I started writing my own life while working full-time in the financial district in San Francisco in 2009. It wasn't because I considered my life interesting enough to share. On the contrary, my life was too dull to endure because of the emptiness inside myself. I desperately struggled for a meaning, any meaning, even an obsession, in my life. I wanted to get to know me.
In 2009, I took my first solo performance class with David Ford at The Marsh San Francisco. When David asked me to describe with sensory details about my experience, I was flooded with strong emotions in front of the class. At that moment, I knew that something needed to come out of my chest, but I couldn't put my finger on it with my empty heart, stagnant mind, and numb senses. I began to take more classes and workshops in performing, storytelling, writing, acting, singing, dancing, improv, poetry, and meditating, just to open myself up, one layer at a time, like an onion. Tears accompanied me, as if I were peeling a real onion. Yet, this painfully slow process is rewarding.
I've spent my past five years trying to reconnect with that original life force in me. In 2015, I want to think big and start small; I want to stop bouncing awkwardly between arrogance and low self-esteem; I want to be a better person, loving more without disrespecting my own struggling ego. Besides learning to live my life one day at a time, I am determined to complete my one-person show, "Don't You Have Dignity, Mama?" (title until I change it). And year 2015 will be the year when I will be able to say, "Yes, I did it!"--the first milestone in my life.
More about the writer at: http://www.xiaojuanshu.net/
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