No News is Not Good News

I'm tired.  I'm so very tired this week, guys.  I was super busy last week with a string of home-run auditions.  Auditions for wonderful projects not only for me as an artist, but for my career.  Auditions in which I felt cool, calm and collected, like I was finally hitting my professional stride.  Auditions I knocked out of the park.  

I didn't book one.  Not a single stinking one.  

Perhaps the mistake I made was falling in love with the jobs.  This one in particular.  I loved that role.  I felt I was destined to play it.  I felt as if the pieces were falling into place.  I thought to myself, this is it.  This is the one I'm meant for that will finally knock down some of the stone walls that seem to be looming between me and the beginning of a "real" career.  But then the afternoon passed, and there was nothing.  I tried to swallow the sinking feeling that started to grow in my gut.  The following morning and early afternoon passed, still nothing.  I finally couldn't resist the temptation and emailed my agent, "No news is definitely not good news, right?"  He responded by saying, "I won't kid you.  If they want you, they're usually pretty on the ball about calling to make sure you're still available." 

I finally couldn't ignore the sinking feeling and my heart felt as if it dropped to the bottom of my rib cage.  I could almost hear it rattle, as if I were an empty oil drum.  I felt utterly defeated.  Then I did something I try very hard to not let this industry ever make me do.

I cried.

I cried over this role.  I cried over the hundreds of other roles I have desperately wanted and didn't get.  I cried for the thousand roles I would desperately want someday and wouldn't get either.  I cried for the fear of never making it, the fear of giving up and the fear of spending my entire life chasing something I would never catch.  I cried because getting this one meant solidly working on a show nearly every day for the next two and a half months, and the $100,000 it would have put in my starving bank account... and not getting it meant I have to keep my phone on silent this week because I'm so late paying a few of last month's bills that I keep getting calls from companies looking for money I don't have and I just can't bear to hear it ring one more time.

I cried for spending so much time every day stressing over being talented enough, thin enough, smart enough, pretty enough, funny enough, tough enough, perfect enough... when many days I feel I'm none of those things because if I were, wouldn't it have happened for me already?  I cried for the feeling of my soul buckling under the stress of constantly trying to survive in some sort of an existence in the space between believing a big break is just around the corner and having it mostly turn out to be a big disappointment. 

I'm so sorry I'm not very inspirational today, guys.  I've barely had the strength to get out from under the blanket I've been curled up under in my favorite armchair these last few days. I'll be back in my normal fighting shape soon, but not today.  I hope you understand.