"The reason why birds fly and we can't is because they have perfect faith and to have faith is to have wings."

'Marie, stop playing the obstacles.'

Today I had a breakthrough.  A lightbulb moment if you will.  In my Acting lesson we were given goals to carry out, and then we were given obstacles that would interfere.  For example, mine was - you really want to talk to your crush and be cool, but you've just found that your mum has terminal cancer and has just about a month to live.  So, tricky shit, right?

Anyway, until the obstacles arrived, I was doing fine.  When they surfaced, I suddenly seemed to devote all my attention on them.  'You should let them push you, not let them block you.'  I was told.

It was a lesson that was in Acting, but I figured that it could be used in life too.  It is so easy to cower away from everything because of the obstacles in your way, but there is a way to use them to your advantage too.  Let them push you forward, make you determined to prove them wrong - to achieve in spite of them.  I hope that I can put that into practise in both aspects of my life.

The course is going great, I love it.  It's strange though - at Central, they're so anti-character.  They don't like the word or the word 'emotion'.  We're given a phrase, 'invent nothing, deny nothing.'  It's all about being as real as possible.  As true to yourself as possible.  However, my time at Mountview built up the idea of character.  Where are you right now?  Your bedroom?  Ok, what's that like then?  See it, really picture it.  Ok, now that that's done - how does your bedroom reflect you as a character?  About 90% of the reasons why I love acting is the idea that I get to be somebody else for a change.  That I get to slip into their shoes.  I spend ages before an audition making character maps.  I go even more overboard if I get the part.  Annotating my script, searching for hidden meanings.  What makes them tick?  What was their childhood like?  What was their favourite memory?  What's their deepest darkest secret.  I look through all of it so that it feels like I've lived their lives too and we're now on the same page.

But at Central, I'm being told to disregard most of this.  It's fascinating really.  They want you to focus on you rather than the character.  I honestly think that I want to explore it.  But that terrifies me too at the same time.  I have learnt (surprisingly, most people would find), to suppress most of my emotions and to put them out on display makes me wonder if I'd just keep on going and never be able to stop?  I have an audition tomorrow for Fantine and Eponine.  What if, during I dreamed a dream say, I poured out my heart and my soul.  'Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.'  Would be completely honest.  But with this truthfulness does there now come a price?  Would I be able to pick myself up again?  Or would I just carry on and sink down even further?

Help?