Bizarre and no mistake

Well, this has been an odd day, to be sure, spent almost entirely with my mother and managing to fulfill at least some of her wishes. We visited lots of people, although she claims she had about thirteen people she wanted to have over for a luncheon, but couldn't figure out how to invite certain different subsets together - they wouldn't get along, they wouldn't have commonalities.  So instead we had lunch with one person (and had invited a second but she couldn't come), went by to visit another person (we'd also spoken to that person's daughter but she wasn't available), and then stopped by yet one last person's house.  Strategic road work helped us jettison plans to take one last person home from work.  (The one I really wanted to see I called, but she's not well enough for visitors.) So all in all, we dealt with six or seven of the thirteen.  I have NO IDEA who the other ones are.

Though I enjoyed seeing these people, they are all sweet ladies that I do adore and was happy to see, I think my mother's assertion that "they want to see you so much!" is false in the extreme.  And after today, I feel it would be more accurate to say she just wanted to show me off.

But here's the weird part.  I grew up having it drilled into my head that no one wants to hear you talk about yourself. I've internalized this idea to a large extent and while I often run off at the mouth about myself, I always end up feeling guilty and ashamed about it.  Yet today my mother actively encouraged me to tell these women about myself.  I kept hearing: "Tell her about how big the crew was..."  "Tell her about what he said to you about hand modeling..."  "Tell her what you thought he said!  Oh, this is so funny."  It was at odds with this idea that as a well-bred younger person, my job was to ask questions and listen with enthusiasm.

But the conclusion it brings me to is that she is proud of me, and proud of all the things I'm doing, not just the ones I assume she approves of, but also how I struggle to work as an actor and keep working and continue plugging away at the profession.  I can hardly believe it, but there's not really any other way I can explain her behavior.

The down side (always a down side, right?) is that she then spent this evening pulling old clothes out of the closet in hopes I would take them home and add them back into my wardrobe.  And these are items I don't ever want to see again, much less wear again.  Sigh.  She always and forever insists on trying to make me dress like a 60+ year old.  When I humor her enough to try something on that I know I will abhor, she tries to convince me I really look great in it.  I do not.  I promise.

But I try to be grateful while firm that some items I simply won't wear, despite the fact wearing them would age me 30+ years instantly.  And I try not to be appalled that items I thought I managed to get rid of 15 or more years ago (and will never fit my mother), she's been hanging onto.  And just because I explain I don't ever want to wear them again will not inspire her to donate them or throw them away. Siiiggghhh.

The unsung

I'm pretty tired, and it was a really long day, genuinely tiring, but it was a really cool experience to shoot this commercial today. I want to write about it in more detail, though I can't do it all justice tonight.  Tonight I just want to say how much work goes on behind the scenes of something like that, work that no one ever sees.  In fact, if you were aware of that work, it would probably mean it was being done poorly.

Trust me, though I'm the only person you'll see on-screen, there were probably over 30 people working on this thing today, and most of them were working their butts off.  From the continuity lady making sure every word is correct, to the prop guys painstakingly cleaning and resetting everything I touched, to the wardrobe lady who bought a trillion tops in order to get they would approve for me to wear, and a whole host of other people who were working really hard and I don't even know their titles...it's amazing, a ton of people are working to make small things seem effortless and easy.

It was a really nice crew.  I hope I get to work with some of them again someday.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Y'ALL.  Y'ALL!

I just booked a national commercial.

Seriously, someone is going to pay me some insane amount of money to stand in front of a camera and talk about something for 30 seconds, and then eventually you will see my smiling face on your tv telling you thing is great (and frankly, it sounds pretty great), and eventually I will get a check for that insane amount of money and I will get to put that ad right smack on my resume and think, "BOO-YAH."

There are so many good sides to this I can't even begin to tell you about it.

Actually, there's a whole section of good sides I can't get into right now - we'll just save those for another post.

But here are two I can let you in on:

1 - the audition was at a casting agent I rarely get called into.  Now, you don't have to be a genius to see that if someone starts booking things, you are far more likely to call them again.  So I hope this translates into further opportunity.

2 - the audition was through an agent I like and want to earn money for - I want to be one of the people they trust to send out on bigger and bigger auditions.  A bunch of movie and tv stuff is filming in the next year or so in Chicago, and while I have no expectation of being cast in any of it, I haven't ever been called in to audition for one tiny speck of it, so it would be great if I could at least start being seen.  That's where the money is, of course, and that's where the validation of doing this for a "living" comes in - anyone can believe in you when they've seen your mug on tv.  (And to take away the money aspect, I think all that work would be really fascinating - I've never done much of it, so for me it would be a cool gig to see how it works.)

To back up: just plain getting and doing this job is going to be a monetary windfall at a VERY convenient time, but I also hope it gives me some greater possibilities down the line.

But all of that is far more rational that I feel.  I feel:  wheeeeeeeee!!!!!  You know in a life of rejection, it feels really really really good to freakin' book one.

I mean.  Really good.  I hope everybody's having as good a day as this one.

Filing Cabinet

Hooray!!  I bought a new (well, used, but barely) filing cabinet!  Instead of having a pile of boxes with disparate things in them, that I have to move around periodically to get to the stuff on the bottom, I will have everything in nice, neat folders with labels on them.  Today I started digging through the boxes, filing what I need neatly, and throwing away outdated or useless material.

Two things.  One.  As I was going through things and thinking how relatively mundane my life/approach to this filing cabinet is, I noticed I was labeling a folder: Funeral Ephemera.  I know lots of you may be pack rats, but at the very least do I get points for creative labeling?

Two. I wrote a lot of truly terrible stuff, mostly bad poetry, but also other bits and pieces of fiction.  However, I'm surprised to find bits and pieces of fiction and poetry in these piles that aren't entirely cringe-worthy.  There's a whole story in there that I wrote as an assignment for a play, and it's not so fantastic that I'm going to start submitting it to magazines, but it's readable!  Sort of intriguing!  Perusing it doesn't make me want to burn it immediately!

I suppose the larger lesson is that it's nice to look back on who you have been and like some of it, be proud of some of it.  Mistakes are made, and regrets exist for us all, but to have experiences and relationships and work you remember fondly is a great delight.

And so, you see a beige filing cabinet, slightly used, I see a repository of delight.