Grateful For in 2021

This Thanksgiving was so good, and also kinda hard. I am back performing in Winter Wonderland on Ice at Sea World! I am right in the middle of finals for school. This is our first (and last!) Thanksgiving engaged! I had a wonderful morning watching the parade and sipping coffee quietly in my PJ's. I had a good cry. I watched a friend's dog. I did some yoga. I went to work. I felt sad and lonely and anxious between shows, and wasn't sure if I could muster. We got back to the hotel at 10:30, and we had a fantastic Thanksgiving cast party in my hotel room. There were Apple Cider Margaritas, a cheese board, and pancakes! A truly wonderful time. All in all, so grateful for the day (even the hard parts). 

My overwhelming feeling as we enter the holidays this year is just awe. I am in awe of this incredible life, and the fact that I get to live it. I am honored that I do feel like I'm making my middle-school self proud. I am dizzied by how much life has changed in two years, not to mention five years! I am so, so grateful to feel myself inching closer to the brave, kind, put together, fun type of person I want to be. What an honor to grow older! What an honor to grow deeper. 

I am still so much in process, but I am grateful to be in the process. Coming out of this year in particular, here is what I'm grateful for:

I am proud & grateful for the boundaries I have set with family.

I am proud & grateful for getting a dog, and learning I actually love dogs. 

I am proud & grateful for the relationship Chris and I have built, and the ways we prioritize each other.

I am proud & grateful for how much Chris and I value growing outside of each other.

I am proud & grateful that I went back to school, and am still in school, even when it's hard.

I am proud & grateful to still be skating, and to know that this is what I really, really want.

I am proud & grateful for learning how to cook over the past two years.

I am proud & grateful for how much easier it is this contract to sit quietly by myself.

I am proud & grateful for the friendships I have from so many different places.

I am proud & grateful for our adventurous Instagram-able life.

I am proud & grateful for our cozy, private, slow-cooker life. 

I am proud & grateful for how I'm learning to be more nuanced in every area of my life. 

Hope you're all cozy & safe & cared for & having a wonderful start to your holiday season. 

xoxo Gillian

Grateful for in 2020, Grateful for in 2015.

An Artist's Pep Talk

 

I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Orlando, FL. Last weekend we opened up shows at Sea World Orlando, and tonight (a Friday night) we started a long run of shows for Thanksgiving week. I am curled up on the couch: freshly showered, eating scrambled eggs for dinner, with my second (large) glass of wine beside me. For whatever reason, the scene is very You've Got Mail to me. I always feel that way when I'm here doing shows at Sea World. Maybe it's the fact that I spend a decent amount of time alone? All those single lady vibes? Or maybe it's the holidays (You've Got Mail is a holiday movie, in my mind. It just is). 

Anyways. I am here. I am struggling to stay on top of school. I am loving every second of the show. I've been shopping almost exclusively at Trader Joes. And, I've been met with equal parts desperation to do more and skate more and push myself to develop more, and disgust at my own work and my own skating. 

Yes, disgust. That is a horrible thing to say! But there it is. I get frustrated on ensemble ice. I doubt my abilities constantly. I second guess myself. I don't believe any compliments. I get so, so down on myself. And I recognize it as useless, and dumb. But somehow I just can't stop. 

On some fundamental level I'm ashamed of my skating. Ashamed I never got to train "properly," ashamed that I never got to reach a higher level of skating. I worry that others perceive me as a very bad skater. I feel like everything I know how to do is just...boring? And bad?

Of course, on a logical level I know that really, not that many figure skaters exist in the world. And the percentage of figure skaters that go on to do shows is pretty low. That the number of skaters that get hired to do shows is also low, and that therefore I can't be the worst (otherwise, I wouldn't have a job!). And yet, the demons of doubt come creeping in. I'm sick of them. 

All of that to say: it's exhausting to feel that way about your art, when all you want to do is go out and make art. I have not even afforded myself the luxury of thinking I could do anything else. At the end of the day, the only thing I can really do is skate and teach and make things and write. That is all I can do, and all that I want to do. So, I must settle at being mediocre at it. 

Or: I could do the hard work of starting to acknowledge that I might possibly be good at something. That there might, somehow, in this very world, be room for my energy, ideas, expression, skill level, self. The hard work of acknowledging that there are certainly thousands of things I'm not good at, but also thousand of things I'm so good at I don't even notice. And that while working hard and improving and striving is so important, I can also allow myself to--STOP!--breathe, breathe, breath--and know that I am capable and worthy and deserving of it all. 

So the challenge this week is the asking. The asking of others to give me opportunities. The asking of myself, to believe that those could happen and then to believe that I could be really good at them. My being is restless...it's time to start making and creating and doing, and not waiting.