Deliverable

Action words:

“This is a ‘must’ and I will settle for nothing less.”

What are my “musts”?

This started out as another “woe is me” type post. I’d planned on referencing my earlier posts here, here, here, and here. I was going to talk about how I felt like I’m beginning to sound like a broken record with the “feeling lost” thing. How it felt like limbo. How I’m stressing about money and how the kitchen and living room are a mess. How it feels like I’m moving backward… How I’m not maintaining my morning/evening routines… How I’m falling asleep on the couch regularly… blah blah fuckety blah.

As I was typing this (while holding for Verizon… Trying to make sure my DSL got cancelled correctly, which it didn’t. Idiots.) I got a call on my cell from the extra agency. I’m set up for registration on Saturday. They said that it should be pretty busy. How does this effect my mood?

I felt a shift after I hung up the call. Kind of like defiance. I’ve always said that I would never ever quit… that NYC would not beat me… that no matter how many times I fell I would get back up. So here it is: It doesn’t matter how many times I screw up. It doesn’t matter how many days or weeks I might wallow in self pity or self destructive habits. It doesn’t matter how tired I might be of the rollercoaster. Fuck it, I’m here and I’m in the thick of it. It’s messy, it’s not perfect but goddamnit I will achieve my dreams. Even if the picture that I’m painting for myself is somewhat fuzzy in spots at least I’ve got the paint out and I’m getting my hands dirty.

So…

Fuck feeling depressed.
Fuck having dirty dishes in the sink.
Fuck having a messy living room.
Fuck being poor.

I have talent.
I have tools.
I have resources untapped and unrealized.

Even if I might not exactly feel completely defiant I’m going to act as if I am.

Stalled or defiant?

Defiant. Definitely.

I came across and interesting post at A Whole Lotta Nothing this morning. It seems relevant, especially given my seeming inactivity these last few (or more) weeks.

He quotes Olivier from HBO’s Six Feet under:

We all go through fallow periods. We must let the soil rest… to prepare for new growth.

Perhaps that’s what I’m going through right now. It seems like that might be right. I only wish it felt more like recharging and less like laziness. Hopefully I’m gathering steam while the soil rests.

Taken from Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto:

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

I need to take more field trips. In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron calls these field trips “Artist Dates”. Time for our inner artist to refuel and fill the well. I find myself slightly jealous when M. takes her Artist Date each week. My inner artist cries out “I should be going on Artist Dates! I was the one who recommended she read the darn book in the first place!”. I know that I can decide to go on an Artist Date (or field trip, as Bruce puts it…) at any time. Something in me is rising up and becoming more and more vocal that I desperately need to do this on a regular basis. I’m sure that I remember something in the book about resistance to doing this, which is what I struggle against. The ugly fear monster rears it’s head.

Again, just sending out the following assertion: “I must take regular field trips to fill the well.”

I need a dramatic monologue. I want to audition for theatre but am going to need to work out the 2 potential monologues that I do have and find others to provide me with some variety in my audition. I’m just putting that out there into the universe.

If you’ve made a promise to yourself to do A.)_____ B.)_____ & C.)_____ with your day, then you must truthfully examine your available hours and successfully schedule your time. It seems a matter of saying to yourself “If I’m serious about wanting to do A.)_____ B.)_____ & C.) and I know that A._____ B.)_____ & C.)_____ take X.)_____ amounts of time, then I must make X.)_____ amounts of time available in my day. It seems like this process should take place the day before. It doesn’t need to be some exhaustive process. Merely something along the lines of knowing what things you have to do that are hard targets timewise (practicing guitar for 30 minutes, for example) and knowing what things are potential time sucks. For example, once you’ve left the house at 5:45 for your 6:30 class that ends at 9:00, you may get home at 10:15 as planned, or you may not. Things can always come up. The trains might get goofy, or you may spend an extra 20 minutes chatting with classmates after class. If you’ve successfully scheduled your hard target time commitments early in your day, you can take that extra 20 minutes chatting and not feel guilty. It might mean sometimes going to bed earlier the night before in order to get done what you want to get done with your day. It will require alot of self honesty and self awareness. You need to know what your “hard targets” are and what your potential time sucks are and act accordingly.

Honor self promises. It’s a phrase I picked up from Body for Life by Bill Phillips. I struggle with this one, especially when it comes to practicing or other things that I want to do for longer periods of time. Consistency is essential if you want to increase your skill level or gain a certain level of mastery at a thing. I want to improve my skills as a guitarist. I want to improve my skills as a bassist, as a trombonist, as a pianist, as a singer, and so on. These things take consistant practice. How does one do this? Do you set daily time based goals for yourself? (Eg.”I will practice for 2 hours a day for five days” Is it more important to build the habit by setting realy really achievable goals for yourself? (Eg. “I will practice at least 10 minutes a day for 7 days”) The concept being that the most important thing is the habit, and not the amount of time you give to the instrument.

The reason for the rumination above is that I’m considering setting myself a practice goal for guitar for the rest of the month. I’m considering making a promise to myself that I will practice guitar for 30 minutes a day from today till the 31st. I’m hesitant because I’ve made such promises to myself before and not stuck to them.

As I finished typing the paragraphy above I looked above my desk and saw my “SMART” post-it note. Maybe what I need to do is make this goal SMART. Let me take myself through it.

My goal is to play guitar for 30 minutes a day for the next 11 days (from July 20th – July 31st)

• Specific
  

  Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model

  “WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.” / I’m going to practice guitar for 30 minutes each day from July 20th – July 31st.

  “WHY is this important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?” / I want to become a better guitar player so that I may one day perform on stage as a singer/bandleader/soloist. These skills that I develop as a guitarist will also help me as a songwriter.

  “HOW are you going to do it? (by…)” / I will make practicing in the morning my top priority. If for scheduling reasons I am unable to practice for 30 consecutive minutes, I will break it down into either 3 sessions of 10 minutes each, or 2 sessions of 15 minutes each. On heavily scheduled days I will make a point of getting up 30 minutes earlier to play my guitar. (This is the thing that has thrown me in the past. As I’m taking myself through this process, I realize that this is the part of the equation that I’ve skimped on.)

• Measurable

“Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.” / I will track my daily practice on the calendar next to my desk. Each day when I complete my 30 minutes I will place a little red sticker on that day. My goal is 11 little stickers by July 31st.

• Action based / I originally learned SMART with “Action Based”, the page I reference above uses “Attainable”, which seems redundant to me. Action based to me simply means “There are definite actions you can take consistently. Those actions are:
  • Schedule time to practice, especially on busy days.
  • Place my sticker on my calendar after finishing practicing.
  • Assess the process after the 11 day period.
• Realistic – I feel like I can do this, though I’m nervous about actually setting the goal.
• Time bound – I have a clear timeline for this goal.

Going through this process has been helpful to me. Specifically the “What, Why, How” part mentioned above. I think that once I go through this process with more goals it will become quicker and more second nature. I think I’ll also read up on SMART from other sources to get different takes on it.

–Update: 8/5/05–
Just a note to this post. I successfully met my goal. The tracking the red dots on my calendar was extremely helpful. It’s also helpful to know that I can set goals for specific numbers of days or amounts of time, depending on my schedule.

I’m feeling very restless the last few days. Not really down/depressed, but restless. Kinda like a shark swimming. Lots of time spent walking around my apartment or laying on my couch watching television. (Ok, the laying on the couch isn’t much like a shark swimming at all.) I don’t know what to attribute it to. It’s like I feel something building in me or like I’m moving toward something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Too much idle time on my hands? Probably. But I feel like my brain is thinking on something in the back part of my conciousness and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I have a couple of hot spots that are festering that I know I should put out (my desk and kitchen) but I can’t seem to get myself to take the action. It’s like I’m about to dive into something but I’m not quite ready yet.

We’ll see how this evolves.

I’ve been meaning to update this for a while. As I mentioned in the update to my previous post, my monologue class was cancelled. This sorta threw my month into a tailspin. This thing that I’d been building up in my mind that I thought I’d be focusing all my energy on was cancelled. Oi! What to do now?

As I’m gathering myself up now and assessing where I am with the month (14 more days to go), I think it’s good to take stock of the things that I’d hoped to do in my original post that weren’t related to the monologue class.

The thing that I wanted to focus on this month was acting. I wanted to take “massive action towards furthering my acting career” this month. To be honest, so far it’s taken alot of hand wringing and alot of overcoming fear just to take a few small steps forward. There has been alot of time wasted. Alot of time spent vegging on the couch doing nothing. I don’t want to focus on that, but focus on the small steps forward that I have taken. To that end:

Things I have done:

• I met with TM. This was a really successful meeting and he really helped me clear my head about how I want to approach my acting. In a nutshell: The acting is the most important thing. Get out there and do it. Be seen. Get in things. You get work from work. Even if it’s bad you’ll be good in it. Also, it’s ok to go out there and be bad at an audition. It’s a process. The most important thing is to get yourself out there.
• I redid my resume and put it in an “acting format”. I’d been lamenting the lack of theater credits on my resume, and had even been told by folks to make up theater credits in order to get called in to audition. (The old catch twenty-two. They want someone with experience, but how do you get experience if you’ve never done anything?). Ultimately (again, thanks TM) I rejected the notion of faking my resume, which turned out to be a pretty powerful thing. I’m much better going into any situation from a position of “Here is the experience and the training that I have. Like it, don’t like it, call me back or don’t, but fuck it, this is who I am. I’m not going to represent myself as something that I’m not”. I also noticed that by not watering down my resume with fake credits, it makes the credits that I do have much more impactful. For me this is a philosophical and principled choice to make, and I feel like I’m sending out better Karma into the world.
• I finally mailed my headshots/resume to the extra’s agency. I’d been obsessing so much about my headshots (which I’m not crazy about, but that aren’t awful) that I wasn’t taking any action. I was so fearful of screwing up this contact that I wasn’t taking any action. I finally made the call this past Friday, and the woman was very nice and remembered my friend who’d recommended me. She should receive my package in time for me to have an orientation with this company this week.
• I purchased Ross Reports and have read through it, but I don’t yet know how I’m going to use this resource. I cancelled my Backstage Online subscription and have resolved to just purchase Backstage each Thursday when it hits the newstand. (The dead tree option is so much easier to use in this case). I purchased copies of the Theatrical Index ($14) and the Hollywood Reporter ($6) on Saturday afternoon, which I promptly either lost on the 2 train on the way home, or had lifted by the disgusting homeless guy on the 1 train . . . I’m not sure which. Either way I guess God didn’t want me reading said publications this week, cause I’m now out 20 bucks.
• I’ll attend my final mask class this coming Thursday. I think I got a lot out of this class and enjoyed it a good bit.

As I look back over what I’ve written above I realize that this is good stuff. It’s not the daily “massive action” that I envisioned when I set that goal at the first of the month, but these actions took alot of doing to finally get off of my ass and do them. In the sense that these actions are “large and will have positive effects” then they are definitely massive, if not daily.

Let’s look at some of the other things I wrote down:

• Daily voice speech work/daily singing practice – This got sidelined by the lack of a weekly monologue class and my subsequent descent into the doldrums
• Create a master contact list and an action plan for working with that list – This is something that I’ve worked with some, but haven’t come to a final answer about how to do. Probably the best thing is to just do this imperfectly at first and a better way to do it will come along.
• Read (define #) plays/screenplays by the end of the month / See at least 3 plays/readings/performances by July 31st – I never defined the number of plays that I wanted to see, so the two that I’ve seen so far (Rain & Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls) will count towards the unknown figure. (Hell, let’s go ahead and make it “three”. Just as a note, I never did see OTMA before it closed). I’ve not read any plays yet so far this month, so I need to get cracking on that goal.

So, as I look forward to the next 14 or so days I’m feeling better than I have in a couple of weeks. I’ve got the “extra” work to be hopeful about. I have an updated resume that I can send out to things I might see in Backstage. I now have a cover letter (the one I sent to the extra casting person) should I need it. I have some play reading to do, but that seems doable. I have at least one more show to see before the month is up. I need to find a way to motivate myself to work on my craft (voice/speech/singing), and I want to put the monologue that I started for my class up on it’s feet.

There’s probably a larger lesson to be learned here about being farther along that you thought you were, or not seeing the forest for the trees but I’ll leave that for another day. I’m hungry and need to get some dinner.

Update on the cash collection front:
Previous total: $188

Added:
$50 – Tip from Club Date

Summary: