This is how I decided to celebrate my birthday this year:

It was a very good day. But it didn’t start out that way.

We had done something similar two years prior. I would have done it again last year but I was in the middle of producing a full-scale musical and couldn’t spare the time or energy. But having done it once before, I didn’t freak out as much during the preparation for this one. At least not until the day of. I had set up a Facebook event and more than 50 people confirmed that they would participate. Score! There was a palpable buzz. This was going to be amazing. I went to the park and scouted out the location and jotted down a provisional route. Tons of potential. I tried to set up a brain storming session to crowdsource some creativity, but couldn’t get people to volunteer. That’s OK, I’ll do it myself!

Then the day of the event arrived. Maybe 50 people had agreed to participate, but it felt like 100 people messaged me before I left the house saying they wouldn’t make it. Bad cold. Bad weather. Bad hangover. Other random bad excuses. So I left the house in a very foul mood. How can you execute a lipdub if nobody comes?! And when I got to the park, there were exactly three people there. But I was a bit early. So I waited. And four more people arrived. And so did a whole new bunch of cancellation messages. So I walked through the provisional route. There was no way in hell it would work. The maze was too damn big! And there were too many tourists to navigate around! And we didn’t even have a radio to play the song with! Back to the drawing board. But a few more people had showed up by now. We were maybe 15 people after the first half hour. Not great, but definitely enough to do something with.

So I banged my head against a wall for an hour, trying different combinations/routes/choreographies. It wasn’t coming together. And I was getting stressed. So we stopped for lunch. And it started to rain.

But then, amongst the raindrops and sandwiches and spreadsheets and scrawled-out maps, inspiration latched on and a plan started to take form in my mind. And more people started arriving! I started delegating lines to people and it all began to take shape. I was infused with optimism and we headed back to the maze to try this again. And it stopped raining.

We spent the next hour slowly walking through the new route and filling in the gaps with the gorgeous creativity and enthusiasm of my very dear friends. They are truly amazing. And at the end of that hour we were ready to try recording a rehearsal. And a radio showed up! And the sun came out! And the route started flowing and people stepped up and shined like the stars they are. We recorded one more rehearsal before we went for the good one. And it was good. But we wanted a great one. So we recorded another. And it was great.

I think I managed to hide my frustration and stress enough to achieve my one and only goal of the day: for my friends to have a good time.

So thank you to everyone who showed up and sang, danced, cartwheeled, jumped, rocked, flew, grinded, tripped, bathed, posed, gurned, and laughed with me on my birthday. Until next year! Unless I’m working on another musical 🙂