I Get Why People Quit.

You are seeing this page because javascript is disabled

To use MindSay, you must have a browser that supports javascript, and have it enabled.

[ Login to reply ]

thewildcard

Tags:

nyc

acting

I am sick of auditioning. Sick!

The great thing about being an actress in NY is that there are always so many auditions. The rough thing is that there are always so many auditions.

Whenever I'm not working and not about to die (for one reason or another), I check the AEA website and go to whatever's going that day. Actually, for about a month now, I plan it all out ahead on Sunday--which is also my day for sending gratuitous postcards--on a big piece of printer paper.

I have been doing the regular audition circuit for about. . .four or five months.

Free time? What's that? Free time, unless it's the wee hours of the morning or I've already been to the auditions that day, is WORK time.

People do quit. People move back to Kansas. People become lifer-waiters and make plenty of money and don't spend it all on postage and audition hoohah. People go to grad school and become something else.

Why do I hang on? Well, callbacks keep coming, and that makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere. The Equity monitors all know me now. Some of the casting directors are showing a flicker or recognition in their eyes.

I guess I haven't lost hope yet. BUT I GET WHY PEOPLE DO.

When you walk out of your last audition of the day, even if the first two were business as usual, and you get the wrong look from the casting director. . .well, it's no way to live. Sitting in a waiting room all day on my off-days is no way to live. Taking good care of yourself ALL THE TIME so you don't chip the paint, so to speak, or wreck your voice or figure or face, when you are sans specialists like chefs and trainers and such is. . .well. . .that's probably how one ought to live, but I'm sick of it!! I'd like to not feel guilty about throwing my voice out at a party or sleeping through possible auditions because I had a night of beautiful insomnia.

Oh, this is so boring and I am spoiled. Rant over. I just need more sleep. Nothing insurmountable here. I'd better go to bed; two auditions tomorrow.

I'm just going to keep on trucking until the law of averages tips the scale in my favor. I mean, I'm reasonably talented; talented enough for practical purposes, certainly, so there must be a finite number of auditions I can go to before ACCIDENTALLY landing a role. Right? Or something? I mean, the number might be in the 10,000's, but the finite-ness is encouraging.

[ Login to reply ]

gum on

Re: I Get Why People Quit.

Quit? And wind-up like 87% of the rest of the country that is unhappy, working a job they hate, living for someone else, wishing they had had the courage to do something other than what they did with their miserable life? Wanting their youth back instead of dragging themselves out of bed every morning to a place they can't stand, dealing with car payments, budrensome kids they do not really want, mortgages, and living like a cookie-cutter schmuck slave? Is that what you want? If so, go home but if not then tough it out and ride it out. Five months is nothing some people put in five years or ten years before some thing happens. If you are getting callbacks that is a very very good sign. Don't be a fool and wind up a fat housewife. Stay in the race and you will see success before long and just remember why you are doing what you are doing and that is to live a life doing what you love and not to become a middle class zombie making some other person rich off your time and labor. People who quit only make room for the stronger. Let them go back to their boring life and you will move that much further ahead!

[ Login to reply ]

thewildcard on

Re: I Get Why People Quit.

But it breaks my heart.