The Golden Globes

For as long as I can remember, I've loved The Golden Globes.

I have always thought of it as the ultimate award show, a champagne-fueled room full of film and television elite, where amongst the glitz and glamour I could discreetly hold hands under the table with Justin Timberlake.  It's been a long-term fantasy of mine.

Well, the JT part is more of a recent development, but otherwise I've enjoyed this fantasy since I was a little girl.   I spent hours dreaming of having the best dressed hair, makeup, and gown, practicing my surprised and humbled expression as a nominee, and perfecting a speech that would bring the audience to hopeful tears.

As a child, I was a performer.  A dancer and singer.  An actress.  Somewhere in storage is a black and white headshot of me as an aspiring child star, my name beneath my chubby-cheeked smiling face.

In a leotard and ballet slippers: TADA!

In fact, it's a shame most of you missed my critically acclaimed performance in a play I also wrote.  It was a modern adaptation of The Ugly Duckling in which I played the girlfriend of the lead character, Snoop Ducky Duck.  My role even included an alternate version of On My Own from Les Miserables featuring the following lyrics:  "On my own, I love a duck with a beauty.  That lies within him oh so truly.  And even though the other ducks they say: He's ugly, oh I hate him, he's disgusting... how they rate him."

I know.  I can't make this stuff up.

I had a passion for show business until probably my early teen years. That's when I started to hesitate.

I remember thinking I could never audition for a show because the director might be seated at a distance and ask me a question.  This was an imaginary scenario, of course, but in my mind, I pictured myself unable to hear him, leaving me frozen in embarrassment and running offstage in tears.

I didn't ever want to take that risk.  And so I pushed my starlet dreams aside.  I let go.

Since my surgery, and since the blog, my eyes have opened to the many times I've failed to even try something I might enjoy-- not because of fear I would fail, but because I have been so scared of the vulnerability that accompanies revealing my true self in the process.  That fear alone was debilitating enough to keep me from embracing what I truly love in this world.

I vow the future will be different.

Therefore, without fear, should I one day receive a second chance to perform, I accept.  And if this performance merits an invitation to a future Golden Globes, so be it.  Just know, Foreign Hollywood Press, that you'll get my true JT-stalking self in attendance.