Allison Mack’s Official Site

I had someone ask me on my forum how my life is right now, how my new year is going. Well, to be honest, it feels a bit crazy. I really feel like I’m at a major crossroads in my life, and I’m just totally starting to recognize how much I really rely on familiarity and predictability. With the Writers’ Strike forging ahead and our last episode coming up the end of January, I’m actually able to see the end of the rope as far as “Smallville” is concerned. If the writers don’t return until after February, the season will end at 15 episodes… And then what?

Life without “Smallville” seems so very strange to me. For the last 7 years, I’ve had a job to go to; I’ve had something on the external world, one thing, that was totally consistent and predictable. Now, I won’t– it’s all up to me to be consistent for myself, and that feels so funny. I could look at it 1 of 2 ways. The first would be that I would totally panic and scare the crap out of myself. The second would be that I embrace the excitement of new possibilities, recognize the amazing value in change and growth, and look at this as a way for me to start to truly see that I am really the only thing I can ever depend on. I think I go in shifts with deciding which way I’ll choose to feel about this time. In the morning, slight panic, and then I amp that up throughout the day until about 3 when I’m in a totally fear-driven state… Then I say something… I vocalize my concern and my fear… And I hear myself talking… And I think, “You goof, this sounds like one of the most exciting things you’ve ever come up against. You’re going to have the opportunity to focus all your time and energy on developing things that you are so truly passionate about. Stop complaining, start working on the amazing projects you have in front of you, and choose joy in your life.” Then I feel good for the rest of the night. I go to bed, wake up, and start over again!

We are so silly, us humans. One of my mentors says we are meaning making machines. Everything we come into contact with, we make a meaning about, and then rather than living in the present and enjoying each moment, we’re either stewing or reveling in the meaning of whatever it is we just experienced. The really silly thing is the only thing we know to be true and real is every moment we’re living. I can’t know what happened in the past because it’s gone, and all I have is a story to tell about it, and thinking about the future is totally based in hypothesis. So that’s my New Year’s resolution: to focus on being here now because everything else is just a guess.

Thanks again for all your amazing support in my projects and adventures. I’m so inspired every time I’m reminded that there are people out there that recognize the importance and the value in creation, and I’m so excited to see what Kristin, you all, and I can build as a team! This is truly a beautiful world!

Keep sending me your backflips and public acrobatics! They’re stunning!

Ciao,
Allison

Hello, team! So a few blogs ago, I posted something about my purpose– remember? Many of you responded to this in a wonderfully beautiful and honest way… So that blog entry came out of a project I have been working on for several months now… A short film that was written for me by one of my best friends in the world and directed by another one of my best buddies! Well, 3 weeks ago we shot the film! It was the most amazing experience I have had in a very long time! To be a part of a team of people doing what they love only because they love it was so inspiring and exciting!

It also felt so good to be a part of a project from its inception, to be a part of creating something from start to finish and really feel like I was a part of the whole process. I can’t tell you all how incredibly fulfilling this was. I so encourage all of you to be a part of something like this at some point in your life. Find the thing that you love doing, the thing that you feel the most inspired and excited by… And do it! Just fuckin’ dive in and do it! It’s so satisfying!

That being said, my lovely friend and editor and my director are working on little behind the scenes docs that we’re going to be releasing sporadically for you all to watch and enjoy! We’re wanting to finish this thing so we can send it out to festivals and hopefully get it marketed and distributed!

Also, I’m starting a little schwag part that I would love to invite all of you to participate in! I have a few little items that I’ve made up, with a little help from my crew, that I’m selling to help me finance this project. I need 7500 bucks to finish this baby, and I think that between all of the support I get from you wonderful people who never cease to amaze me with your incredible support and a few different grants and such, I could potentially reach my goal! So check out my doc and click on the donations button I added to my site and let me know if there are any products you are into buying to help me finish this awesome project! Enjoy watching me do something other than Chloe And thank you so much for joining me on this radical journey!

Click the links on the side to find out how you can be apart of this!

Ciao for now,
Allison

God, I love Rumi. I think he is my all-time favourite poet and philosopher.

So… I apologize for my massive hiatus. Honestly, I have been feeling a little lost recently. I dont know if I am totally alone in this feeling, but the past month of my life I have sort of felt like I have been skimming the surface; just sort of floating through things and not really committing to anything. This plays into all the areas of my life.

I don’t like this feeling at all. Last week, at work, I had the most bizarre experience. For the first time in my career I totally zoned out at work. Thank God for Tom Welling, who reminded me very gently that we are there to tell a story and he wasn’t really sure what I was telling that day. His beautiful and loving feedback really helped to snap me back into reality. I suddenly thought “What am I doing? I have the most awesome job in the world. I work with people that I adore, and I get paid ample to do this.”

It’s so easy to get caught up in my head space of what I don’t have and where I’m not, that I forget to recognize the beauty in what I do have and where I am. I have decided to make a list of the things I love so that I can remind myself of the details in my life that I’ve been ignoring recently.

Who knows? Maybe we have some things in common. Ok, here goes. I love:

• ice cream
• laughing
• friends
• movies
• warm wool socks
• getting into a hot shower after being out in the cold rain and feeling my toes defrost
• art
• books
• taking an amazing photograph
• touching down after a long flight in a totally new country
• movie previews
• good acting
• overatures at the ballet
• bows at the end of a performance
• my nephew’s bounce
• when my dog scratches his nose on the ground
• hitting a scene just right
• hearing my best friends hour long messages on my machine
• flowers
• when the sun breaks through on a rainy day
• amazing alliterations in Tom Robbins’ novels
• my boyfriends cooking
• going to an art opening
• walking down the street, with the leaves changing and my arm wrapped around someone
• singing

Ok…wow, I feel better. It would be so cool if you all tried this and commented with your list. I would love to see the things we have in common! Thanks for listening to me vent. I so appreciate all of you! oh and hey!!!!

Oh, I won a Teen Choice again!!!!! So cool, right? Maybe this year I will get a surfboard!

Ciao for now
Allison

I find this quote so incredibly inspiring! I realized that I have only ever really done what feels comfortable in my life. I have never put myself in a position where I’m doing something that I have never done before. I have done this knowingly because the idea of looking like I don’t know what I am doing scares the heck out of me. After realizing this, I feel that limiting myself is ridiculous!

I am just shooting myself in the foot because… how can I ever grow if I never challenge myself. How can I ever know the depths of me if I spend my whole life skimming the surface and doing what is comfortable. So, I have decided to branch out. I will be directing episode 20 of Smallville this year, and I am so intimidated! It’s silly. I know that I have eight months to prep and that I have the most amazing crew of people around me that will do everything in their power to help me make something awesome, but getting past that ego that drives me has been a huge challenge. Ignoring the voice inside my head that is screaming “You have no clue how to do this!” has definitely been a challenge.

As I start to do more and more work on building this skill in myself, the voice is starting to soften and I am actually really enjoying the process. I liked this quote so much because it talks about “abolishing you fears” and “raising your commitment to the point of no return!” There is something so empowering about that phrase! So I am raising my “commitment level to the point of no return”!

I have now announced it to all you lovelies and I can’t go back on my word. It’s that silly pride thing that is actually helpful in this situation I am taking on something so foreign but I have made a strong decision to enjoy the learning process! Who knows, maybe I will become a fabulous director and just have two careers! Woah… let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Thanks for all the support you provide! I love hearing from you every week. You have no idea how much joy I get out of reading your thoughts on this website!

Ciao to all
Allison

ps… Oh yeah! And check out Miss Tabby’s site, allisonmackonline.com. She is doing some really awesome stuff for my birthday! I am collecting funds for a foundation that I am starting and any support is so so so appreciated!

Hello, my fellow thinkers! I want to start this blog by thanking everyone for their beautiful and incredibly personal responses last week. I had the opportunity to read many of the entries, and I was so moved by all of your willingness to share and be honest about what is going on for you. I have to admit that it was really scary being that upfront about my insecurities, and it was so amazing to feel the support from all you readers and then to see the participation that came from that… Truly beautiful.

So, it has been an insane week finishing up on the show. I always seem to work the last day of the season. Last year ended with a kiss with Tom Welling and some Egg McMuffins at 7:30 A.M. This year, I got off an hour earlier, but it was much colder and there was no kissing involved. We seem to be going downhill here. I must complain to the manager.

Ok… So this week, I have picked yet another Gandhi quote. I mean, the man was brilliant! And I have been really thinking about money and how misrepresented it is in today’s society. I think it is so funny that we choose to blame our problems on an inanimate object instead of looking at it and recognizing that it isn’t the money that creates the issue; it is what we as human beings choose to do with this money that creates the struggles, but it is so much easier to relinquish responsibility. I know this to be true because I do it, consistently. I, often times, feel very guilty about the money that I make because I love what I do so much, I have always been very mixed up in my belief that it isn’t really hard work if it is fun; and since I have always loved what I do, I don’t equate it with hard work, therefore denying that I have put any effort into earning my success, and in turn, feel guilty about it. Oy! Yet another thing to work on. Haha! It seems to be a never-ending struggle. I guess that is the point in life– to find struggles, overcome them, and then help your fellow humans do the same. What a wonderful cycle.

I also wanted to bring up finances and money because last year, a great friend of mine introduced me to this wonderful new type of banking called “microfinancing.” For those of you who don’t know much about it, the man that developed it (Muhammad Yunus) won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. It is this really awesome program that he set up in Bangladesh that offers small loans (sometimes as low as 50 bucks) to entrepreneurs in developing nations. This gives them the opportunity to help themselves out of their situation and eventually build enough of a business to employ others in their community. It is such a beautiful way to encourage people out of poverty because it supplies an opportunity where there wouldn’t normally be one, and yet it isn’t a handout. The people can feel like they are doing it on their own, therefore, there is no loss of pride or self-esteem.

It’s amazing for me, how much better I feel about receiving money when I feel as though I have actually earned it. It’s like I was saying before, until I actually acknowledged the effort that I put into my career, I felt very bad about taking the money for it. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be in a developing country that is living off of handouts. I can project that I would have very low self-esteem and confidence as an effect of the lack of effort that I put in to earning that money that someone has given me for simply existing in this poor country. But what microfinance does is provide people with the opportunity to earn the money, thereby building a greater sense of pride and independence, which ultimately results in raised self-esteem. Beautiful.

I am so excited about this program and these ideas because it feels like a sustainable and constructive way to address some of the world’s poverty issues. I want to encourage all of you to check out two websites that are dedicated to this type of banking and do a little more reading about it on your own.

The sites are www.kiva.org and www.grameenfoundation.org.

I hope you have as much fun reading about it and are as inspired by their ideas and missions as I am!

Look forward to your feedback! Yay!

Ciao, friends.

Allison

When searching for a quote, I have started the habit of deciding what to write by what seems to be relevant to what is going on for me that week. It has kind of been a cool way to get my ideas and thoughts out on a page and also bounce the thoughts I have floating in my head off a number of different people from a number of different places and backgrounds.

So far this has been a beautiful experiment, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all the responses everyone is posting on this site. It really is such an amazing way for me to get to know all my fans and also get to know myself in the process. So, that being said, I have had many conversations with different friends this week about violence and what that is. I thought these quotes were in keeping with this because it is a great way of looking at what violent reactions and thoughts can end up doing to the world at large. Now, my opinion of violence has changed drastically in the last little bit. I used to think that it was a solely physical act; that the word only encompassed those acts that caused physical harm or destruction, but as I began to think about it a little more, I really started to recognize how destructive words can be. Sometimes, even more destructive than a punch. It was after this recognition that I really saw how violent I can be in the way I live my life… Not always so much towards other people, but so more so towards myself. I allow my insecurities to dictate the things I do in my life. I am constantly berating myself for not being “enough” of what I think I would be. I suppress the things within me that I think are “bad” and then spend my time and energy punishing myself for even having these flaws in the first place.

I feel like these habits are incredibly destructive and violent towards my own growth and potential. They essentially ruin my ability to enjoy my present life and situations. Now, if this isn’t violent, I don’t know what is.

The really incredible part about this discovery is that I can only treat people the way I treat myself. And I will never have the capacity to be the compassionate and loving person I want to be in the world if I can’t ever be that for myself. It is this strange reality that I am seeing, the truth that everything I do and see in the external world is simply a direct reflection of what is going on within me and my own little head…. And so I struggle to find inner compassion, to tame that violent dictator that consumes my thoughts. Maybe, if I can tame my destructive self, I will be closer to attaining my goal of being a kind, honest, and loving person. I really wonder what would happen on a global scale if more people would stop the abusive behavior they inflict upon themselves and actually began living with compassion for their own flaws, embracing them and accepting them as part of the beauty of what it means to be human.

No more real exciting Smallville news, other than I heard a rumor that the finale script was leaked, and everyone has very strong opinions regarding “the green tear.” Don’t worry guys, it will be cool… I won’t let you down

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas! Bye for this week.