Monday, February 18, 2013

What happens in a week

Mind work has become my thing as of late, being a person who works sporadically, and not booking the last couple of jobs I felt I would, led me to doing some mind work.  Now when I say that, what I really mean is taking the time to work on keeping your mind in the right frame.  The more that can happen, the less down you might fall when the reality of the bizz doesn't work out.  But naturally, you have to keep at it even when times are good.  Luckily for myself, not getting work helps remind me that I need to keep my mind in the right spot.  Fear plays a lot in my head.  Fear of not working.  Financial Fear.  Fear of not living up to expectations.  And giving it up works but sometimes that feels like a cop-out.  In my profession, control over how often you work is out of your hands.  But control over working is not.  How nice is that really?  I have been around enough to know that it isn't a waste of time, it is what I do.  And even though I'm not getting paid to punch in at this specific moment, it is and always will be training for when the opportunities come up.  There will be more.
Specifically, what I find the most challenging in this industry isn't when you don't do your best.  That's an easy fix.  Need more time.  More focus.  Let the job become more important that what I was trying to get in story. Instead the challenge lies when you do your job, everyone is rooting for you, you have all the people behind you (you think), and still no go.  That's challenging.  Because at that point, you look back on your work and question if what you thought was right or "good" maybe wasn't.  Then maybe your don't really have a clue as to what is good or bad, and down the downward spiral we go.  But truth be told, that isn't the case.  And I have hard statistics to show that.  That is why we go back to the work.

1 comment:

Paul Mischeshin said...

Great point Kurt. I think as actors, when it's a situation we are not expected to do well, we tend to relax and perform better. I find it infinitely more difficult to do well when everyone expects me (myself included) to do well. In truth, much of this business is out of our hands. All we can do, is all we can do.
Thanks!
Paul