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Wow I am back online..it has been a long time…too long.. so much has happened. I am now living in Nova Scotia. I am still adjusting to that. I will write more later I just wanted to make sure all was working well. I had been having trouble getting on my website..

I did my hour of “Commitment” today. I worked on one of my new shows,

“Years Well Waitressed”

I added another short story, ……My First Customer.

It felt good to do it.

I have also made another commitment.

I have just recently committed to leading a 4 am Sunday sadhana at the Ashram here in Toronto, starting this Sunday, August 17th.

Sadhana is an early morning practice that includes, prayer,yoga,meditation, and mantras. The practice runs from 4 am until 6:30am

This will allow me the practice teaching I need. There are always a few people there.

Technically, I am not “teaching the class” I am “leading the class”. But it is great practice in giving instructions to a class. I really want to commit to my true loves, my writing and performing and my physical well being.

Fall is coming… change is in the air!

Wow, I have been back from Winnipeg two weeks. I really enjoyed that city. I had a great run of “The Road Less Gravelled”. My very first show of the festival was nearly sold out. I went on to do three sold out shows and win “Best in Fest” for my venue. I got a great review from CBC and great audience reaction. I kept overhearing people talk about my show. People stopping me on the street to chat with me. Some people came back a second time to see it. I felt rewarded.

I realized that for the first time that each time I do the show it is a little different and it is a lot like serving tables, once you can do it well, there is money to be made. So what’s next?

I need to take it to the next level. Write my next show, hire a publicist and get my name out there. It is time to treat my artistic career as a second job. I have a great idea for an internet show that I would like to do.
So every day I have to commit to doing something for an hour that will help me gain employment in my chosen field. It is about the commitment. Just keep doing it.

I have always been inspired by this poem.

COMMITMENT

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back,

always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of creation there is but one elementary truth,

the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans;

that the moment one definitely commits oneself,

then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision,

raising in one’s favour all manner

of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,

which no person could have dreamed would have their way.

W.H Murray , 1951 ( The Scottish Himalayan Expedition)

I lost count of the days…….. I will have to start my forty day blog again when I get back from Winnipeg….. I am off to Winnipeg to do the fringe. I won’t have any access to my blog so I will have to fill you in on details when I get back!

ART IS AN ACT OF THE SOUL,NOT OF THE INTELLECT

That’s another of my commandments. I got that one out of The Artist Way, I read that book many years ago. It is hard to be an artist in this world. There is hardly any place for us. I guess you have to make your own space. I am slowly doing that for myself.

I had a long day today…..goodnight

I recently found this review of my show…pretty cool!!!

The Road Less Gravelled
September 08, 2007 | 11:45 AM

The first two times that I attempted to go see Newfoundlander-turned-Torontonian Wanda Carroll’s one-woman show “The Road Less Gravelled”, it was sold out; the show played to a packed house again last night. And impish, hilarious, enthusiastic Carroll deserves all the attention she’s been getting. In just over an hour, Carroll takes the audience on a journey through her bored childhood in tiny Conche, Newfoundland—from her first days as an alarmingly beautiful baby, to her ultimate departure from the province, to attend university at Dalhousie. A gifted, comfortable story-teller, Carroll delivers each tale with glee. And she’s got a knack for choosing just the right words and facial expressions to perfectly convey the stories and feelings she’s describing (even those outside our realm of personal experience). Carroll shares her first encounter with a “real” bathroom (for years, her family’s home lacked plumbing, so they used a “poop pail”); “The bathroom was the most beautiful room I had ever seen,” Carroll declares, enthusiastically. Contrasting the “real” bathroom with the “poop pail”, she points out that in the real bathroom, you didn’t have to “figure out which one was yours…You knew!” In just a few short sentences, Carroll perfectly conveys a child’s wonder. We instantly understand how excited Carroll was about the bathroom, because we’ve been that excited, too. Carroll brings a similar wit and sensibility to stories about her first pineapple purchase (”My god, you guys—I’d never seen a real life pineapple before”), her discussions about apartheid with a seal-hunt shunning pen-pal from South Africa, her love of the Mary Tyler Moore show, and her first indignant encounter with nepotism. The show’s great, and well worth the ticket-line duels you’ll inevitably have to engage in to get in to see it.

I am excited about my life! I have so much to be grateful for. I thank the universe.

I gotta start doing a daily voice work-out starting tomorrow.I will be in Winnipeg in a week to do my show. YEAH!!

I got lots of birthday wishes. I had a great day of yoga. I am teaching this Thursday at my friends house. YEAH!!

Here is the latest addition to my list of personal commandments ( remember I found my own ten commandments cause the original didn’t really work for me)

“Creation is only the projection into form of that which already exist” Shrimad Bhagavatam

So technically I missed a day. I won’t tell if you don’t tell.

Happy Birthday to me. I had a great day. I studied yoga, went out for a nice dinner and now I am off to bed. I have another day of yoga tomorrow!

Oh my, a birthday of 42 is a different story from 24, and that is a good thing.

Life is better with age. I swear to god!!!

A long day. I saw my friends show tonight, it had some great moments. My friend Diana is Vivi. A down and out silent film star. Diana did a great job! She has grown so much as a performer.

We meet at Baby clown class in the fall of 2001. We are Baby Clown siblings.The first thing I remember about her is that she was tall and thin, I had just quit smoking earlier in the year, so I was feeling short and fat. At some point she said her parents were Irish. I found that interesting. My people are of Irish decent. And so I knew then that we were connected. We were both Irish.

Diana says that she looked at me and thought, ” I am going to get to know her” . And she did……….. A friendship is born.

A relationship without judgment, a true friendship.

She was beautiful on that stage tonight, a true star. She inspires me. And seeing her up there tonight….. reminds me of my own command of the stage….. it is addictive. I am so proud of her. She is going to have a great time!

VIVA VIVI! Toronto Fringe 2008.

This brings me to the Next of my commandments;

“Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect”

Good Night my friends!

I ended my cleanse last night. It was another positive experience. I will do it again.

It is my birthday on Saturday and I am going out to dinner so I need to prepare my body for food and wine.

To tell you the truth, I’m kinda nervous about eating.The idea of eating seems a little strange. You wonder what will happen when you eat. And when you haven’t eaten in days you aren’t sure what the first thing should be.

For today it is soups and juices day, to get my body use to food again. Tomorrow I will have some yogurt and banana. I will be back to normal by Saturday. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… I have so much to do, gotta go walk my dogs, gotta answer a couple of emails, gotta rehearse! Which means I put on a show for the dogs and the cat. They usually fall asleep. Speaking of cat I think mine needs his medicine………gotta go…

………….before I go, here is another of my personal commandments…..

“Undoubtedly,we become what we envisage” ( Claude M Bristol)