'Tis the Season...

It's Saturday, and it's December now. Which means that many people are feeling the pull to do some 'holiday shopping' this weekend... right?

Well, not me. I was standing outside of my friends Devon & Pam's Queen West apartment building this morning thinking about how much I do not want to face the shopping world today, and I remembered an email that I sent to some of my dear ones a few weeks ago... I suddenly felt compelled to share this message with everyone who might want to read it and so, here it is:

(Sent Nov 19, 2008:)

Hello My Dear Ones!

As this 'holiday season' draws nearer, I find myself filled with the usual dread. Not because I don't thoroughly enjoy those twinkly little christmas lights that crop up everywhere, or even the odd holiday movie... No, I just hate the stupid consumerism of this time of year. I hate how it feels like everyone with something to sell, everywhere, is trying to convince us that if we REALLY love our loved ones we will spend money on them and buy them tonnes of STUFF.

The thing is, I really don't need or want more STUFF. Don't get me wrong, I want your love (I think I have your love - no?) but I just really don't need any STUFF to demonstrate that you love me. I also recognise that it is enjoyable for some to spend money on others and use gifts as a token or expression of their love/friendship/whatever, and that is A-ok with me.

But here's my request: if you choose to spend money on me this holiday season please use it to donate to one of my favorite charitable organisations (two are mentioned below), and then tell me about it with a nice card!

IMPORTANT: Just because you are receiving this email DOES NOT mean that I was expecting you to spend money on me this holiday season. I may be sending you this email simply in an attempt to inspire you to send a similar message to your friends & family... 'cause hey, I think it's a darn good idea!

But... if you DID have your heart set on spending some money in the name of your love for me this year, please spend it in my name by donating either to...

"Head & Hands" (a very cool, grassroots/community-based, youth organisation in Montreal that my friend Nikki works for. "Head & Hands" is committed to working with youth to promote their physical and mental health. This is a very, very effective organisation because of it's long history of working WITH its community to affect change in the best possible ways. This kind of work is very close to my heart and I would give them a million dollars if I had it to give!) www.headandhands.ca

OR

"CarbonZero" (a canadian-based organisation committed to providing the highest quality carbon offsets, sourced through the most stringent verification practices, based on a principle of transparency - to help combat the global warming that is happening as a result of our everyday activities, including the use of electricity, cars and planes) www.carbonzero.ca

You can purchase Carbon Offsets to help support me in counteracting all of the touring I've been doing this year at: http://www.carbonzero.ca/buyoffsets

Okay, long enough message.
Love you all!
XOX
megs

So, in the hopes of inspiring some of you out there to buy nothing for your loved ones, and/or request that they buy nothing for you, I have shared this message. I hope it inspires goodness in the world.

Another idea that I had this morning, if you really feel the need to give something solid to your loved ones, is to go out and buy some food for them to donate to the local food bank.

Or, if you want to feel super productive in your own life (like I do right now!) you can avoid the stores this month and spend time sorting through your own stuff at home, and then gather up your warmest not-used-enough-by-you clothes and accessories (I'm talkin' hats, scarves & gloves here - not bracelets) and donate them to a local shelter. If you are female in Toronto, I recommend taking your stuff to 'Jessie's Centre for Teenagers' (www.jessiescentre.org) - a centre for pregnant teens and teen mothers that I used to volunteer at - it's my donation centre of choice.

Okay, I guess that's all I wanted to say right now.
Fa-la-la-la-la and all that jazz.

Peace.

My Life is Your Life...

Because I know that I haven't been a very diligent blogger lately, and that's because my life has been sooooo full (of greatness), and I keep hearing my friends say that they are living vicariously through me these days, so... in a few sentences and snapshots, this is what my life has been like for the last six weeks or so...

I went on tour.
With two guys in a big truck.
I saw a lot of the USA...

And I got to perform, often, in tons of different theatres...
Big, fancy new ones and cool old ones,
I was on stage, performing a fun show, for screaming groups of school kids, all across the USA...
Fun, fun times...

I rode in the truck and looked around...
I looked back a little,
but mostly I looked forward...

I did "meghan-like" things,

Of course!

We spent our two days off in Vegas...

I had copius amounts of FUN!

And the road continues,

And I still love my life!

ENDNOTE:
I am "home" now, in Toronto (still loving my life!) But I will be leaving again to go and do yet another show, for four months, in Florida. I will be there from January-April 2009 and then... I will be ready for yet another great adventure, I'm sure!

I know this much is true...

I know that it has (yet again) been a long time since I wrote a blog entry.
So what else is new?
Well, lots is new in my life, and lots is not. I am still on tour, and I am still loving my job and by extension my life (because my life pretty much is my job these days), and all of that is not really what I feel like writing about right now. Right now, I feel like writing about what I know to be true at this time.

So, I know this much is true:
I want love. I have been wanting (okay, despite my proclamations that I don’t believe in wishing, I’ve actually caught myself lately wishing for…) love that is real and true and good for me. And just now, sitting here outside of our current theatre venue (in Southern California) beneath what I think may be a full moon, I realized (or rather, I remembered): I have that. I have so much real, true, good-for-me love in my life. I know this is true. And I am oh, so thankful for every ounce of it.

Furthermore, I know what kind of person I want to be – and in that real, true, secure knowledge of that person, I am realizing that I am that person. That person is someone who, deep down, wants everyone’s dreams to come true. As much as I want for myself, I want for others. That much, I know, is true.

I am also the kind of person who wants to be the very best that she can be. I am the kind of person who carries with her a constant awareness of how I might be able to improve. For this too, I am thankful.

And I am the kind of person who has chosen to believe, to have faith, to be thankful and to be loving. In the face of challenge, adversity and difficulty – I believe that I have chosen to simply walk forward through the fire as best I can, and be as thankful as possible.

I watched an excellent movie recently (Zeitgeist – do check it out!) and it contained a quote that resonated deeply with me:

“They must find it difficult…
those who have taken authority as the truth,
rather than truth as the authority”

I know this much is true: I have chosen truth as my authority. And this sometimes makes me the type of person who questions authority, sometimes to the dismay of those in authoritative positions. And I like that about me, even when others don’t like that about me. It is also true that I like to be liked, and thus sometimes it is difficult for me to take positions where I upset others. This is an ongoing struggle for me – but I choose to strive towards taking truth as my authority, as opposed to authority as my truth.

I also know this much is true:

I will always be my own worst enemy,
and my own Best friend.

I also know, all too well perhaps, about the ebb and flow of life. I know that all things must end, and though I struggle with endings, I know for certain that endings are the only way to make new things start. I know well the excitement of beginnings, and I love them, but I have grown to love endings too.

I have also come to know that the more you give, the more you have to lose, but I have never regretted giving all that I had to give simply because I had to face it's eventual loss.

I know that everyone and everything in one’s life is there to teach or show or remind us of something, but it is entirely up to each individual to figure out what that something is.

Furthermore, I know that sometimes life gives us a person or a situation and it seems like they are there for a specific reason, and sometimes this is so. But sometimes they end up being given to us for a completely different reason that becomes apparent only through the 20/20 vision of hindsight. So it goes.

I know that what doesn’t kill us most definitely makes us stronger. I know this because I am still here - alive and living and strong. Perhaps what I truly know is that I have not yet been given anything that I cannot handle (even though sometimes I thought that was exactly what I was being given) and I do believe that I will never be given anything that I cannot handle. Or perhaps I simply believe that I can handle anything. I’m still working on the core truth of that one…

Finally (for now), I know that many (if not all) of the best moments (of my life at least) are small and simple, and can easily go un-noted… but these are precisely the moments worth noting.

I know and believe that so completely that I feel it bears repeating:

I know that many, if not all,
of the best moments in life
are small and simple,
and can easily go un-noted...
but these are precisely the moments worth noting.

And so I shall go forth and attempt as best I can to take perpetual note of the little things – those lovely little things that bring me large, large joy.

One Week In

So here's the thing about being on tour - well, this tour at least: there's NO time to do anything besides ride in the truck, eat, sleep, un-load the set in to the current venue, perform at the current venue or load the set out of the current venue. Yes, that's really pretty much all I do.

Thankfully, I am in very good company. Yes, I love my tour-mates - Bryan and Dave - I think we are all so very lucky to be with each other on this tour. We work hard and well together, we have faced (many) challenges with determination and optimism, and we've enjoyed some good chats and very good laughs together while riding for hours in our truck as well! Here we are, a week ago today, setting out on the road together for the first time from South Carolina:

TEXAS HERE WE COME!!!

But not without a few delays first... You see, somewhere in Alabama our engine light came on and all of a sudden the truck wouldn't go above 40mph. Our show manager (and also my CSI co-star), Dave, called the truck company and arranged for us to take our truck in to a shop somewhere in Alabama to get looked at and hopefully fixed.

Turns out that getting our big yellow truck fixed was not gonna happen. We needed a new truck. It took the Alabama guys about an hour or so to get us our new truck, but we passed the time by unloading all of our gear, set, equipment out of the back of our first truck and in to the parking lot. And then we waited.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, the new truck was 2 ft shorter (lengthwise, and a little bit shorter heightwise) than our original - Tetris anyone? Well, we got the new truck loaded up and I think we were back on the road just after 8pm. In the end it was really only a 5 hour delay in Alabama... (I wish there was a button I could hit here to denote my sarcasm) So we drove and drove and drove, in the darkness of the night, trying to catch up for lost road time. Apparently the universe wanted us to stop driving just after midnite, because that's when we blew a tire. Yup, no joke. We pulled in to a hotel and poor Dave had to stay up until about 2am for the tow-truck driver who came and fixed it for us. And then bright and early the next morning, we were on the road again - we needed to get to Texas by that afternoon!

So we got to Texas... And I loved it there!

We performed first at a little theatre in Waco where the crew were so great and so cool and we loved them...

Then we moved on to the University of Texas in Tyler, TX and performed in a huge theatre that made us feel like rockstars...


We stayed in some nice hotels...

And even went out for dinner and mini-golf one night...


And then it was time to move on to Colorado, which is where I am now. We loaded our set in to the theatre yesterday and in about 15 minutes I will head out the door so we can go do our two shows here and then load our stuff out again. We get to stay here tonight and then it's on to Montana tomorrow. It's ridiculously gorgeous where I am here in Colorado - in the mountains just outside of Denver. I will take some more pics and hopefully write another blog entry sooner rather than later.

Anyhow, time to run out the door and go be an actor again!

For the record - I really love my life right now!










This is Sydney Mathis, CSI: Live, signing off... for now.

Suddennly On Tour Again!

Well, here I am at the Days Inn in Columbia, South Carolina. I know, right? You must be thinking 'whaaaaa ?!?' Yeah, me too sorta.

It all started a week ago yesterday - (Canadian) Thanksgiving Sunday. I got a call from my boss at the company that sent me to St Louis this summer. He was in need of an actor to replace another who was on tour and needed to return home for family reasons. It wasn't hard to say yes. I had just been thinking, not two days earlier, that I wished someone would call me and just say 'come be a performer again.' Well, be careful what you wish for...

After saying yes on the spot on Sunday morning, I found myself flying on Tuesday night to meet up with the tour who were currently performing at the South Carolina State Fair in Columbia, South Carolina.

It's been a crazy-intense week... Learning a whole new show, meeting new people, and then early this morning I said goodbye for now to my new dear friend Jen - whom I am replacing. She is off to fly home to Toronto and in less than half an hour I will be hitting the road with the boys - Dave and Bryan, my new tourmates. We have about two and a half days to get to Waco, Texas...

It's all been such a blur and I need to get out the door soon, so I'll just leave this posting at that for now... Will hopefully find the stamina to write more at the end of the day today... From another random hotel room somewhere in America...

'til then...