Hanging up my Boots and Heading to the Sunshine

Well, it has been quite a long time since I've posted on this blog!

I've been busy.  Over the last couple of years I finished working on one touring show, started a romantic relationship and started working on another touring show.  I've been go, go, going and have to admit that I've let myself go in more way than one.

At one point in 2015 I weighed 40 pounds more than my lowest adult weight of 220 that I had hit just the year prior.  I contribute this to a lot of things, but mostly I link it to stress of the new job and the honeymoon period of a new relationship.  Like so many people I know, when they get together with someone we come to the realization that so many of our social interactions revolve around food or alcohol.  Couple that with the fact that our schedules were off (while he toured with me, he worked primarily at night while I worked a lot of daytime hours) and so when we saw each other, it would be going out for breakfasts, or after the show at night for late night food (usually fried) and beer (he LOVES his craft breweries!).  I've since lost a lot of that weight and am now sitting at around 235 on the scale.  Certainly not where I want to be since I liked how I felt and looked at 220, but I have plans to take care of that, and that's what I'm getting to next...

While I appreciated working on the new tour, I always kind of knew in the back of my head that I was burned out.  After coming off of the last year of Million Dollar Quartet where we were playing as many as five cities in one week and with very to little no time off in between to rest and recuperate, I jumped straight into the world of Kinky Boots.  After about a year I hit my highest weight in 4 years.  I started losing some of the weight and that was great for a while, but it wasn't enough.  Finally in November I decided that this show had helped me to financially afford to take a bit of breather and so that was what I was going to do.

So, a couple of weeks ago I worked my last day with Kinky Boots.  I'm now in the land of unemployed and I'm now in the position to have control over my own fate in a way.  First things first - I need a place to live!

When I started touring, I decided that it would be silly for me to maintain an apartment in New York and worry about subletting it all the time, so I put my belongings into storage and I have been living out of two suitcases and a plastic trunk for the past five years.  That was really wearing on me this last year.  We had a number of weeks off this past fall when the tour didn't have an engagement and I had no choice but to either visit with friends and family or to take a vacation.  Sure, that doesn't sound so bad in theory, but think about how you feel when you are tired.  Where do you want to be?  If you said in your own bed, you're correct.  Unfortunately I can barely even picture my own bed anymore!  When I decided I needed to get an apartment again, I had to think where I want to go.  After our rehearsals for Kinky Boots, I realized that New York was not the place for me anymore for a multitude of reasons.  My friends had pretty much scattered across the country and I wanted to pick a place I knew people already.  My boyfriend lives in Columbus, OH but we discussed it and he doesn't want to stay there for very much longer but isn't in a place to move for another 6 months, so that was crossed off the list.  I visited my good friend Beth and her wife Abby in Orlando, and really kind of enjoyed it.  There is a lot to do (even outside the Disney and Universal realms), beaches are just an hour drive, there is a good airport, etc, etc.  So I decided Orlando is the place for me!  I mean, if I hate it, I can always move.  I'm not decided on living there for the rest of my life, but I am very much looking forward to settling down for a bit!

I have lots of things that I have planned during my time of "funemployment" (sorry you are probably going to get sick of me using that word) and I will continue to share them here.  I hope that you will join me on my adventure of moving, running, knitting and losing weight.

Not necessarily in that order.

Stay tuned!!