5:45 PM - 02.14.22
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I feel...uneasy.

Tues 2/15/11 (12:45 pm)

(Looks like I felt so "uneasy" yesterday I couldn't even get an entry out. But anyway...)

(And just about as I was about to start this, Jane B. requested a Facetime, which was delightful as usual. So it's now a few minutes before 2:00 as I start in earnest...).

At the moment, I'm not feeling as "uneasy" as I sometimes have over the past couple days. Not sure why.

(I'm never sure why I feel "uneasy", really - When I feel bad, am I feeling bad appropriately because bad things are happening, are bad mental habits leading me astray, or is it an instance of chemical interactions gone awry? Or a bit of each? Who the fuck knows? Not this guy, that's for sure.)

The predominant concern these days is my cat Hamlet (Who is situated at my bedside as I write).

Within a year's time, maybe less, my formerly fat cat has lost, like, half his body-weight. Which I guess actually puts him at an "appropriate" weight for a cat. But my Vet has informed me that, unfortunately, he's essentially lost "good weight" (i.e. lean muscle mass and the like) and retained pockets of fat.

He's had pancreatitis for awhile (I am hoping he will not when I take him to the Vet on Friday) but it's unclear to the Vet if he has underlying intestinal troubles beyond that.

His pooping - never his strong suit in all the time I've had him (His poops have been more "cow pie" than "cat turd") - have gone from "pudding" to "soup" in consistency. Which, along with his weight loss, means he is having a "malabsorption of food" issue (He started rejecting the Iams dry food I've fed him for years, so I moved to the wet stuff, and he recently even started getting a little picky about that. So now he's on, mostly, a special diet. Which he's currently not eating as much of as he should because, as the Vet basically said, it kinda tastes like shit).

So I'm nervous about Friday, because I'm afraid the Vet is going to suggest further tests (Including scans that can't be performed at the office), and if those I-imagine-not-cheap "further tests" mean further, I-imagine-not-cheap treatments...that's probably not gonna happen.

Between this (relatively new) Vet and the previous place, I'd say I've spent between $2500-3000 chasing this issue.

And while I wish I were made of money, I'm really not, particularly in an era where I'm not earning any regular income (I'm pretty sure what I've spent on Hamlet at this point is more than I've ever laid out to deal with any previous pet's health issues).

I always feel massive guilt at a time like this - for bad things I might have done to cause the problem, for inattention that might have exacerbated the problem, and for being unwilling to throw a fortune at the problem - but things are what they are (Thousands of dollars spent on a pet cat are thousands of dollars not spent on the care-and-feeding of Yours Truly).

So I'm hoping for good news on Friday ("Well Mr Hoffmaster, Hamlet seems to be on the mend. Keep him on the expensive, special, shitty-tasting food, and he'll be good for another ten years").

And if I don't get that good news?

Since I don't perceive him as being miserable at present - His coat is shiny, he isn't continuing to lose weight (At least at present), and he still finds certain food quite tempting (I bought a rotisserie chicken recently, and he practically snatched it out of my hands. Then he knocked over the garbage to get at the bones) - I will probably just take him home and enjoy his company for as long as he seems to be enjoying mine.

(In the latter part of writing all that, the computer went dark, and I was afraid I'd lost everything I'd written, which I always find rage-producing...but happily, a simple restart got everything going again. Anyway...)

The other thing much on my mind these days is Acting.

Surprised?

Doesn't feel like the year's gotten off to a quick start, Acting-wise (I've had years where I'd already booked a job or two by now. And of course, for most of the past decade, there was Shameless).

Had four auditions last week (Commercial, Voiceover, and Theatrical), but I don't know if any of them are still "in play".

(As I told Jane earlier today, when I was first here in LA, they didn't give you all the information at the initial audition - When the callbacks were happening, when the fitting would happen, the "shoot window", etc - and I'd bitch about that to anyone who would listen. But now they do, and the only time I actually check is when there might be a conflict with something else or I want to get a haircut or something.)

The audition I was most excited about was the theatrical one, for a big Network drama, a self-tape Jane helped me with on Thursday (It was a co-star, but a good one).

FTR, the audition was due Monday morning (More on this in a moment...).

They'd asked for two takes, so I did two takes. And I felt good about what I'd done - It was a role I think I'm well-suited for, and the kind of role I could imagine being typecast as (That's something, as a community theater actor, that I would never have wanted. But now, as a professional actor? While I'd still like to imagine being a chameleonic, Daniel-Day Lewis type, there would definitely be worse fates than being the first guy Casting thinks of when they're looking for someone to play a doctor or lawyer or college professor or what-have-you).

When I finished the audition, I edited it, then tried to put it up on the requested website. But it was a website I hadn't used in forever and I had some password difficulties, so I ended up sending it to the assistant at the agency (He'd told me to, so I didn't just foist it upon him) for him to submit for me.

I thought that was that, but on Monday, I get a text from my new Agent, saying that Casting was asking for my audition.

As you might imagine, I found that...concerning.

I told him that I'd done it Thursday afternoon, and had sent it to the assistant to submit for me.

He then asked me to retrieve my deleted files, "just in case" (I didn't even know you could do that with pictures and videos, so I learned something).

But then, moments later, he told me they'd figured out the problem.

While I was glad they figured out what had gone wrong, I wasn't thrilled that I'd gone to the trouble of getting the audition done in a timely fashion - because it's best if you're among the first auditions seen instead of the last - only to have it being turned in at the last instant anyway.

But as soon as I had taken a breath that the situation was resolved, I realized there was a critical bit of characterization that I'd left out of either take of the audition.

Sometimes that second-guessing is just me being...well, me. But in this instance, it really was a big, potentially audition-killing oversight.

So I've been stinging a bit over that for the past 30 hours or so.

But there's nothing to do about it but shed a single, manly tear, and go on with my life.

...and speaking of "going on with my life', I'm meeting my commercial agent for dinner tonight, so I need to "clean up my act" and make myself semi-presentable.

Till next time...

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