Sunday Splurge

Hey. It's me. Happy Sunday. Super random messy narcissistic spontaneous catch up post, enjoy.

I just had this moment of genuine happiness of being single. In general I am happily single but of course there are times where I am not. Sometimes I'm REALLY not. And with Valentines Day approaching I know many singletons may be feeling a little low. I honestly wanna be known as the Queen of Single, maybe I'll just name myself it and put it in my insta bio then its #official. Like I wanna be the Queen of Single that if I finally meet the right person and we like each other so much but my brand of being single is so strong that I turn it down. Cuz I wouldn't wanna let my fans down like Dua Lipa (eyeroll) did. For those that don't know, the guy she wrote New Rules about, she got back with! How disappointing. Anyway I have so many visions and ideas of my single brandness. After my hit blog post, 101 with No1: How To Be Happily Single, check it out if you're feeling low about V Day. I wanna do a theatre show about the same topic and release a song, which I have already partly written, just need to learn how to sing lmao and find someone who can mix, edit and produce a track haha, the future darlings, one day. AND I wanna write a book, and be a published author... how iconic. I will literally be the queen of single. I have also wrote a spoken word piece called 'Single And...' which I performed last year. Talking of spoken word it is the Open Mic, Open Mind on Wednesday, so all my UCA friends I hope to see you there! It is LGBTQ+ History Month Special and I will be presenting with the one and only Jayden Powell! I will also be performing, I've got a killer setlist with some new pieces too, can't wait to share, might even post the performance on my YouTube so everyone can see!

Anyway I have been feeling inspired by two talks I went to yesterday at the event Surviving Actors. One run by Tommy Balaam and the other by Abiola Ogunbiyi and Daniel Dresner. Abiola especially said some super inspiring stuff, the bit that really hit home for me is when she spoke about people that laugh at you or don't understand and/or shade you for wanting to be an actor. But this also works for anyone in the creative arts sector or "unconventional careers" (whatever that means). We've all had it when someone says 'get a proper job' or makes you feel stupid/ashamed for wanting your dream job. Don't let them, you have every right to want that job/career. You have seen actual living human beings just like you, doing that job, having that career so it is perfectly valid for you to want it too. That talk really inspired me and I probably won't be writing this post today, like above what I said about wanting to write a book and below what I go on to say about things I want to do.

In other news tonight is the BAFTAs (held in London) and the Grammys (held in LA) and I was just thinking about them and the fact that Gaga for example who is nominated at both can only attend one. And I'm just setting my future goals, after I've released a killer No1 album and been in a blockbuster movie when I'll be nominated for best actor (which by then will be a gender-neutral category, okay wait I will do a side note about this because this is important lol) and I'll be nominated for Best Album, Best Artist, Best Song, I dunno and all the others lol. I'm full aware awards and award shows are stupid AF and a whole level of problematic but I'm an attention seeker so let me live. Also I wanna be the first openly queer actor to win an Oscar, can you believe a queer person has never won best actor/actress, homophobia still STINKS in 2019. Or maybe its because once in a blue moon where there is actually an LGBTQ+ character on our screens they're played by a cis straightie. (Lol thats a whole other blog post) But I worked out with flight times and car journeys to the venues and with the time difference it would be pretty impossible to go to both. But obviously I will be successful and rich enough to have a private jet or something and pull it off and attend both and accept all the awards. Like imagine the whole entourage on the jet with me changing from one iconic red carpet look to the next. Hahaha or maybe the year I'm nominated for both they won't be on the same day so we won't have this problem lmao.

Side Note: Gendered categories are a joke. Best actor and best actress categories shouldn't exist. Why does being a man or a woman affect your performance? They don't have best white actor, best black actor, ect. Or best blue eyed actor. Or best blonde actor. Or best straight actor. You get the message. All these things do not affect your performance, and neither does your gender. We live in a society that is SO obsessed with splitting men and women, which is problematic in many ways. There isn't just two genders hun. But anyway I would love to see all these award shows scrapping the gendered awards. And if people are worried about their being less awards, you can add other awards. Like many award shows have. You can categorise the acting genres more deeply. Eg best actor (actor as in the gender-neutral term) in a drama, best actor in horror, best actor is romantic, best actor is comedy, more genres ect. I feel like within the drama category we can be more specific and make more categories. Then once you have all the winners from these awards, one of them gets picked as overall best actor. How fun would that be. You can have more nominees too. I dunno. I just hate gendered awards, it is dumb but has been so ingrained in our society we just see it as normal but ITS NOT.

Random next topic. I have for so long had this amazing successful future planned/vision for myself. And I am NO WHERE NEAR achieving it. And it stresses and upsets me SO much. I have put so much pressure on myself for as long as I can remember. What gets me THE most is that I KNOW that I have the potential to CHANGE THE FUCKING WORLD, I just need the platform. I care SO much that I actually can't sleep at night. This world needs a switch up and I got no idea why I think it's my responsibility but I do, maybe it's just because I know I can, I have the capability. Lizzo who is one of my favourite artists ever and who I had the pleasure of seeing live last year said this in a recent magazine interview, “I’m going to become iconic... I don’t mean in the way all the kids are using it now for everything like, ‘Oh, I took a nap, How iconic.’ Even though it’s valid; naps are iconic. I mean iconic like an icon. Like when you see the go sign or the stop sign, you know what it means.” And I have NEVER related to something SO much. And she is about to become HUGE, which I am so excited and happy for her about because she DESERVES it. But part of me is a little sad, because if you've ever loved an artist that isn't that famous you'll know what I mean. When it's only you that you know that loves them and they feel like your little secret. But I'm willing to give that up because Lizzo's voice NEEDS to be heard by THE WHOLE WORLD. Check her OUT.

Anyway back to me. Like I said I have this vision and expectation of myself and my work. And in the last week and few days two projects didn't go to planned. The first was dying my hair. I have just finished my showcase unit where we did a theatre show so had to have my natural hair colour and starting tomorrow is our film unit so again need my natural hair for the film so I had just over a week and I've always wanted pink hair so brought a bleach London wash out in 2-10 washes hair dye. It was The Big Pink one if anyone knows. So I was expecting my hair to not just be pink but FUCKING pink. The problem is in my head the way my hair looked was as if it had be professional dyed in a seriously expensive salon and professionally styled. I also wanted to do a photoshoot to capture this iconic pink hair-do as it would only last a few days. Again in my head we were in a professional studio with expensive lighting and set. Instead we are dying my hair with £6 hair dye in a bath tub on a Thursday night on a girls sleepover. The dye is so bad after it's been washed out it is not pink enough so my friends are using pink chalk and colouring in my hair to make it pinker. The photoshoot then happens in my friends bedroom using a broken lamp as lighting. BUT I have to say a HUGE thank you to my friends because I was super upset and SO close to having a D I V A fit when I saw how unpink my hair was!! They saved the day and we made it work and the pics weren't too bad if we do say so ourselves. Maybe not quite what I envisioned but I aint a multimillionaire superstar yet so we out here on a BUDGET.

The second thing was some filming I did this week on Brighton beach which is part of my dissertation multimedia show. These shoots which I started planning and envisioning for over 7 months obviously weren't quite as the same as my blockbuster of imagination envisioned but they were pretty good. Especially seeing as I just gave Dan a camera he's never used and he has no experience as a camera person. This camera wasn't the BEST but we made it work. We did have some lighting issues which were beyond our control. But I am excited to continue editing this footage and add it into my show. I think straight away I'm like UGH I HATE THIS, whatever it is I do/make, photoshoot, film, spoken word, blog post, acting, everything and anything. Because in my head I imagine it being perfect and we've all been told that don't exist, although I'm unsure... haha. I dunno why I'm telling you these stories!? I dunno maybe to say, let's not put too much pressure on ourselves but still work hard and have our dreams. AND DON'T FEEL GUILTY AND STUPID FOR HAVING BIG DREAMS. I know I do and I'm really working on not feeling guilty and stupid for wanting my dream career. Abiola Ogunbiyi's words really helped with that yesterday. Let's just try and live our best lives and support each other.

Completely changing topic here. But. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who is a personal hero of mine gave an amazing speech this week, please check it out, click here. Politics is relevant to us ALL.

Anyway, I think that's it for now. Thank you so much for reading, have a good Monday tomorrow and remember we got this xo