9:24 AM - Mon 11.06.17
Is This The Best Use Of My Time?

Last night was the debut of Season 8 Shameless.

As someone on the show who's also a fan, I enjoyed the episode, and it got a good review on The AV Club (My go-to website for that sort of thing).

But in terms of my own bit?

In short, there wasn't much there (They cut a scene), and IMO, what was there wasn't very good.

Afterwards, I just felt depressed and deflated, wondering why I even bother asking people to watch me on the show when, most of the time, I do next-to-nothing.

For the record, I've often felt that tension - I feel obligated to "push" my being on the show, all the while thinking there's really not much there to push - but it's particularly tough when I tell people to watch, then what I do gets cut down (Or sometimes cut out altogether) and just doesn't, in my estimation, add anything to the show.

Hoping I'll feel better about my next episode (My next episode is not the next episode, but the one following).

Anyway...

I have a callback today (For that commercial where I was the "youngest old man" auditioning), and it's kinda weird - Not that I got the callback, but that it's not till nearly 8:00 this evening (Hoping against hope that the drive to Santa Monica during evening rush hour won't be as bad as I basically know it's going to be).

In this instance - I have no lines, I'm not interacting with anyone else, and there's just not much to it - I don't know why they can't "cast off tape" (i.e. Decide who they want based on the initial audition), skip dragging people in for another round, and save everyone time, money, and aggravation, like they seem to be doing more and more on the theatrical side.

But that said, Since booking Bosch, this is about the best acting news I've had - Not this callback in particular, but the streak I'm on, where I've gotten callbacks from my last three commercial auditions.

Writing that last bit makes me think about something I read in Backstage years ago - A column, I think from an agent, saying that if you're being submitted appropriately as an actor, and you're doing your job well, you should get callbacks at least 50% of the time (While I haven't officially "crunched the numbers", pretty sure I've never attained that percentage on anything like a regular basis).

So if there's a "zone", I currently seem to be in it.

Now here's hoping today is the start of being in the "booking commercials" zone...

Haven't done much of anything today - read comics, screwed around on the Internet, napped, and of course, have done this - and I feel vaguely guilty about the whole thing.

And I don't think it would have been necessary for me to do a bunch of "chores" to not feel guilty about how I've spent my day (Though...maybe).

The "quality" of how I spend my spare time troubles me - I take stabs at filling my time well (And I did try to go to a "Dance Fusion" class at Noon, since I'm not going to be able to go to Zumba tonight...but it turned out I had an old schedule), but what I mostly do when I have "nothing to do" is...nothing.

Anyway...

I don't know how much time I have to give myself to get to the callback today (If it were at the casting place on LaBrea, I could just take a Lyft there and walk home...but it's not), so I'm going to - hopefully - air on the side of caution and give myself what seems like "all the time in the world" (Because if I can't get there right on time, getting there really early is tons better than getting there really late).

Then after I've booked the job - See what I did there? - I'll probably come home and watch more of the new season of Stranger Things, because even though I "haven't really done anything today" (This is pretty much it), I suspect I'm going to be tired, and feeling like I "deserve" a reward for my efforts this evening.

And I should probably start getting myself together...

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