint for what my routine is going to be.