I don’t know what the hell happened to me, but somewhere late last year I began saying “yes” to things I would have never (in a million years) agreed to before.

I said yes to starting my own business, to posing in my underwear for Dr. Sketchy, to teaching exotic dance classes, to performing in my first (and second and third and fourth) burlesque show, to teaching burlesque classes, to being featured on the front page of the newspaper, to having my class taped for television, to writing my first piece of creative nonfiction (on a very personal topic) for a literary magazine. And now, apparently, I just said yes to staging my first burlesque show in Houston starring 5 NY-based performers. Huh? Seriously, I have NEVER done anything even remotely like this.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my year of yes, it’s that committing is the hardest part. Every single time I’ve agreed wholeheartedly to something, no matter how off the wall or seemingly impossible, things started coming together in ways I could have never imagined. Helpful people appear, random emails arrive and fortuitous connections are made, all without any effort on my part. Not to get all crazy metaphysical, but I think the universe rewards us when we stretch ourselves beyond what we thought we were capable of. 

That said, I now have three months to figure out how to put on a show and do it right. This ought to be interesting :)