Every
January lends itself to a fresh start, a new perspective, or a clean
slate. Those first couple of weeks I’m typically pretty energized and
motivated (as I’m sure many are) to get organized and go after the
things I really want. Making lists, goals, stacks, piles and files. This
January is no exception. I’m just hoping the enthusiasm doesn’t wane
and get forgotten like it usually does, and all of those life changes,
bucket lists, and closet purges get forgotten about yet again, gathering
dust until the next new year…
One major “cleaning out” I would like to do, or I guess one aspect of
my life I’d like to be more aware of, is my EGO. I don’t mean it in the
sense of being full of oneself. Rather, the attachment we may have to
identity. In taking this new full-time job and then having a two week
break in the peaceful, distraction-free, snow-blanketed mountains, I
realized something: I got to get rid of my ego. Well, maybe not get rid
of it entirely (I have a feeling it will always linger in some form or
another) but to at least lessen it, quiet it, learn to let go of it, not
let it rule all of my actions and decisions. Am I still being vague?
Okay, let me get specific…
My passion is acting. Making stories. Writing them, telling them,
painting them, performing them, sharing them. But it isn’t teaching
them. Not full-time anyway. However, I feel that at my age, and where my
peers are at in their lives, I should be at that point, too– with a
“career” job, an annual salary and paychecks that come like clockwork
every two weeks, and health benefits, a retirement plan. You know the
drill. “Grown up” stuff. But what is that, really? Why do I feel like
I should be in that place? Because it’s what I really
want, or because of my ego? Sure a steady income is nice, don’t get me
wrong. I am absolutely terrified of being financially unstable. But I’m
equally, if not more so, terrified of each year going by where I’m NOT
doing what I love and taking this back seat to my own life… letting
things happen to me (this job literally fell into my lap) instead of
making things happen for my life. It’s my life and I only got one of it,
so why spend it doing what I don’t want to do? Well, there’s that fear of course.
This year I want to learn to be okay with (and feel good about)
taking an unconventional route and how taking an alternate route does
not mean failure, laziness, immaturity or the other labels I’m afraid
of. It just means something different. If there’s one thing that acting
has taught me is that there is no one right way of doing
things– not in building a career as an actor and certainly not in this
game of Life. I read a great article in GQ the other day about “The Cooler Me.”
Basically, this guy who took the more “conventional” path (married,
with children, steady job, etc) wanted a glimpse into what his life
could’ve been had he gone a different direction, so he became friends
with a doppleganger, a guy who with similar age and background is living
his life as a musician, unattached, in a house with a
million roommates. Reading the article, I’d say I’m somewhere in
the middle. But it did make me realize what is important to me right
now, to listen to my heart.
My heart is in making stories in every form that entails. My heart
yearns for travel, freedom, adventure, friends, acting. This year, I
would like to make more room for all of this. I’m in a fortunate
position where I don’t have many attachments. So instead of letting my
ego rule my actions, I want to let my heart do more of the decision
making.
Tags: artist life, fear, life decisions, life goals, passion, paycheck to paycheck
A
couple months ago I had the pleasure of hearing Shelly Gillyard (Senior
VP of talent at Nickelodeon) speak about that pesky little guy, fear.
Of course fear is something we battle with constantly as actors– fear
of not getting the job, fear we are not good enough, fear that success
will never happen, and on and on. But perhaps we battle that demon
because it’s the only story we’ve been telling ourselves. At some point
in our life, we failed at something we really wanted, or our parents
told us we’d never make it– something however seemingly small or
insignificant was the beginning of that story we have been telling
ourselves ever since: fear. Shelly brought up a great point– why not
tell ourselves a new story? It’s just a story after all. It’s not the
truth. I do not have to take fear on and internalize it only to fight it
constantly as I navigate this crazy career. And we all know how
powerful language is– we’re actors after all– so why not use that power
for good? Why not tell ourselves a new story of success and happiness
and worth and positivity?
