If you're prone to noticing things, you'll have seen that the subtitle of my blog has changed.

The reason for this is because I've found what it was that ran me down.

It's hard to write about...not because it's painful, but rather because my perspective has so dramatically shifted.

If you're looking south and looking south, and suddenly you're looking north, chances are you can describe the old view from memory and you can describe the new view by virtue of looking at it...but how do you go about recalling the view as you swiftly turned from south to north?

Let's start with the old view.

Way back in the post college days (all of three years ago, my how long ago it seems) I believed that I had talent, and that it was a waste to not use that talent. To that end I was laser focused on getting my acting career underway. To that end, when I was presented with a small business opportunity, I didn't take the time to understand myself and determine whether or not I was the type cut out for small business, but instead focused exclusively on the potential returns. This was unwise, to say the least.

In all frankness, it was straight-up stupid. But, believing as I did then, believing that the only way I could get ahead in life was through the film industry, I charged ahead, totally unrealistic in my expectations of myself and my actual desires in life, and so filled with "momentum" that I either couldn't or wouldn't stop long enough to examine these things.

But it needed to happen.

We moved to California (on borrowed dimes) so that I could be right here when the time came to start acting. Again, unwise...but necessary. God was giving me rein so that I would be ready to understand the truth about myself, and what I really needed from life.

So we moved to California and I went to drive a truck. Another money move, because, by this time, I at least realized that the small business was never going to be something I could commit to.

So I went through the school and signed on to a lease--with the aim of making more money. Silly rabbit, leases are dangerous! I spent a ton of time and money keeping a truck up and running for no permanent benefit, including, as it turned out, no money bonus.

And all this time I was champing at the bit, convinced that if I could just get in there and start acting life would open up...things would be fine.

The grass was greener, I was sure, on the other side of the fence. Cut to January, when I came home...to the top of this blog. God was still giving me space to discover my limits.

So I hit it as hard as I could...believing that a miracle would come. And a few did. Money came in when it didn't have to, and I kept at it. But the doubt crept in. I discovered what a set was actually like. I discovered how many projects were just flat repulsive to me. The more I worked, the more I discovered just the size of the miracle that God would have to do to keep us funded and protect me from a bunch of work that I would regret doing. It was not impossible for Him to do, of course, but the logic of it happening dwindled.

May sucked for work, and I really started looking at alternatives. I "decided" to seek out a regular job to pay bills and write...but God knew my mind...He threw me bait and I took it. My manager emailed their interest in me, and I jumped on it. I wasn't ready to let go of the film career on the "right now" schedule--to the point where I abandoned the principle I'd learned from the business debacle. I used the last of our credit to fund the materials for the manager.

June got me Iron Man II, and I spent two and a half weeks understanding just how little I identified with most the people there, and how little interest I had in doing anything and everything to make a career.

All that work in June--13 twelve-hour days with O/T and bumps and everything--paid July's rent, and not much else.

The needed miracle got bigger. But the manager hadn't had time to kick in, and I got on Joey's list...maybe something could happen, right?

Then I read two books, back to back. One was spiritual and relational, and the other was financial.

This is the swift turn to the new perspective.

I realized several things of critical importance to the rest of my life.

To this point in my life I'd been working on unconditional commitments but making decisions on the fly based on a lot of conditions. I realized the danger of this when I viewed it from a parenting perspective. The example was this: if dad promises to go to Six Flags on Saturday, you go to Six Flags. Dad doesn't change his mind if the kids' rooms are messy Friday night. Even if the condition arises, you didn't set it beforehand, it's just inconsistent to add it later.

This does apply to my parenting, but more importantly to my immediate future, it applies to how I follow God. Once upon a time (and repeatedly since then) I made an unconditional commitment to acting...and then stuck to it or abandoned it as different conditions arose. This is no way to make a life decision. I've been pushed away and drawn back by every slight discouragement or encouragement (the manager's email is a perfect example). I couldn't make final decisions because I refused to apply boundaries to what would change my mind. I thought this was the best way to follow God. Not so. It just opened me to temptations.

So I realized that I needed to reevaluate my course based on pre-defined conditions so that I might actually be able to make wise choices instead of wondering perpetually what my responsibilities were.

Then came the financial book.

I think I finally understand just what, exactly, my role in my finances is. God provides, but I'm responsible to manage. I know it might seem blisteringly obvious when put that way, but I'd never considered it with that kind of blunt clarity. I realized how easily a small income can translate to great wealth over time. It was shocking, and invigorating. All this time I'd been either trying to control how much income I had or completely letting go to let God provide everything. But now I see the balance. Think of a farmer. He must plant and cultivate and harvest, but he cannot make it rain. I was either trying to make it rain or abandoning the planting and cultivating expecting that God would grant me the harvest if I hung on long enough. Those miracles I was waiting for I had no justifiable reason to expect. Why should God work a miracle when no miracle is necessary? Why should God give me my "dream" simply because I refuse to understand the peril of my situation?

I've been wondering why God has been making the path so hard...and now I realize He's made it quite easy. He led me to a place where I could see what a dead end my impatience and assumptions were leading me to. He has protected us from the bankruptcy and other things that could have derailed us for a long time.

The clarity has slammed home with all of the force and precision of a shell loaded into the breech of a howitzer.

So here is my new course, and my new perspective.

I have debts to pay and I have skills that give me access to work that will help pay them. I'm going back to the road, and this time I will not be looking longingly at Hollywood as the source of my salvation from debt and discontentment. This country provides a unique opportunity to have income and prepare for the future. I have control over whether or not I participate. So I'll drive, and by God's providence (on which we still have to rely) we will have the income to pay our way. I will work toward self-discipline to stay healthy and fit, and to write in my spare time. In five years, or ten years, if I've completed a book or a screen play I'm happy with, I will try to sell it for publication or production. Then I can be involved in art that I care about, and that I can believe in. By that time I should have enough to keep me from the peril of needing money so badly that I must take work that sells a message I don't believe.

Contrary to what you might thing, contrary to what I thought, this is not a disappointing change. I'm relieved. I'm happy. I'm looking forward to the future without frustration, anxiety or desperation for the first time.

Also a novelty: I don't feel as though changing careers diminishes or disqualifies my artistry. I'm still a gifted, skilled actor, I still care deeply about film, I'm still a writer and lover of music...but I am a trucker, too.

I am a Child of God, a Husband, Father, Trucker, and Artist, and none of those things will ever cancel out the others, nor will any of them cease to be a part of me.

So this blog goes on the road with me as I turn a new page in my life...As I, I hope, being to live life as it's meant to be lived, and enjoyed.

I think my wife and my son will thank me for it. I think I will be happy...at long last. I think my life will be my life and no longer anybody else's.

So I'm into the traffic, and off the curb.

Unemployment

Ten days ago, as you may have already surmised from previous posts, I filed for unemployment insurance from the state.

It was a detailed application, and took some serious organization of resources to complete. I didn't mind; I was doing this in an effort to take advantage of programs in place to defray the difficulty of unemployment and underemployment.

So yesterday I got my packet.

May I quote?

Claim Beginning Date: 6/28/2009

Claim Ending Date: 6/26/2010

Maximum Benefit Amount: $0

Weekly Benefit Amount: $0

Please note lines 3 and 4.

Do we notice a problem here?

California has granted me unemployment benefits in the amount of nothing. For a year. They even sent me a handbook entitled "A Guide to Benefits and Unemployment Services". Because apparently I need guidance and direction on how to collect zero dollars.

I'm seriously considering submitting a continuing claim every week for the next fifty-two weeks claiming my $0, and demanding a check be dispatched to my home for the sum of $0.00...but then I'd be wasting a stamp.

I'm not bitter. I just find it eye-rollingly bureaucratic that the state sent an entire benefit package to an applicant that was rejected.

But...even then...was I rejected? Or was I approved for nothing?

Maybe it's in the handbook.

Done Got Told!

Entourage shot its last day of this newest season last week Wednesday. I was there. It was filming in an airplane cabin. It was a fake airplane cabin...which, remarkably enough, was stuffier and hotter than a real airplane cabin.

I was seated between a friend and a random twelve year old girl, who turned out to be pretty cool (and who has two more years in the industry than I do).

We talked about random stuff, and I tried to keep the conversation orbiting around a twelve year old's universe. But one random exchange did catch me off guard.

"Did you watch the Michael Jackson Memorial?" she asked, as a prelude to a cool story.

"No," I said, being quite honest.

She was already prepared to launch into her story, and when I uttered the impossible response to her rhetorical question (namely, "no, I did not watch the thing") I was suddenly on the receiving end of an incredulous, wide-eyed double-take.

"Are you serious??" she stared at me for a moment, until, I think, I shrugged.

I think it's possible I was the offender in the Great Faux Pas of '09 for young Ashley. Never in my life have I heard such a simple question freighted with such disbelief, disdain, and judgement. Apparently, I am a Philistine.

The funny part is, she wasn't even around when MJ was making decent music.

My friend got a laugh out of it, and so did I.

After yesterday's posting, and some time spent sitting back reviewing my life as a whole, it's really really hit me how much Problem Focus is crippling me.

I'll have a problem the size of a dime and shoot for solutions the size of a dinner plate...only because I'm zoomed in too closely on the dime.

I am not the world's best storyteller.

I also tend to post only when I feel as though I have something "complete" to say.

The combination of those two elements tends to make this blog philosophy oriented, vague, and generally disinteresting, because the whole through-line of blogitude is lacking.

It's like, "Hey, Mark, great to see what you think about purpose and meaning, but what the hell is going on with you?"

It's been a rough couple of weeks. To say the very least.

I will give y'all the skinny, and try to avoid justifying my behavior or pontificating on the meaning of things.

So what is it? The 12th today? I feel like it should be August.

The month started on a high note. I got accepted to Joey's and my manager finally had me on his radar screen. The downside was that we had just paid rent and really didn't have any money to put toward anything else. But the best we could do was hold out and hope for improvement.

Things did not really improve...at least from a money stand-point. Boy, how do I describe the roller-coaster?

I got a part in a student film, then decided that it was best to tell the director of that film that I couldn't guarantee anymore that I'd be available to shoot it, because I was "at risk" of going back to driving full time. Of course he found another actor to take my place. I would have, too.

I got a single day of work on Entourage this last week. Hiatus is still heavily in place.

I got a call from another of the directors from the audition that got me the first part that I got kicked off of (still with me?) about being in her film, and I turned it down. I was pretty convinced I was going to go back driving.

I actually applied to drive for Interstate Distibutor out of Tacoma, WA. I did this because I decided (five or six times in as many days) that I was tired of the uncertainty and the debt and the heinous broke-ness...and feeling sure that God was pulling out the rug on acting. I was also feeling terribly sick of all of the grossness of Hollywood. The vapid people, the...disappointing...city, the heat, the dirt, and the money chase. LA is a pretty soul-sucking place if you haven't got a really, really good reason to be here. I applied to drive under the auspices of getting on with my life. Paying debts and focusing on family and being near family and friends seemed to take precedence (a move to Minnesota was also ultimately planned into the career shift).

But then came yesterday, and then came today.

Yesterday, I posted a remarkably vague status update on Facebook about how "changing course isn't quitting: quitting is quitting." Or something like that. While that's true in itself, and when I posted it, I was 98% sure I'd be back OTR by the middle of next month, it drew a simple question from a guy (a friend, really) that I've met in my months in the industry.

"What are you doing?"

Now, since inflection is lost in the ether via text, that question can be read several ways. In my state of mind (or perhaps because I needed to read it that way) it was delivered with a tone of failure-to-understand, and perhaps warning to think whatever-it-is through before you do something stupid.

And so the wheels came off. All the certainty I'd had about my decision (which wasn't ever 100%, because I'm a doubter like that) unravelled. What was I doing? I was planning on totally changing my life. Why again? I went back over it all again, in my head and out loud, with Alicia.

Now, in talking to our parents in the depths of our confusion about what to do at this critical point in our lives, they've both been generous enough to help us out with some money. Without the collection monkeys strangling us with stress (their computers auto-dial you every three days, *eye-roll*) the immediacy of "needing" money diminished slightly. That, combined with the long, long declension of reasoning that led me to understand that, mostly, I just want to stop doubting and find some joy and contentment in my life, left my in a place where, even though I don't know whether or not Interstate will hire me, the best course is to not take the job.

That long, long declension of reasoning was this morning...I think...it's all been bleeding together so much. If I'm chasing contentment and joy and I think making another career change is going to find me what I seek, I'm taking awful risks. As Alicia so astutely pointed out, there's contentment to be had in anything, and in any circumstances, and lacking it tends to be a problem that originates inside me as opposed to in my circumstances. So really, the most efficient (but hardest) way to find the contentment I'm after is to change myself.

This I realized on top of a few basic points about the physical situation we're in:

>Hiatus is ending soon. More work.

>The SAG contract is in effect. More work.

>My manager has new head shots of me to use in his submissions. More work.

>We've received generous gifts from our parents. Bills paid, and possibly rent paid for August.

>The state of California has programs to offset the hardships we're facing. We've applied to these, and haven't even given them time to "kick in".

Really, those last two words are key words. There's a lot of stuff that just hasn't had time to "kick in".

So we're at this just a little longer, then, and trying to keep our focus on God instead of on the problems. I don't know what the future holds. I really, really want to know what the future holds, but I'm not allowed that luxury.

All in all, this is hard. It's very hard. And it's so easy to see the driving and feel like it would be freedom because what I really want right now is relief. Read: I want a vacation. I want to get away and see the sights and have some time where everything is taken care of.

So this month, a driving job is a sore temptation. Come September or January, it might be what I really need to do. But not July. Not just yet. God is silent in this...and silent, I think, so that I could jump through these hoops and learn a few things (not least how to ask for help from the many different places it's available). I'll keep going until He speaks otherwise.

Case in point (as a reminder mostly to myself) when Alicia and I agreed to team up, get her a CDL, leave an apartment behind and make some money...we wound up pregnant. How's that for a change of plans? I can't see anything but God in that.

I'll admit, I don't like it that sticking with acting is the right thing to do. It's not fun. It's not easy, it doesn't make me "happy" right this second...but it is the right thing to do. Leaving now is trying to get God to work on my schedule instead of His...and turning a desire for a vacation into a desire for a different life.

See you next week, hopefully without another hurricane.

Here's a forehead slapper:

I got my first audition call from the Manager today. I was pretty excited. Good pay rate, would shoot Thursday, etc.

Then I got there. Because I signed a non-disclosure agreement, I need to be very vague. It's a dating show. As of this writing, the blogger in question (namely me) has been married for 4 years, 1.5 months.

Oy.

The irony of blogging is that the most interesting content is the stuff that rises out of the flames of adversity. The irony being that when life is hardest, I (and most folks, I think) want to blog the least.

In my case it has more to do with not wanting to "cry" in public than to do with my life being too busy or too complicated to sit down and write. And to say I'm embarrassed to cry in public is kind of wrong, too. I'm more afraid of detailing the difficulties and the doubt I have because of the difficulties. To do so would be to (in my mind) contradict the clear-headed confidence I've detailed in other posts and in talking to people.

But this is life, no?

[Edited out a mediocre first pass. Trying again later.]

[Second pass]

I've realized since I posted this at first, then went and excised a chunk, then let some time pass, that my posts need to be longer, more deliberate, more explicit, and less summary.

In my last blog I spent a lot of time philosophising, moralizing, pontificating and just plain bitching, and I notice that I border on that here. The problem is that to take the time to write thoughtful, honest posts (of the nature that would be really productive) requires more work and emotional risk than I'm immediately willing to give.

I've also remembered how effective a teaching tool simple exposition can be. Sometimes I fall prey to exactly what I dislike in others, the tendency to learn from my own life and immediately issue imperatives to others about theirs. I'm learning what I'm learning because I am who I am. If I tell you what I'm learning and why and you find application for yourself in it, isn't the learning more organic and dynamic that way?

So what am I learning? Where am I at?

I am at broke. Beyond broke, in fact. I'm very tired because of it. I'm tired of the stress and the wondering and the collections calls, as polite as the poor people on the other end of the line manage to be. I haven't even had that many calls and I'm tired of it. I'm weary of the confusion that comes from feeling and seeing God lead me to this place, and then apparently let us free fall. Does the free fall indicate that this path is ended and another is supposed to begin? Or is it indicative of God's method of teaching patience and discipline?

I'm still a licensed trucker, I could go back...even if, at this point, going back would mean needing to call up a relative or good friend for bus fare to Tulsa. It could very well be that God sent me on this adventure in order to teach me to let go of my own schedule and rely on His. I certainly am at that place where I've laid aside my desires. I don't care what it is that God wants me to do, I just want to know that He wants me to do it.

And there's a new, strange freedom in that. Not being so hellbent on any one thing that I refuse to give it up in spite of clear direction elsewhere...

But I have no clear direction elsewhere.

It could be that, in fact, God is saving a flush of success for just the right moment, so that in this dark hour, when there is no hope, He can rightly take credit for providing.

These things I do not know.

So what do I learn from this?

The best I can do is take the opportunities available to me to relieve my [our] current distress. They are few. In the meantime, I can research my options...and weigh the benefits of one against the other.

In the end, I could chose to follow one path over the other, because it seems to be the right thing...and God could again do what he has done so many times already...He could close that door right in my face.

I am not in control of my life. This is not surrender, apathy, fatalism, or laziness. It is simply true. I can lay plans and put out feelers and all the rest, but if God does not will it, it won't be.

So why am I so scared of making the wrong choice?