3:10 PM - 04.24.20
-

Well, after feeling like I was dealing with our current situation pretty well - In large part, because I was doing "Safer At Home" before "Safer At Home" was cool - the last couple days have been...problematic.

So what's going on?

(I've just started reading You Are Not So Smart, a book about how we're not nearly as logical and reasonable as we think we are - and how, to a great extent, we don't really know why we do what we do so we make it up after the fact - so take whatever I'm about to say with a grain of salt.)

In my last entry, I introduced a note of "all is not well in Paradise" ("I like not having to drive, and it's been a nice surprise having some 'acting shit' to do...but I'm also binging on junk food and clubbing myself upside the head from time-to-time, so WTF?").

So now I'm wondering if I didn't "turn up the volume" on something that had just been "background noise". You know, how if you haven't noticed something before, then you do, after that, it's hard-bordering-on-impossible to not notice it?

Anyway...

Another thing is that one element of my physical circumstances has changed in the past week or so - It's gotten appreciably warmer out - Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that when it gets warm out, it quickly gets downright steamy in my apartment (I'm on the third floor of a three-story building in a not-well-ventilated space).

So for the past number of days, it's been..less physically pleasant in my apartment than before. Leaving me with two choices (1. Deal with it. 2. Fire up the air-conditioning, and watch "Safer At Home" start costing me an arm-and-a-leg in electric bills)

(I guess a #3 could be "Get a fan", which I've dismissed because of the aforementioned "not-well-ventilated space". But we might be dealing with a "Better-Than-Nothing" scenarios here.)

But, to my thinking, the main culprit here is the thing I was most happy about when I last wrote - The fact that there had been a few auditions, and that I'd "gotten over myself" and successfully managed a self-tape on my own.

(Well, almost on my own - There was an element of editing I was unsure about, so I gave it to Jane, who also had trouble with it, so she passed it on to David, our documentary editor. After all that, I discovered that the problematic editing didn't actually need to happen at all - I could have just submitted the two separate pieces - but anyway...)

Early on during this situation, I mentioned my embarrassment at it being a "relief" to not have to worry about acting - I didn't have to worry and anxiously check my phone every 30 seconds, waiting for something to happen (That probably wouldn't), because nothing was happening. For anyone - but with just a couple auditions, suddenly "getting an audition" is "something that probably isn't going to happen...but could".

Similarly, the whole "getting over myself" and making the self-tape happen on my own made me quite happy (Even as I felt pretty strongly that nothing was going to come of it).

But now that I know I can do a self-tape (And have spent $300-plus on various stands and geegaws to make it happen), I kind of want the Universe to support me by throwing self-taping auditions my way.

(And as I was writing this, just got a notice for a VO thing - Not quite the audition I had in mind, since I already had the means to do a VO audition before all the shit went down, but still...)

But, fact of the matter is, nothing is being produced (The self-tape audition I did was a "general audition" for the CD for NCIS, and I actually did an episode of that show years ago).

So best for my mental health to see the two theatrical auditions I had as being flukes and go back to that "relaxing", "Nothing's going on for anyone" mentality I had before.

But really, all this angsty-ness notwithstanding, I'm still doing pretty well. It just feels, for the past couple days, like I've done an unhappy, unhealthy return to the thinking that was making my pre-pandemic days fairly stressful.

It's time to get back to appreciating having to do so little, and having so little expected of me.

Till next time...

previous - next