I don't know if it's an ecstatic delight or brutal torture that I face once again.
The Hollywood gears are turning and once more I get a chance to role the dice in the audition room. Not that I think its luck, its just you can never really know what a director or producer is looking for in talent. You can have all the talent, training and preparation for a thousand lifetime, and you're still just not what they're looking for. Them the breaks I guess, and I can say I'm very comfortable with knowing that.
But man, you get use to a status quo and something always comes along and tosses a molotov on the dance floor.
You see I, like most actors, still got a day job. It's all part of that elegant dance of survival and thriving. A delicate balance of making enough to survive in the dog eat dog world of LA, and having enough time to perfect your craft to compete in the Industry. It is not an easy thing, but I have been blessed enough to even those needs out for awhile.
However, the pandemic has put that delicate balance in peril. The importance of making enough to survive is far from a sure thing this far into the plague. I know far too many actors forced to live in an anxious state of wondering. Will I have enough to eat, can I keep my home, is the dream dead? Far too many friends have been forced out of the employment that secures their chase for the dream. Breaks my heart every time to speak with them, and have empty word of comfort that won't alleviate their terror. I'm feel guilty to survive as I do now, to ably sail the sea of these perilous time. Tossed about in this storm I may be, still my head above water.
But now the hard choices emerge again. With the Hollywood engine churning once more, the choices of partial survival or potential opportunity present themselves. And wouldn't you know my damned luck, they must overlap in the same time but opposite spaces.
While my eye is ever leveled with the dream upon that mountain of success. My heart is gripped by that same fear my friends and colleagues face. Will I risk my survival for a chance to scale the mountain once more. Will this climb send me fumbling for a foothold only to tumble off its shear cliffs and be shattered on the bedrock bellow?
Or is the Fear the mind killer I always heard it was? Its gripping claws trying to dally my ascent to a better perch upon the mountain. Wasting my time that could be better spent taking my place on the shining hill that I see so many others find their way too.
I do not know.
And I don't know if the weather for this climb will be better tomorrow or worse...
But I do know, I did not come to this town to simply watch others try their hand at this climb.
I'm calling in favors, and promising a few of my own. Seeing what I can sacrifice to the mountain, in hopes that the supplies I lose now may be replaces again further up the treacherous narrow pathways. Or maybe not even missed at all. Maybe all I'll leave behind are my worries and I find everything I've ever wanted.
Maybe.
Maybe, I'm just a ridiculous eager fool trotting off to my own psychic and economic demise.
Oh well, at least I'm fool enough to try!
I'll raise a glass to anyone Daring enough to try, and pity those not brave enough to dare.
BE BOLD!
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