My first singing lesson was a lot of fun. I was terrified.

It was peculiar. I don't normally get crippling stage fright -- not for speaking, anyhow. But Andre said, "All right, what are you going to sing for me?" and the bottom dropped out of my guts.

Sing? I could sing? What had I been going to sing? I dithered around the room a bit, and ended up singing Black Coffee staring fixedly at the wall.

"There," he said, "that was fine. I've heard much, much worse!"

Then he told me all about his theory, which is that every person is gifted with a unique and beautiful sound that only they can produce. "It's your job to find that sound. And it may not be a 'pretty' sound. Louis Armstrong, probably one of the most influential singers in the last hundred years. His voice is utterly unique. Billie Holiday. Janis Joplin is a bit much for me, but still. Unique sound."

This, of course, was the prequel to us making awful music together. No, not music. Exercises. Hard and soft, chest and head.

I have been practising, every day, in the car. And angsting about headshots. In order to take acting classes, it seems, I need a headshot, and a resume. I have no idea how to judge. "It should look like you." But also like "your type." What's my type? Crazy aging Bohemian, I think.

A couple of weeks ago I had coffee with a colleague of mine I'll call Mr. Gesundheit. (His actual name is a sort of Ukrainian sneeze.) He's an artist by nature, and a manager by profession, and he was telling me about the singing lessons he took.

"Singing lessons?" I said. "Oh, do tell." He'd done it for a few months, and then, he said, he started feeling out of his depth and gave it up. But he gave me the number of the guy he'd been working with.

I'd heard of him, as a matter of fact; he's an opera singer, and has made quite a few appearances roundabout in cantatas and oratorios, that sort of thing. (This is a very big classical music town.) And from what Mr. Gesundheit told me about him, I was absolutely stoked, particularly the bits about how he works with a lot of people in musical theatre, and does audition preparation.

I zipped off home, and called the number. Out of service. I Googled the man, and found his name attached to that of a rather nifty music studio in the artists' coop in which I occasionally undress for life drawing. Went to the website, got an email address, and emailed.... and it came back later that evening as a dead address.

Well, I knew this teacher was still around. I looked up his last name in the phone book, and called all the likelies, and talked to four cranky people who weren't him.

Rats. Emailed Mr. Gesundheit, who very kindly dredged up another number for me. Eureka! Bingo! Score! His voicemail, at any rate.

We played phone tag a little (the teacher called me to say he was going on vacation, and he'd call me back) and I waited. And waited and waited, jittering. Tonight, I thought, "he's back from vacation, according to his message -- and next week, he leaves on another vacation. Get on it, Katharine."

It's the Pisces. I hate to be a pain. However, I must get over that. I will get nowhere without putting myself out there -- the part that is so foreign to me.

Anyway, to make a long story short(er), I called, and he called back. He has, as one might expect, a most delightful phone voice that ripples down the line like a rich fudge sauce, all full and round and open. We talked about theatre, and acting, and how valuable voice training can be for actors. He asked me if I knew anything about music (no), playing an instrument (no), reading music (no) or singing (in the shower, the car and the living room), and he laughed.

I meet with him on Monday.

"Think of something to sing," he said, "just so I can hear you." Oh dear! This will be fun. He will wince. I think I have a niceish voice, and reasonable pitch, but still. Eek. Whatever will I sing? I expect some old jazz song, a little Julie London or something, will be best, since it's safely in my range and I won't forget it.

I also emailed a photographer, whose work I like a lot, to ask whether she does headshots (she specialises in portraits). I was then stunned to find, from a theatre website, that I can expect to pay up to a thousand dollars altogether for shooting, "artistic" and printing fees for headshots. Well, if it's to be done, it must be done. I've learned that most training courses request headshot and resume with application, so I'll need them sooner rather than later.

I am so excited! Well, all right. I alternate between excitement, terror, and thinking I've gone completely daft.

When I was a girl, I stood one day in the art shop of the NAC, reading something, and it hit me. A voice said in my ear, quietly and rationally, "Be an actor."

I'd been debating what to take in university -- English? History? Anthropology? -- and unable to decide. Now I knew. I'd done a fair bit of theatre and improv in school, but it hadn't actually occurred to me that this -- more fun than anything else -- could be a career choice. Apparently it could.

I went off and studied Theatre Arts in a town six hundred kilometres or so away from where my parents lived. (This had nothing to do with acting, and more to do with the fact that I couldn't be in the same room as my mother without fighting with her until I was at least twenty-six or -seven.)

Two years passed. I loved being on stage, and all the words and workup to being on stage. Sadly, I was cast much less, and in smaller roles, than the prettier, less chubby girls. And when I lost my student loan funding (due to events wholly beyond my control) I panicked and chickened out. I wasn't pretty enough to be an actor, nor was I stable enough to deal with constant rejection. Was I crazy? Did I want to starve and commit suicide under a bridge? No!

I wandered off and started working for local government instead. I got cats. I lived with a guy for a long while -- long after it stopped working out, in fact. I drifted to better jobs within said local government, as things opened up before me -- not great things, but all right. I got married. I bought a house. I kept on performing, in amateur theatre, getting better roles, and still loving it.

Eighteen years passed, mostly in a sort of daze. Every now and then I would wake up, wonder what the hell I was still doing here, marking time instead of doing something meaningful, and get seriously depressed. But the thing with serious depression is, it's so much fun all on its own that you don't really have time to consider the issues behind it. Then by the time you're over it, you're so worn out that a bit of boring normality is great, really.

This time, I saw the depression coming, looked it in the eye, and said, "Oh no, not again," and surprisingly, meant it.

All right then, I said to myself, if we're not going to angst about wailing and bleeding out misery, then something must be done. But what?

A change! I shrieked back. Change everything! Get divorced, move to Wales, write poetry and work in a bar! Finish one of your novels! But whatever it is, get out!

Well, that did strike me as a bit extreme. I considered. Yes, writing... and boy, that cottage in Wales seemed attractive... I don't know about divorce -- a new lover would be exciting, yes, but in the long term, is there really someone all-round better out there?... but what it is, what I need, is creativity. Ahhht, dahling.

I rolled my eyes at myself, talked sternly about benefits and mortgages, and considered further. No, seriously, I said, what about freelance writing? Mortgage, bah. I don't need a house, I said.

You'd feel differently about that if you hadn't got one, I replied.

Lookit, I said, about the writing. I feel dead already. Am I supposed to carry on like this until I actually AM?

But the thing I love best about writing, isn't the writing -- it's reading it, performing it out loud. I write, constantly, and even think in print, but I don't think of myself as a writer. I perform. All the time, every day. I get dressed up in character to go to work, and another character to go out dancing. I transmute myself at intervals. And when I'm on stage, I'm alive.

You aren't any prettier, I said. You're also twenty-ish years older.

Ah. But I've got a more realistic viewpoint now, I said. I don't expect to be a star. Performances need good, solid people who aren't stars, too. And no matter HOW bad auditioning and rejection is, is it any better than waking up every single morning and hating oneself for taking the easy way out and into a life of nothing?

You'll feel differently about that when you don't have gym access. Or nice food. Or money when you want it for books.

Maybe.

I still have the civil service job; I am the queen of safety nets. But we'll see what we can do.