(Not THAT kind of working girl, mind you. And than you to Krissy Myers for the above photo of me)
I’ve been thinking more and more about acting as a business, and my life in general as a business. See, this has come about in several ways and through several people, which I suspect is the universe’s way of smacking me over the head and saying “time to evolve”. Recently I took on some work outside of just performing and creating – I’m now working for Fresh Collective as their office manager/Girl Friday. Aside from working for a great, POSITIVE company with a great product and being afforded some very lucky opportunities for serious personal development, my boss Laura-Jean runs a great Tumblr blog called Becoming a CEO. As another creative professional, I find that her blogs resonate a lot with me and my journey, especially one recent post about internal vs external. I think a lot about where I want things to go, and don’t always take the steps I need to make that happen.
See, I am great at Getting Stuff Done for other people and as long as I’m engaged and occupied mentally, I’m pretty happy and achieving great flow. It’s when I don’t feel challenged and engaged that I find ways to procrastinate – and especially in my own personal life stuff (or when I’m afraid of a new challenge) – I find that I will self-sabotage or neglect the work. If I’m involved in a project where other people are relying on me but I’m not feeling engaged, I tend to slowly start slacking off, and if it’s something for me/my career but I have fears/doubts… well, those dishes need doing and I should read this book and… it goes on and on.
Another inspirational lady in my life as of late is my dear friend and fellow actor Miroki Tong. Much like me, Miroki has a lot of passions and interests – I know I’ve fallen into the trap many times of doing more than I can take on, like having five parties in a night to go to or having acting work plus housework plus personal stuff plus commitments to other people plus fun social pursuits. In one of the recent development books I’ve read, they talked about how quitting is not always a bad thing – a lot of smart people know how and when to quit and it can actually work to your advantage. Miroki’s recent post about “saying goodbye to a Jacques of Trades” also resonated with me because for awhile I was trying to build several businesses in tandem. I am slowly learning how to quit everything that is bad/dead end for me – such as not doing photography as business, not wasting time and energy on people who are not supportive in my life, not eating foods that are going to cause me to feel miserable… the list goes on and on. I’m making it my mission this year to quit as much as possible when I know things aren’t benefitting me any and they are sucking up my time that could be better spent elsewhere.
Lastly, a talented lady musician I know, Late July, aka Nicole Simone posted recently about her experiences with “marketing” her music, rather than just making music. I’m torn on this – it seems like you need to market the shit out of yourself these days if you’re to get “anywhere” at all, but I hate the thought of making art purely for profit rather than for what value YOU get out of it. A bizzare comment from someone who’s regularly in front of a camera, I suppose, especially with my resolve to only take on paid projects this year… but I always make exceptions for projects that have MERIT. If something moves me and makes me want to move others – rather than just stand there and look pretty – I am 1000x more attached to it than something I need to “sell.” I like truth when it comes down to it, I guess, and I can’t “sell” anything I don’t truthfully believe in and feel.
All that said, things have been picking up well for me with acting work lately. Among other things going on, I’ve been recently booked for two upcoming pilots (one I had to sign a strict NDA for, so no details yet unfortunately), am wrapping up my dice living, and there’s some exciting new projects on the horizon for the next few months. Always moving forward. Also, planning a wedding. We just got our first contributor on our Indiegogo campaign towards stag and doe ticket sales so that’s pretty exciting considering I haven’t booked the venues yet.
Lately, it’s all about quitting and refocusing and shifting things around in my life, but I’m getting there.
