Broke and Modeling? Yeah, okay.

There's a little saying which I use often and which describes, to a T, the mentality of Los Angeles; FAKE IT 'TIL YOU MAKE IT.

As you can see in the attached images from my photoshoot this morning, combined with the fact that I have had zucchini as a meal four times within the last forty-eight hours, this is precisely the strategy I am utilizing for my preemptive strike on the industry. They'll never know what hit 'em.

So here I find myself, past midnight, stretched out along my bed with a strong need for sleep but a strong will for doing. A very wealthy investment banker and financial planner whom I work for on occasion out here, cleaning or babysitting or what-have-you, told me something wise about my constant need to be active. He told me, "I am a human being, not a human doing. Remember that." I thought that was excellent advice. Yet even when I try sitting still for a few seconds, my mind races and ponders and debates and theorizes, until I find myself, once again, exhausted at 3am. Seeing as I am going to yoga on the Malibu pier at 7:30am, I will offer up a truce of 1:30am tonight.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to my phone ringing at 6:58am. Very much under the impression that this was a wrong number, I let the call go to voicemail and then dialed my mailbox. It was a British woman from Lifetime Fitness whom I had left a message with on the previous day regarding open positions for teaching yoga.

Dear Lifetime Fitness, I would like to humbly offer a public service announcement to you: you do not return business calls at 6:58am. Let's get real. I do not care if you get up and run five miles at 4am and make your Magic Bullet smoothie and feel real dapper by the time the sun comes creeping out of the mountains. I will find you and add weight-gain powder to your breakfast if this happens again.

Okay, so this may not be a very "yoga" attitude.. let's just say I'm a big believer in karma?

I called the woman back today, and it ends up that the clubs in my area have plenty of yoga teachers for the time being. I am finding that there are more than enough qualified (albeit largely unemployed) yoga teachers in the city of Los Angeles. I miss teaching greatly, and because I cannot afford classes right now, I am feeling slightly lost without a steady practice to ground myself in. After being frustrated with the situation for the past week, I printed out a pass for "one week of yoga for $1" at Yogaworks. I will start using my pass on Sunday.

For the next week, I will be practicing yoga daily for 2-3 hours, as a sort of teacher training retreat for myself. During my teacher training in 2008, as much as the three-day weekend trainings left me feeling exhausted, broken, and sore, they also left me so full of electric energy, hopefulness, and strength that I couldn't wait for the next one. We learn the most by being exposed to discomfort - physically, mentally, and spiritually - and having to sit with those emotions. As such, I am going back to my mat to face myself, and to rejuvenate my entire being. I will also be eating strictly fruits and vegetables for the week (a detox every once in a while lets the digestive system take a breather and replenish itself to work better for you). Here goes nothing.

So yes, on the one side, I will continue to "fake it". I will scour Craigslist for talented photographers who need free models, and I will get up at 5:30am to get ready for the unpayed photoshoot in Beverly Hills, so that I can continue adding photos to my portfolio. I will take the time to workout and to primp for interviews for smokehouses, so that I can pay rent. I will wear the cute clothes and spend a few hours a week trying to get a little sun, so that I can be a marketable actress in this big, surprisingly lonely city, where the beautiful bodies and the golden beaches seem to underline the deafening solitude.

But on the other side, I will not settle for faking. I will come as I am, devoid of makeup and glossy headshots and peachy-keen-jellybean thumbs ups, afraid and uncertain and shaky. I will come to my mat, to face and to find myself as a human being, to center my compass once again.

And with that, it is 1:30am. To quote Robert Bolt's highly inspiring A Man for All Seasons, "Dear Lord, give us rest tonight, or if we must be wakeful, cheerful."

Adieu.