9:30 pm - Fri 7.16.2010
Who Will I Be When I Wake Up?

(Doing something I rarely do - Playing the "Blues" channel on Time Warner Cable. It's making me realize, as a perpetually bored individual, that I have "resources" for entertainment and edification I make very little use of. But anyway...)

Wish more were going on, acting-wise, but I've been back in LA for a month now, and have had one audition (A $500 voice-over for a director's reel).

So while "The Business" is revving up - I know, because some of my acting friends have been going out - I'm still waiting for "The Business" to rev up for me.

The voice-over audition on Wednesday was interesting, though...

Unlike commercial and theatrical auditions, there aren't physical "casting agencies" for voice-overs; there are a couple of casting websites, but you're responsible for getting your audition recorded (Then you - or your agent/manager - send the audio file to the decision makers, where you hopefully end up booking the gig).

My voice-over person lives in Pasadena and has a studio; there's also a place called VoiceTrax in Studio City (Where I recorded on Wednesday); a lot of voice-over people have their own recording studios, which is clearly something I'll want to think about "down the road" (Otherwise, you have to pay someone for "studio time").

But like I said, it was interesting, recording the voice-over audition - Not because of the material (Which was oddly cryptic dialogue we were basically instructed to do in a monotone), but because of the collaborative feeling I had with the engineer, and the sense that, since it was my time and I was paying for it, I didn't need to feel rushed, or shy about asking for another take if I wanted one...unlike how I often feel in commercial and theatrical auditions.

Anyway, I left feeling like I'll probably have a fair amount of success with voice-overs; I have a good voice, I'm a good actor, and the idea of not being limited by my physical appearance is really appealing.

And considering how few times I've been in a recording booth, I felt surprisingly comfortable on Wednesday.

In short, I wouldn't want voice-overs to dominate my acting career in the coming years...but if they did, and I could make a decent living?

I could imagine worse fates.

The other relatively "newsworthy" thing is that I had a "sleep study" Wednesday night.

I found the need for another sleep study frustrating - it feels like a waste of time and effort, just to find out what we all already know (I continue to have sleep apnea) -
but for insurance purposes, the study can't be more than a year old, and my last one was in 2008.

It really sucked - Seems ironic that when you can't sleep, you end up having to go somewhere where you're guaranteed to sleep even worse than normal - but hopefully, this will be the precursor to getting the treatment I need (A "septoplasty", to fix my nose, and a couple rounds of "somnoplasty" - which is like laser surgery, but using sound waves - to whittle down my over-sized uvula).

This could be pretty profound, life-changing stuff, so it's surprising that my emotional reaction to all this has been more anxiety and upset than anything else.

As I told Cary earlier, there are real reasons for said "anxiety and upset" - fear insurance won't cover it, fear of pain/discomfort, fear of being "out of commission" (In terms of auditions), etc. - but I can't help but wonder if one reason I'm feeling "angsty" about the whole thing is the "uncertainty factor" (AKA "fear of change". Or, conversely, the fear that I won't change nearly as much as I imagine).

I've felt tired and crappy and struggled with depression for so long, that I don't know exactly who I'd be if that wasn't the case.

But it's definitely worth finding out...

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