My Year In Japan - The Journey There

Living in Japan for 13 months changed my life.

I must, first, relate the journey that got me to Japan: I totally manifested that shit. It took me 2 years to accomplish and I’m willing to bet most people will attribute it to perseverance, but let me tell you about those couple of months leading up to finding out I was going through my eyes. If you had felt that energy and experienced that synchronicity that the universe gave me on that audition day, you’d understand what I mean I’m sure that almost every performer that’s ever booked work has had this feeling or something similar happen at one point or another in their career. You’ll know what I’m talking about when I get there, just keep reading...

*A side note about what spurred me to want to audition in the first place, and why Tokyo Disney? One of my top three passions in life has been to travel and to truly experience the world and get to know other cultures first-hand. This job would definitely tick that box. Also, one of my good friends from college, Emma Fitzpatrick, whom I greatly respected and looked up to, worked at Tokyo Disney shortly after she graduated and told me that I was the perfect look and type of talent for the show she was in (Big Band Beat) and that the Japanese people would eat me up. Well, the seed was planted and the year and eight months prior to booking Universal Studios in Osaka continued to water that seed...hard.*

At the time I started auditioning for Tokyo Disney, I was living in Pigeon Forge, TN and was working at a dinner show called “The Black Bear Jamboree.” What’s the Black Bear Jamboree? you might ask. Imagine a cruise ship style review show in a theatre located in a place affectionately known as “Hillbilly Vegas” (Pigeon Forge), where the average BMI of vacationers was off the charts and one of the big draws of the town was clearly all of the “all-you-can-eat” locales. Now, take that show and add a really flimsy storyline to it that helps to tie each decade of featured music together. Now sprinkle in 6 animatronic bears. Yeah...that’s right...I’m talking about 1991 Chuck E Cheese-grade animatronics… I’ll say this about that time - I learned A LOT (about who I was, what I wanted, what I didn’t want, how to put life into perspective, how to have patience, and what endurance felt like) and I was surrounded by a lot of talented people - many who were very comfortable in their lives there, but were competitively talented nonetheless and could have had careers outside of Pigeon Forge had they so desired. Also, despite the talent on the stage, the show itself was garbage. Needless to say, my time in Tennessee had its positives and negatives, but mostly I just wanted out.

Anyway, I began auditioning for Tokyo Disney. I went to their auditions in New York City twice (fall of ‘09 and spring of ‘10) and auditioned for that show Emma had performed in called ‘Big Band Beat’, a great show by theme park standards and certainly better than my current one. On both occasions, after singing my first song, I was “called back” and progressed through the audition pretty far, but never received the call with the offer to actually go. So, the autumn of 2010 rolled around and I thought I would give it another try. You see, although I hadn’t ever seriously considered working at a theme park as part of my personal brand of “a viable career path,” if I were to work at any theme park, Disney would be the one to do it best, I was sure. And I also knew from Emma that they really took care of their international performers at Tokyo Disney. Couple that train of thought with the reality of my time in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee and my growing desire to travel as far away from “Middle America” or “small-town South” (take your pick) as I could, then of course it made sense in my mind to pour my time and resources into making the trip to NYC and auditioning again. Mind you, not only had Emma planted the seed about my belonging at Tokyo Disney and being perfect for the role, but she also expounded on how her life was changed and enriched by that experience and I really wanted my own version of that for myself. In my brain, it was the perfect ratio of culture, life experience, and quality of life. Unlike cruise ships, were I to book this job, it would give me the opportunity to really dig into a city and a country and a culture instead of being there for a day, getting a taste, and then leaving by sunset.

As I approached this audition, I don’t know if I thought “third time’s a charm,” but that would definitely be an appropriate phrase for the circumstance as I prepared myself. I remember thinking, “This time…THIS time I’ll be what they are looking for. I’ll cater to THEM.” I wore a dark grey (almost black) suit and slicked my hair down, as this was a jazz show I was auditioning for. I was going to be as croonery and 1920s-dapper looking as I could be…surely that’s what they wanted, right?! I walked in and was shocked to find that despite it being 7:00AM, I was THE FIRST person in the room. I thought there must be a problem...these were the Tokyo Disney auditions after all - and if you know the NYC musical theatre audition scene, it won’t shock you to know that a lot of places that have coveted contracts to give to performers typically have hopefuls arriving at 5am to be the first person seen. Slightly thrown off by the lack of turnout, I waited…and began double checking what day of the week it was and comparing it to what the audition breakdown said. Had I gotten the wrong date? Sure enough, people began to trickle in. I was one of the first people to sign up and one of the first people to audition (if not the first) and I thought, as I finished my song, “That felt good! Surely they’ll tell me to come back and move or dance in the afternoon.” They did not...and so I went back to my friends’ apartment feeling dejected.

(*side note - another perk of and reason for my coming to NYC for a full week was that a few of my best friends from college lived up here as well as the friends I had made when I took a sublet from a friend for 2 months in 2009 before moving to Tennessee. It was a great excuse to catch up and remind myself that the world was not all “yee-haws” and “Cracker Barrels.” Also, other auditions.*)

I decided, since I was in town for a week around these auditions, and the day had only truly just begun, that I should just double check and see if there was anything else I could go to…and funnily enough, Universal Studios Japan, the most competitive Disney alternative in the country (ours and theirs), just happened to be having their singer auditions that very day. I requested an audition slot late in the day and thankfully they gave me one. I was going to have a second shot at Japan that very day!

I also decided that I would go into this audition and absolutely be ME. I re-showered, re-styled my hair to make me feel attractive and current, changed clothes to look sharp and feel more like myself, and once again made my way to Midtown, Manhattan. There was no way I was going to guess what someone wanted and try to be that. I was going into this audition with the mindset that I would do ‘me’ VERY well, and they would have no choice but to love it.

I arrived when they told me I should, checked in, waited till my number was called, lined up with everyone else, went in when it was my turn, and sang the hell out of “A Song For You” (you know, the song by Donny Hathaway, but in the style of Ray Charles.) The pianist felt my energy and souled it up. We made music. After being asked by the audition panel to stay and dance and sing some more, I filled out a sheet with all of my measurements, had a polaroid taken of me to accompany said measurement sheet and left the studios just knowing I had booked it. 

You see, there is an energy exchange that takes place in an audition room sometimes (you see, performers? I told you we’d get there.) You feel the room shift a bit. Between the reception and reciprocation of a positive energy with the others behind the audition table, everything brightens, becomes more in focus, and just feels “right”. You fall in love, a little, with each other. It’s really quite magical - and that description doesn’t quite do the magic justice.

The day came to an end, and I left having learned a very important lesson that I continue to learn today in other ways. It is always, always, always better to walk into a room with your head held high and to be authentically YOU, than to guess what people want to see and try to morph to their expectations. People can tell when you are being inauthentic and it almost never goes well.

After the week was over, I headed back to Pigeon Forge, and then around a month and a half later I received an email from USJ (Universal Studios Japan) saying that I was basically on a short list and that it was very likely that I would receive a call in the next month or so as things were finalized. I was, again, reassured that I was going to work for USJ - how could I not? I just needed a phone call…and that’s exactly what happened.

On December 8, 2010, about 30 minutes before my second show of the night at the Black Bear Jamboree Dinner & Show, I received a phone call and was offered a contract to work at USJ for a term of 11-13 months, and I (naturally and without hesitation) accepted the most life-altering contract that I have ever received up until the point of this writing. I packed my life for the 2nd (and definitely NOT the last) time into 2 suitcases, a carry-on, and a personal item, got on a flight and flew half-way around the world to the Land of the Rising Sun.

If what happened that fall wasn’t me visualizing my future; aligning my life’s mission, passions, and desires in my heart; communicating that to the universe; and manifesting a clear path to that visualized future, then I’m a tomato. (That was the first random thing that popped into my head...insert any other random inanimate object if you wish. Or say “Bob’s your Uncle” or something…unless Bob really is your uncle…sorry Bob.)

I spent some time learning the basics of the language before I left, because if ever there was a chance to learn a very foreign language through immersion and being surrounded by it all the time, this was it. (In case you’re wondering, I used Rosetta Stone...I found it super intuitive and helpful.) When I got to Japan I realized that, compared to the vast majority of the USJ newcomers, I was actually pretty well versed in the Japanese language - at least in its structure and the essential vocabulary.

I quickly learned some colloquialisms, verb conjugations, and customs (and their accompanying niceties and turns-of-phrase) and was frequently reminded by my Japanese friends and cast-mates that I had a natural ability for and a fairly decent command of the language already. I took the praise (merited or not) as a token of appreciation from my native friends, grateful to me for making an effort to speak as they do, for learning more, and trying to understand and integrate into the culture of my host-country.

The rehearsal process, itself, went by fairly quickly - I remember sitting in the theatre all day as we put together a show that had never been done before and would likely, after that year, never be done again. One of the most prolific and connected female directors of the park, Kahori-San, was in charge of the creation of this Sesame Street show - the show that I was to be performing in for the next 11+ months. She was different than most Japanese women. I know this, because the Japanese people I knew told me so, as did other westerners who had worked at the park before and had the pleasure of working with her. She had a directness about her that wasn’t found in most Japanese people that I came across - and just a more western feel to her in general. It was as if she had spent years abroad and decided to come back to Japan, or was somehow pulled back, but couldn’t fully shake (and perhaps didn’t want to shake) the changes she underwent from living in her adopted homes, wherever in the world they may have been.

She was accompanied by a guy who was involved with Pilobolus (the shadow/form dancing company based in the US) and who served as choreographer to the show. Rounding out the creative team was the Music Director of all of the shows of the park (or nearly all of them…I can’t remember.) In hind-sight, I wonder what Kahori-San thought of that work - of creating a children’s show? She DID invent a new Sesame Street character for the Japanese audience. Moppy was its name. It was a short, pink dinosaur with a giant round head, a strip of hot pink fluff one might call “hair” on top, and a voice oddly resembling that of the Pokemon character, Pikachu.

In a few short weeks, the show was open and our cast became the “veterans” welcoming the final cast scheduled to arrive at the park to our cast house and to their year at the park - the Monster’s Rock and Roll Show cast. By this time, we were able to really dig into our neighborhood and learn most of its secrets. We were able to find the myriad ways to get to work and had picked which one worked best for us. We knew how to get into town by ourselves and find ‘Jupiter,’ the import grocery store, where we would buy comforts from home. And I would say, at this point, most of us had heard of and been to the handful of “staple” restaurants and bars that I would reckon 80-95% of ALL foreigners who come to USJ go to…or at least went to while they were open.

The feeling at this point in the journey wasn’t a feeling of “home” - everything, from the streets, to the signs, to the immaculate public transit, to the eery quiet of a large group of people, to the sounds of the convenience store doors opening, was foreign. No, one who had never been to Asia or had not grown up with a large Asian population around them could not feel “home.” Rather, it was the feeling, or the beginnings of the feeling, of familiarity - of feeling settled in a new place. Going out the front door was no longer disorienting or overwhelming. It was time to start truly living my life in Japan.

**One final side note to this post - I glossed over a few of the details during this part of my life: a relationship ending, my tour of the south to visit loved ones before I left the country, my purchasing a new mini camcorder that also took stills to capture my year, my thinking I was going to be in a Hello Kitty show and then arriving in Japan and learning the casts had been swapped and it was now Sesame Street I was doing...all interesting stuff, but not super important to me getting to Japan.

***In telling this story, I not only want to paint a picture of Japan as experienced through my eyes over the course of 13 months, but also dive in to HOW my life was changed by this experience. As this story progresses, I’ll take you through each season in Japan with some picture highlights.

****Remember to “like” and leave a fun comment below! Let me know what you like, what you dislike, what you want to hear more of, etc. Share this with friends - especially those that enjoy travel stories. Follow me on the social medias, as well! (follow the links below)

Ways In Which Innocence Wanes And Departs

When it comes to beginnings, as far as childhood and upbringing go, you couldn’t get more clean-cut-standard-middle-class-southern-white-American-dreamy than this one. The jock and the cheerleader were high school sweethearts, were married at a young age and had 2 children, a boy and a girl, two and a half years apart from each other in age. They were a church-going family. Both parents were hard working folks who aimed to give their nuclear family a solid foundation to build upon. They lived a comfortable life, but the children weren’t spoiled by any means. The parents expected excellence from their children’s performances in school and in extracurricular activities - not because the parents needed to prove anything, but because they knew their children were capable of it and why wouldn’t you give everything that you set your mind to 100%? At least this was the way it seemed to the eldest child, the son, upon reflection years later.

Thomas would later recall, with his sister, that their childhood seemed “charmed.” Sure, there was sibling rivalry, arguments, uncomfortable silences, and the death of a grandparent in those early years to name a few examples of “imperfection,” but there were no broken bones, no hospital trips, no community upheavals that rocked their world and altered day to day life by much.

It was therefore, with overwhelming shock, discomfort, and a decent helping of consternation that in Thomas’s eighteenth year of life as a senior in high school looking towards his future, the veil was lifted and the real world came flooding in.

If you spoke to Thomas about life before this, he would tell you that the only signs of the erosion of innocence within his life came from his quiet, internal struggle with homosexuality...another story for another time. To Thomas, those urgings could be controlled, quelled, or kept in the dark...at least for the time being. It was when things beyond his control crept into his life that he felt innocence was truly being forced out of his life.

The first sign began around the holidays. It was merely weeks before the winter holiday break, and as was his body’s tendency when nearing the end of a marathon of activity, sleep-deprivation, and general over exertion, Thomas started getting a tickle in his throat that was a sure-fire sign of strep or tonsillitis or some other similar ailment. No, no, no, this can’t be happening, he thought. He had a solo in the school choir’s Christmas concert and he needed his voice to be there.

His mom took him to the doctor a few days later, you know, once the illness was clearly getting worse and not better. His mom always did that. She always insisted, “Let’s be sure you can’t fight it yourself. Let’s be sure you actually need medicine or a doctor’s prognosis and medicine before we seek it. You’re tough.”

With only an examination in the bag, the doctor declared that, based on symptoms and what is typical in the realm of disease within those symptoms, Thomas probably had strep throat. It could be tonsillitis, but we would treat it as strep with antibiotics to knock it out...just in case. With amoxicillin in hand, Thomas left the doctor to live his life. 

A couple of days after beginning the amoxicillin, he developed a rash that really couldn’t be explained other than from his taking of amoxicillin. After all, that’s the only thing that had changed in the past couple of days. The weird thing was that Thomas had never had an allergy to penicillin-based drugs before, so he thought this odd. Perhaps the doctor did, too, but he didn’t think enough about it to do any further inquiry - just to change the type of antibiotic.

Thomas got better and plowed through the rest of the semester, sang on mostly healthy vocal cords, and had a fun and healthy rest of the holidays. All seemed well…

In the spring semester, Thomas started noticing random bruises on his body. There was never an explanation as to where they originated from. It was possible he banged his knee on a table or hit his arm on a door frame or something of a similar nature, but he couldn’t really tell you why as he’d never been prone to bruising before. But the bruises were prevalent enough that his mom began to notice and asked a couple of times why he was banged up. He just shrugged them off - after all, he felt fine.

The only other concerning sign that something might not be quite right came with the summer and Thomas’s desire to get into better shape. As a lifeguard at a local pool, Thomas would stay early or leave late in order to work out in the gym attached to the pool’s clubhouse. It was on his runs on the treadmill or elliptical, particularly the sprints, that he noticed something odd happening. When he would get his heart rate up, he’d taste the metal of his own blood in his mouth. Looking in the mirror, he realized his gums were bleeding. Again, this seemed very strange...he felt healthy and fine and he took good care of his teeth. What could be causing this sensation? Surely not some sort of degenerative gum disease?

It was through his physical for college and the blood work that was needed that things started coming to light. He had gone to get the physical on a Thursday or a Friday and on the following Saturday, after having spent the morning out with his family, he came home to a message on the answering machine saying that he needed to come back in for some follow up blood work but that he and his parents should call back immediately.

With a slightly elevated blood pressure, and rising anxiety, the family called back to learn that when they got the test results, Thomas’s platelet count was desperately low. The doctor explained that 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microliter of blood was normal. Thomas’s registered 11,000...less than 10% of the acceptable low. Perhaps it was a fluke of the machine, but to be sure, the doctor wanted to see him on Monday to re-draw and do another test. It was at this time, that a hematologist/oncologist was introduced into the mix at the hospital. After going in and doing another Complete Blood Count and learning that his platelets were even LOWER (9,000), Thomas was put on a healthy dose of steroids, which can help in these situations, as well as having about 7 or 8 other vials of blood drawn to test for everything that could be causing this abnormality; Lupus, Leukemia, HIV, and ironically enough, the “kissing disease” mono(nucleosis) were all on the table as viable options as well as several others. In the end, the only thing that could correlate and explain what was going on with the low platelet counts were antibodies for mono.

What did it mean? Well, Thomas learned that sometimes when a person contracts mono (which incidentally can cause a rash reaction to penicillins!) if that person doesn’t rest properly or take care of themselves for a couple of weeks while they are enduring the virus, their body can have an adverse reaction by means of spleen enlargement. This is precisely what happened to Thomas, and this spleen enlargement triggered an auto-immune response in the body called Immuno Thrombocytopenic Purpura or ITP for short. When this happens, the body sees platelets as foreign objects in the body that must be destroyed, and that’s exactly what was happening to Thomas. His body was destroying platelets quicker than it could make them.

As the saga of treatment and putting off a splenectomy continued through the summer, another type of innocence was coming to a close in Thomas’s life. It’s that child’s innocence that projects on the adults around them, who in the child’s inexperienced eyes (and with help from good moral behavior on the adult’s part in front of the child) see adults as nearly perfect and infallible, having all of life's answers. All of the adults in Thomas’s life that were part of his family’s close circle of friends were jolly, kind, married (happily), fun to be around, and had children themselves that happened to be some of Thomas’s best friends. Through his eyes, they were an extension of his parents. I’m sure to his parents, they seemed an extension of them as well. After all, they did mutually choose each other as friends.

What Thomas learned that summer is that things aren’t always as they seem in the world of adults. Oftentimes adults put on a facade to some extent, even to their friends. This author would argue that is especially the case within faith communities where moral uprightness and righteousness is sought by its members and the more socially unacceptable thoughts and actions are shunned, seen as “sinful,” or looked upon with some degree of shame.

It was an early evening in late July or early August and Thomas’s mom called him while he was lifeguarding and said she was coming early with dinner and that they were going over to the Carr’s house. She sounded a little tense and perhaps emotional on the phone as she followed that statement up saying that Alice, the mom of Thomas’s best friend, called and said that her husband, John, had done a very bad thing and that she needed some support as she’d just kicked him out of the house.

As an adult, in the thick of the situation, I can imagine that even though the situation itself might not be shocking, Alice’s emotional buildup and release through her unpleasant revelations would still be very horrible. As a teenager who knew nothing of the situation, Thomas was stunned. What could have happened to them? What had John done? How were the boys? It wasn’t until a few hours later, as the sun was extinguished with the coming of night that Thomas’s innocence was also doused in the full realization of the truth. John Carr had been cheating on his wife, Alice for the better part of the last 6 years. Thomas’s parents knew there had been some unrest in their marriage a few years ago, but obviously didn’t think to burden Thomas or his younger sister with this knowledge. 

Apparently, the couple decided to make things work for their sons and to gloss over some of their marital tribulations. That is, until the woman John was sleeping with got fed up with keeping it a secret. She wanted John to leave Alice and be with her. In her impatience and frustration of being “the OTHER woman” and John not being forthcoming with his wife, she took matters into her own hands. She sent Alice every email that the two secret lovers had written to each other over the past several years, providing evidence of all of the times John had gone on “solo” trips that turned out to be not-so-solo trips.

Thomas couldn’t imagine the deluge of fury, hurt, and grief that Alice must have felt, opening email after email and reading about the trysts that were being planned, seeing her husband’s betrayal in black and white. Or what the sons must have felt having their trust in their parents shattered like that. Thomas, and his parents, both felt a little betrayed themselves. The family they thought they knew was not so known to them anymore. Thomas still knew and loved the boys that he had spent all of his childhood with and as far as humans go, Alice and John are decent humans. They just made some mistakes, as we all do.

The charm of childhood was wearing off. That feeling that everything was going to be alright, that everything was as it seemed was waning. Thomas was no longer sure that “good” meant what he thought it meant. Despite all of the good fortune his childhood had afforded him, he was learning that life wasn’t always going to feel this easy. Life wouldn’t be laid out beautifully in a spread before him to consume at his leisure. He continued to learn this as he navigated his way through his first semester of college, dealing with the impending splenectomy that took him out of school for a week, and then, later in the semester, a 2nd degree ankle sprain that kept him from auditioning properly for the spring musical, 42nd street.

It wasn’t until years later, after the eventual splenectomy, after Alice and John had found happiness in other partners and their boys grew up and started living their own adult lives, that Thomas started really seeing the world as it was and championing vulnerability and authenticity in his own life - not to mention, seeking a healthy dose of silver-linings. The faith foundation that had been so carefully built for him by his parents and church community, their ideas of right from wrong, what “sin” is, and what REALLY matters to God, if there even is one that can be defined by and confined within a single religion, all had to be dismantled by Thomas, carefully examined, and rebuilt or refitted in a way that better explained the world, history, the present and what real “goodness” is.

Everyone has their own pace at stepping into the full reality of the world and leaving childhood behind. I could argue that part of nostalgia is a melancholic mourning for that lost innocence of a youth when life seemed easier. That is why I believe it to be one of the more dangerous emotional and mental states that humans can live in. If unchecked, we stop living in and embracing the present and we start longing for a romanticized past that feels easier and simpler...even though, if we examined our pasts with an accurate lens, we’d still see plenty of reasons worth abandoning it and living in the reality of now. But this is adjacent to the point, not the point itself.

The point, at least in Thomas’s case, is that innocence is more an illusion - like Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. It is also that society and “nurture” play a huge role in the way that we filter and view the world around us. If someone had presented a healthier and more well-rounded version of reality that showed the light and the dark of the world with all of the nuances of gray that fall in between, Thomas would have realized that the gray is what makes up 99% of the world. The pure white and the pure black end of the spectrum are merely bookending points. Thomas eventually came to this understanding, but it was a conscious effort on his part to do so. And the effort continues to this day.

Also worth noting is that, through this ongoing journey of life, Thomas has learned that the meaning that humans tend to apply to certain circumstances in their lives as either Karmic or as a praise/punishment response from The Divine because of other prior circumstances and behaviors we humans have displayed is not nearly as important (or accurate an assessment) as the subsequent action or inaction taken in response and reflection to those circumstances. THAT’S where the true meaning comes from. The meaning to our lives and the circumstances therein comes because WE give them meaning. Also, hindsight is 20/20. Try not to judge in the moment. Follow your intuition. Make the world a better place because you were there.

Stories Worth Telling

Welcome to my website, reader! I’m not sure what brought you here, but I hope you stay a while. This particular writing is the first in what I plan to be many, both fact and fiction, that have been central in my life’s narrative (as well as come colorful imaginings and artistic ramblings that resonate within.) I can’t guarantee there will be a rhyme or a reason to all of my future writings and posts – I imagine it will be ever evolving for a bit with the common thread being me and my experiences. BUT in the meantime, if you find something that resonates with you, tickles your fancy, tickles your funny bone, or makes you reflect in some way, please like and leave a comment beneath it. Or just say hi!

Do you remember the first book you learned to read? Mine was “The Poky Little Puppy,” one of several books in the Little Golden Books series. I don’t really recall the premise of the book, but I remember that once I learned how to read that book it wasn’t long until I was devouring every book I could get my hands on. Books led me to create the worlds I was reading about in my head, allowing myself to inhabit them in my imagination. Reading facilitated the curation of my creative brain with new material and fed my growing imagination, helping to satiate my curiosity of the world as a child.

As I got older, there was a time when reading became a bit more of a drudgery. When the requirements thrust upon me by standard education, extra-curricular activities, and a desire to be a little more social in my adolescence, as I believe is fairly common in our society, led me away from reading for pleasure. I was kept busy elsewhere for the better part of my middle school and high school experience. Plus, all of the reading that came with school tended to be books that were not chosen by me and therefore “not as fun to read.”

Despite this time of my life where I shunned reading in general, I still loved to go to bookstores and hunt for books that piqued my interest; books that I wanted to read for the sake of reading. Walking into a bookstore always felt warm and inviting. To this day, when I enter a bookstore, I can’t help but marvel at the rows and rows of books, wondering just what knowledge, wordsmithing, and imagination lies behind the covers bearing names of authors known and unknown to me. I can spend hours looking at magazines, whose easy-to-digest writings are typically accompanied by rich photography – helping to transport readers visually into the world they are talking about. Then there are all of the non-periodical writings on any number of subjects that are just as delectable to consume.

The short of it is that reading other people’s stories always gets my own creative juices flowing. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, books allow me to enter the world (real or imagined) through someone else’s eyes and perspective. They stoke my own creative fires, make me wonder how I would tell my own stories, how I would shape my own commentaries I have on the world and cultures as filtered through my perspective and experience.

I will partially credit books and the imagination that they gave me to the life that I have built for myself thus far. Books spurred my desire to travel, to see exotic places, to experience other cultures, and to deep dive into the experiences that life can offer if you are brave enough to adventure into the unknown. In just over a decade’s time, I’ve lived overseas, performed all over the world, been to every continent except South America and Antarctica (I’m mad about the South America one…I want to go so bad!), visited at least 55 countries, met some truly amazing humans, had some truly wild experiences, and have generally not had enough time to truly digest and synthesize it all.

Some of the most formative and life-changing of those adventures came to an end and not once did I have the chance to sit down with someone and say “let me tell you about my year abroad” or “can I take you on a journey through my life for the past few months via the pictures I took and tell you my stories?” Not that I needed to expound and reflect in a masturbatory way to my parents or friends about my experiences. But to truly incorporate them into my psyche, to truly make the most of them in my daily life and my creative life, I think some sort of reflection is necessary.

About this, I will also say that as a writer, performing artist, creative producer, and storyteller, I believe it is important to cultivate moments and experiences in life that lead to great stories and serve to fuel the imagination. My plug to you to do something out of the ordinary today (or tomorrow) and maybe step out of your comfort zone.

Naturally, as time went on, I began to take some of my experiences and write my own stories down. The stories that stuck vividly with me through the years; stories of heartbreak and of complete joy; stories that helped to define the adult Patrick; stories that were funny or ironic; stories that will forever be etched on my heart and in my brain. Some of them have led to other writings of mine – fictional writings – or ideas for plays, shows, performance art, etc.

But what good is a story if it isn’t shared?

So here I am. Sharing with you, the reader, my stories. A portion of my soul. I will try and be as uncensored and honest as possible. I plan to dig deep. I hope that stepping into my world and my imagination does something positive for you. I hope you can find ways to relate to me, despite our different journeys. If you are inspired to travel, to tell your own stories, to examine your life a little deeper, to adventure more, or just to read more and maybe giggle a little, then I am glad. If you just want to be a voyeur into my life and join me on this creative experiment – I will also be glad.

All are welcome. Buckle up!

I aim to post every Monday and Friday, so keep an eye open!