The First Moves

Whirlwind.

It's been a week since I moved back into my apartment. I've only been home to visit two or three days a month since June of '07, so it was really like moving in for the first time. Everything needed to find a home, and then get rearranged for efficiency. That is not a small or simple process, as you might know or imagine, especially when one is folding one's belongings into a house that has been set up and running like a (mostly) well-oiled machine for a year and a half.

I knew I needed to do a few things beside just move in so that we might not be broke at the end of the month. I needed to take a couple of days to recover from the 7 day per week schedule of an over-the-road driver. I needed to get registered for Central Casting (a background talent service). I needed to find a headshot photographer I liked...it's been years since I last had headshots, and while those were awesome, and free (more awesome), they don't look like me anymore. I needed to generally get the ball rolling on finding work and getting paid.

Having spent a year and a half driving...behind the wheel 8 or 9 hours a day (and then some) with most of that time pretty much available for idle thought...I've had plenty of opportunities for self-examination. Extra work or no extra work? Is that limiting? Can we afford all of the start-up costs with three people and no income? What are good places to look for auditions? for headshots? for Other Work? What kinds of Other Work should I even look for? Will there be any auditions? Can I even get cast?

You get the picture.

This is where the "Step into Traffic" mantra comes from. There are a hundred thousand variables in a life in the film industry, and you can control one of them.

Will you show up?

Okay, two of them.

Will you show up? Will you keep showing up?

Will you step into the stream of traffic in order to have a chance at getting clobbered by the opportunities when they go whizzing by?

This idea is especially applicable if I believe in what I supposedly believe: a God that's looking out for my best interests, and that's actively involved in the world. If that's so, what is the loving point of worrying these variables until they're worn through? If it is to happen, it'll happen. If it's not, it won't. If it doesn't work out, I still have a future, it's just somewhere else. When I can embrace that, anxiety fades away.

So I had stuff to do. But I knew I needed to pace myself, because even with a fresh understanding of Who's in control, I know that I get freaky and start to focus on the what-ifs. I've launched enough what-ifs into the air in the last months to give the FAA an ulcer.

I got registered at Central yesterday. It was no sweat to find (trucking skills paid off), no sweat to park (a small car and trucking skills paid off), and really, no skin off my nose to register. To invoke Dr. Allen (my mentor at University), it really helped to be a person. I realized what 18 months on the road has done for me.

This ain't my first rodeo anymore. A short drive down to Burbank in a small car is pocket change compared to a 650 mile day in a 72 foot truck. A new and different place is just a new and different place. It's not scary anymore. I know how to pay attention; how to glean information by keeping my eyes and ears open. I feel comfortable waiting in lines. I've got hours of patience now instead of minutes. I know how to ask questions and be communicative, and how to be at ease in idle conversation with people I don't know.

What I don't have yet, however, is a good way of monitoring my stress levels. While I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm freaking out because I doubt anything will work out, I've got a massive blind spot when it comes to to the stress created by believing that things might actually go well.

I got home from the registration, and I promptly crashed out, taking a three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't all loaded down with fear, I was tapped out from feeling like things were looking up and that I was doing everything I knew how to do. What a flipping concept! It was unexpected moments like this that were part of the calculus for slowing myself down a little bit.

When I emerged from my sleepy fog, the schedule for the day was shot...but it was okay, because I had some wiggle room. Instead of emailing the photographer I had found, I saved it for this morning and just signed up for access to Backstage. I think I can get good use out of the boards in order to find work, but of course, that remains to be seen.

I took a side trip to Babies R Us for a high chair for Matt. It won't be long before he's eating solids, and Alicia wanted to get him up at the table so that he can get used to the family table idea. It's nice to tool around town now and feel like I really live here for the first time. I'm not too familiar with Santa Clarita, given that I only lived here full time for a month before packing up and shipping out for OTR driving. It's a strange feeling to run these errands and not have the reality of a reload hanging over the whole thing. It makes California a little bit more of an attractive place to live. I guess we'll see how I feel about that in July, when I can't just drive away from the triple digit temps.

Today I rolled out of bed at 630 or so, a few minutes after Alicia, who was a few minutes after Matt. I spent the morning poking around online for job possibilities and getting the hang of the Backstage User Interface. I also sent an email to the photographer. I think I'll like him. In less than an hour and a half we'd sent four emails back and forth and I was booked for Saturday. Huzzah.

A note for the theatrically illiterate: headshots are basically the key to auditions. You go in and read for a casting director, and you leave a headshot behind. If the casting director (who sees a lot of people on any given project) can't go, "Aha! That's that guy!" Well, you're never going to get work, cowboy. So headshots are the currency of the industry, and if they don't look good or can't represent you accurately, it's really almost as if you didn't have them at all.

Then came the check-in with Central. You call a number and listen to recorded messages, checking to see if you physically fit the description given for the extras needed. If you do, you call another number for that show (for the purposes of the blog, show=TV show, Film, or Commercial) and the game begins. Said game is the process of having the patience to redial the number for an hour or more trying to get it to ring instead of getting a busy signal. It's really the only way it can work. Remember that line about hours of patience? Yeah, bonus.

While I was battling the "doot-doot-doot" in my ear, I took the time to reorganize our DVD collection, which was significantly fattened by Christmas gifts. We also finally purchased a DVD player (I know, ridiculous) so that we can play DVDs on our really cool, really inexpensive TV. We're gradually knitting together a life from little pieces. It's like a mammoth human quilt.

Somewhere around the letter M in the DVD alphabetizing, the line actually rang through. There's some adrenaline for you. Short version: I got lined up for Kath & Kim on Thursday.

The epicosity of this has not fully sunk in.

I gigged out while I digested the fact that I was within days of being paid (however little) to work on a TV show, and I thought, "Well, call back again, maybe there's something new for tomorrow," fully expecting there to be nothing.

Turns out, in the hour of redialing, there was something new. I called on that one for about twenty minutes and got set up for a shoot tomorrow on Trust Me. Alicia's spiffy little Zoom-Zoom car got me that one.

We have passed epic and gone plaid. I know I'm mixing references here, but an event of such mind-blowing immensity can usually only be encapsulated by mixed fragments of thought.

Without weeks of pain, I'm being paid to work in Hollywood. My dimmest dreams are suddenly an arm's reach away.

Granted, this is two days of work, not a running gig, or a speaking role, or a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Membership...but there's a physical reality to it. I've never been paid to do anything theatre, film, or otherwise art related in my entire life. That ends tomorrow.

For a final note: there's irony in the fact that tomorrow, on my first Hollywood job, I'll spend the whole day driving.