So I'm broke. What else is new? What's new is that I shouldn't be broke. There are checks for work I did over three months ago that should be in my hot little hands. But they aren't. I can see the downside to non-equity acting. I am beginning to believe that no one ever gets paid in this business, that all agencies simply prey on your willingness to take crap because you "have to start somewhere" and if you finally make noise, they replace you with another eager young thing.
But I have to admit, the sums of money coming to me seemed massive at first, until I realized the very prosaic uses to which those sums must be put - debt, savings, health insurance. Depressing. I don't even have credit card debt, the way so many of my fellow 30-somethings do - I should by all rights be ROLLING in money! I live within my means! I give at least a paltry sum to charity!
The biggest problem with the three-four month wait for money you make on acting gigs is this: by the time the money comes through your door, you have spent it in imagination so many exotic and fabulous ways that having to put it in safe and reasonable places feels anticlimactic. You've had endless time to think about that money, to make plans for it, split it into happy sub-monies that will make so many accounts bigger. You've cut the pie over and over, trying to work out how to feed all the many, many guests.
Of course, some people have literally spent the money before it comes. I've only sort of done that. Heh.
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