I had a bad two weeks. Stress, illness, minor surgery, hormones, bee stings, bug bites, you name it. The fact that I have been auditioning my hiney off since February – with no bookings to show for it – got me very, very down. There were floods of tears for a solid three or four days in a row. It was bad. I’m still exhausted. I can’t say that I have regained my usual go-get-‘em-ms-positive-attitude spark entirely, but you know what? That’s just where I am right now.
I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head about life and my relationship with my work that are wild and, well, oozy and hard constrain in a cohesive manner. So my apologies if this post is a little more fractured than usual. I’m writing this after minor surgery, the flu and a night of 2.5 hours of sleep. But hey, no excuses. I just have to own it.
There are some things I learned over this fortnight that have struck a chord with me.
For one, I really had to take my own advice. Each and every article I have written for Ms. In The Biz was crafted to help others. To help you, should you need it. In my mess, I needed help though. I was questioning everything. So I went back to my own basics. (Really, to see if I was full of crap.) You can certainly imagine how relieved I was to find I could not only hear my own advice, but recover by using it. In particular, honesty about who I am and what I can do and being okay with not getting the job perhaps because of it. I know who I am and what I can do. That is paramount. I believe in my strengths, I recognize my weaknesses. A director’s vision is her or his own, I don’t have to understand it but I do respect it.
Plans! A LIST of plans! It could be plans for that day or plans for that month or that hour, but ohmygod I would fall to absolute pieces if I didn’t have a list of plans. The instant I started making a list of what to look into, what books to read, what class I could maybe take in the fall I felt ten times better. I was back on my way to making something happen.
Also, I could not do this without people I trust, who love me, who believe in me. Who hold me when they can and help me to heal. And for all those kind-hearted, random strangers who go out of their way to say something honest and kind, be it that they like my previous work or my choice of shoe.
I wonder about the days that don’t go our way and how you, wonderful individual reader, go about getting through it. When these bad days or weeks strike, what motivates you to keep believing, keep muddling, keep working? What do you learn in tough times? What strikes a chord for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
xo Jennifer