3.9 The One About New Years

A little less than eight hours to go.

I’m writing this with This Film is Not Yet Rated in the background.

Even the greyness of the day is full of potential.

I wish everyone the happiest of New Years, full of possibility and being easy on yourselves when you fall.

The point is not the falling, it’s the getting up again.

Get up again, my lovelies.

You won’t accomplish what you don’t try.

You won’t get what you don’t ask for.

“The secret to getting ahead is to get started.”  – Mark Twain

So get started.

3.8 The One About “What’s the point?”

As a writer, I live in a big world of ‘what’s the point?’ and ‘how do I get to the point faster and out earlier?’  Every scene in a movie, in a tv show, in a webisode has a point that you want to get in and get out with to advance your story nice and clean or fast and dirty.

It’s not always helpful to me when I’m thinking about blogging.  My goal is to post once a month, however I can get caught up with “What will the point be?” behind whatever it is I’m writing and I get stuck.  I started this blog back in a time when I didn’t realize I felt the need to say something.  Anything, really.  I was struggling to find my way through many things, and Twitter (@mowsh) became a godsend and a lifeline.  It helped to re-train me in the idea that I could actually say something whenever I felt like, whatever it was:  it could be funny or stupid or aggravating or whiny, it didn’t matter.  But my blog seems to have this magazine style to it, where there’s a lesson to be learned.  And if there’s no lesson, I’m hesitant to write.

Where does this idea come from?  There are plenty of people out there posting rants, recipes, anecdotes, poems.  I can get stuck in the idea of what my blog is ‘supposed’ to be.  Sure, sure, as a writer and actor, the net swirls with branding and marketing and staying within those guidelines to establish your presence, but I think ‘presence’ really comes from your own unique identity as a “person of planet earth” and the character and integrity you establish as you go along.

So do I believe people look at me and have expectations of who I am?  Of  who I am as an actor based on my headshot?  Of  who I am based on my blog or my Twitter feed or my YouTube page?  Absolutely.  But that box comes with many holes, where I can reach for new things as I find them, and for them to drift by, unexpected, for me to catch.

New things, new ideas, some change, some stay the same.  Some come out of left field and thrust you upwards a tier.

So what is the point?  Well, sometimes you don’t need one beyond merely “I just want to”.  Life isn’t as neatly laid out as a film or tv show.  The shortest distance between two points may be straight from A – B, but life can lay a silent, winding alphabet down in between, ergo:  A (j – i – w – c – s – t) – B.

My goal is to keep this in mind going forward and to remember that “I just want to” is also rewarding, no other justification required.

Just makin’ it up as I go along. :)

3.7 The One About Old Ways of Being

When old ways of being die, it can be a bitch.

Sometimes, we make conscious decisions about these things:  we change our diet or vow to work out more.  We make plans, contact buddies and whip up a timeline on the calendar.

Sometimes something is done for us.

By someone, or circumstance, or passing moment.

And what a slap in the face that can be.

Especially when it was a way you didn’t realize you had.

You’re just used to it, you acquired it somewhere along the line of your life.

And then you’re aware that you now have a choice: continue on as is or make the change/s.

And nothing can be more irritating than knowing full well that you can’t just ‘continue on’.  You can’t go back to blissful pseudo ignorance, because now you know. So change it is.  What a pain in the ass.

And there’s a whole other layer of digging through your psyche, your soul, your childhood, your purse, looking at who you are and what you want or what you thought you wanted.  You come to realize that some of your instincts were learned incorrectly.  And there can be a mourning process.  You’ve known that part of you for so long.

It’s difficult.  It’s challenging, it’s outside your comfort zone, it can leave you confused.

But you also feel lighter, more focused, settled and flexible.  Excited about life.   The door was opened a crack, and looking inside, the world of possibility stretches before you once again.

Here we go. :)

 

3.6 The One About Being Confused

Being confused can be confusing.

Even now I just paused, busy trying to figure out how to add to the rest of this blog.  Sometimes there are so many things going on, great things, crappy things, ‘seriously?’ things, and then the sneaky ones.  Ah, yez.  The sneaky ones.  The ones that you wouldn’t normally find confusing at all or would affect you in any way since you’re generally solid on those things.  When your friends giggle at the fact that you may not have a FB account and because of your heightened state of confusion, you wonder “Should I?” Or a job opens up that isn’t in the field you want to go into, but the money is good and you wonder ‘Should I?’.  Heaven help you if things like marriage, babies or moving to Brazil pop up, you could convince yourself these are the ways to go. Even though your gut is screaming at you that you hate computers and that you were ready to declare a death in the family every day to get out of going to work the first time you had that particular job.  Never mind that you’re fine on your own right now, kids are great when you can return them to their owners and the heat makes you break out in a rash.

Sometimes I find that the best decision is to not make one.  You’re confused for a reason, but that doesn’t mean you have to send in the troops to figure out what it is right now.  Give it some time to percolate in your brain.  Whatever you ‘should’ do in life is whatever is cool with you and if that means that it may take a few days where you don’t feel particularly grounded or at peace, then it may take a few days where you’ don’t feel particularly grounded or at peace.

Keep calm and carry on, and your path will eventually come to you.

Although I will also recommend Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake.

It’s a personal philosophy. ;)

3.5 The One About Doing Less More Often

Do less more often.

It sounds deceptively simple, doesn’t it?  It made me highly suspicious.

Being self employed, I have loads to do.  All the time.  Yes, yes, my lovely normal friends, you have loads to do as well.  But most of you have the job you do and you do it; you’ve been doing it awhile, you’re told when to show up, when you can go home, what the parameters are and the possible rewards you’ll get.  And you’re fine with it.  Or you’re fine enough with it in a way where you’re not going anywhere and offset any negative feelings by pocketing office supplies.

My job is getting the job.

All. The. Time.

I live in a constant state of hustle.  And when I try to take a moment to breathe, my mind is doing an end run on me demanding to know why I’m not hustling.

I have a list.  It’s a loooooooong list.  Everything I want/need to do, new ideas for tv shows and films, places I can improvise, auditions I need to learn, books to read, profiles and websites to update, marketing and publicity, courses I want to take, people I need to get in touch with, projects to be worked on, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, meetings, etc.

And I can struggle with all this.  Knowing that my ability to keep myself clothed and fed with a roof over my head depends on my doing all the above and more on a regular basis can be overwhelming.  And doesn’t always work.  (Read ‘broken kneecap’ &  ‘inability to work’ paired with a serious lack of ‘financial IQ’ growing up and you’ve got ‘screwed’.)

I can find myself putting things off because the scope of what needs to get done is too much to handle.  Especially the things like websites, marketing, publicity and writing a book because these are things I don’t know much about, so I have to learn about them first, and it’s intimidating and—well,  it goes on and on and on.

Then a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of Dallas Travers (www.dallastravers.com/index.php).  She’s a writer and career coach for actors.  And she has a little PDF document on her website called “Do Less More Often”.  It’s specifically a marketing document, but it managed to re-arrange things in my head.

Something I logically already knew, but said in a way that made something pop.

And only eleven pages long.  :)

Essentially, when you break things down, they’re manageable.  And an actor and writer’s career needs to be managed.  It’s a marathon, in the simplest sense, and as Dallas puts it, it requires “taking consistent and persistent action”.  And these actions are not all going to see immediate results:  throwing myself into the world of self web design for my script consulting business (www.whytheface.ca) took time.  And patience.  And effort.  There were days when I was lucky I finished one page in the way I wanted it because I was working outside of my comfort zone, going by trial and error. If I am itching for an immediate result, I’ll go improvise somewhere (being silly + people laughing = possible free beer).

And since I became consciously aware of and began implanting this idea, everywhere, with everything,  I’m getting so much more done!  And, on the flip side, it’s also allowing me to have some breaks or time off without my mind poking at me about the hustling.

Because there will never be a point where I will cross the last item off the list.  There’s no ‘end’.

But if I do less more often, I actually get more done.  Which gets me further along to where I want to be.

And it somehow seems easier.

And if there’s a way I can work hard to get what I want and it somehow seems easier, I’m in.

3.4 The One About My Desk

I love my desk.

I love desks in general.  I always wanted one growing up.  It seemed so romantic, the idea of pounding away on my own typewriter on my own desk in some fictionalized fourteen year old girl’s world.  What I was pounding away on was my uncle’s massive red IBM hunk of metal that engaged the letters if I so much as looked at them while I sat at the dining room table at three in the morning.  (During the summer, people.  I dutifully went to school like everyone else.)

It was still bliss.

But not quite the same.

The first desk I ever got was in my second year of university.  There wasn’t even a question about whether I was going to get one or not, it was what kind.  I found my jewel at the University Plaza Zellers in Windsor.  It was that late 80’s/early 90’s pseudo-but-not-really light brown woodgrain ‘colour’.  It had two sets of cupboards, one on top, one on the bottom.  It had a small shelf running along the perimeter of the whole thing so it sort of looked like an entertainment centre, where you stick your tv in the little hole.  That shelf was the home to various inspirational items over the years from my dictionary, my Darkwing Duck and Data action figures to my goldfish, Spot.  $115 dollars later, I jauntily drove it home in my red Chevette Scooter (an inheritance from my uncle who, that summer, walked into our living room, held out the keys and said “I’m getting a van.  Who wants my car?”.  Aside from the fact that my sister was slow on the draw, I had my licence and she didn’t.  Logical, but she was older than me and not impressed.) and my roommates helped me lug it inside and somehow put it together.  I always thought we looked like a commercial, where you cut out every few seconds to show the progress of the desk as it was being built: us tearing open the box, Leanne struggling with the drill, me with that extra piece of wood they always put in the box making you think you’ve forgotten something.

That desk stayed with me for maybe twelve years, and when my boyfriend moved in, he wanted his desk.  I actually don’t remember what I did with mine.  I think I donated it.  I remember being able to get it into two pieces for easy re-assembly and thanking it for years of service.  And three years later, when we broke up, I found myself stuck with this soulless, silver and blue, ginormous IKEA nightmare.  It was massive. There wasn’t enough space in my room for it.  It was great to spread things out on, but it was more like a table with one self on it.  Again, I don’t know where it wound up going.  I think my dad sold it at a garage sale, so I’m sure someone is happy with it.  But once again, I went on a hunt for a new desk.  I dragged my sister around to a bunch of stores (she was the one with the car now), but whenever someone asked what I was looking for, I was never sure.  I just knew I’d know it when I saw it.

And I saw it.

At a Staples Business Centre out in yahubitzville.

It was perfect:  the left side was an open desk, and the right side had five small cubbies, a proper cupboard, two shelves, a ‘landing’ and a file cabinet at the bottom.  The desk, the cupboard and the cabinet were a darker, not quite cherry looking wood.  The rest was black. I wanted it.  And it was on sale.  Naturally they couldn’t find one.  But I was stubborn.  This desk and I were meant to be.  I needed it.  By the time they were able to locate one, they almost didn’t take my coupon.  And my delivery day came and went without a delivery.  But when it finally got here, I was in heaven.  I spent seven hours putting it together by myself: one woman, a ton of wood, screws, screws, screws and one manual.  My knees ached.  My electric screwdriver quit on me (for some reason my screwdriver has to be ‘charged’ and won’t work if it’s merely ‘plugged in’.  Talk about uppity.)  The Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon helped.  And I almost killed the whole thing when I was sliding it to my room to finish it there.

I’ve had that one for four years.  And I still love it.  I look at it as a sort of an inspiration to me.  A rebirth after a hard breakup.  Something new that was just me and just for me.  And now it has a new home:  my office.  It looks great.  And I feel much less like a university student now that it’s out of my bedroom.

The office itself is a disaster.  I have random things on the floor while I try to decide where everything goes.  I need another filing cabinet and a bookshelf or storage unit of some kind.  Two beautiful white boards are awaiting purchasing at an office supply store near me for my use.

So work needs to be done.

But the desk is here, fabulous as always.

And it’s my one thing I wouldn’t do without.

3.3 The One About Projects, 1.0 and Various Upgrades

New projects are exciting.  :)

My business website is now up and running (www.whytheface.ca).  Considering that I designed the whole thing myself, with a little hand holding in the beginning, I’m quite happy with where it’s at as a first stab at it.  If you’ve never done anything like this before, I’d say the frustration level is not unlike that of Baby when Johnny Castle was trying to teach her how to dirty dance.  No designing with my laptop in a lake, tho. And no overbearing father trying to put me in a corner.  My dad happens to be very encouraging.  He just doesn’t quite understand what the site is or how to go about finding it.

Heck, you could even do what I did: give yourself a launching deadline of your Second City Conservatory Graduation Show, the one you’ve been working up to for a whole year, where you and your classmates wrote an hour and half show through improvisation in a ludicrous amount of time, because hey, you can put the website addy in the program;  still work in the evenings, audition during the days, and book gigs;  throw in a 3 day acting conference and awards night with wine, cute boys and pretty dresses; unimportant things like buying groceries and doing your laundry; oh, and have your grandfather pass away in the chaos of the final culminating week.

That’ll make it quite the experience.

Let’s say I was more than happy to set aside the self imposed ADHD for a moment so I could take a breath.

But then.

But then.  :)

An old project resurfaced.

A wonderful new theatre company here in Toronto, Theatre 20, was asking for submissions of musicals with an eye towards development.  A writing partner of mine and I had a fringe show from a few years ago which had gotten put on the back burner, with, oddly enough, this being year that we decided to take it out again. It’s a fun idea, I think.  Rough around the edges for sure.  And through the middle.  Alright, it needs a lot of work.  But we’re in love with the possibility of it.  And we were fortunate enough to get a time slot to go in and chat about it.   It was a good meeting with some hard questions.  You know the hard questions:  the ones where you feel like your soul is being ripped about and there’s no way you can actually articulate what it is you want to for some reason.  And once that minute is over, and you realize you made it through the little storm that all your insecurities threw at you, your head starts churning about where to go from here.  How to incorporate the answers to the questions they had and what questions those questions spark.  End of the day, they’d like to see our show developed further than where it’s at before they’d feel comfortable pairing us with resources on their end, and they’d love to look at it again when we’re further along.

Oh, the happiness.

And then a second old project resurfaced.

At the above mentioned acting conference (for ACTRA members, specifically), I took some workshops that focused on writing.  As I was sitting, listening to the speakers, dutifully taking notes of what I found interesting or helpful, an old idea started batting me about the back of the head, encouraged by two different factors: one was a point someone made that companies have a general interest in family shows that have strong, female characters; the second was a lady on a panel that dealt specifically with family oriented shows, and her willingness to discuss your half page with you, not necessarily because it might work for her company, but to merely give you guidance.  The treatment I wrote for a family television show featured a boy, but as soon as those two factors merged in my head, my subconscious staring whispering “What if you make your lead a girl?”.  This was horribly exciting to me, so much so I almost ditched the wine and cheese afterwards to run home, pull it out and start making changes.  One lunch meeting with a friend who’s taking on a role as a sort of creative consultant later, and that’s off to the races again, too.

And there’s only so much time in a day.  There are many other ideas kicking around in my head, some newbie, the start from scratch kind that haven’t even seen a pen and paper yet (yep, I do a lot of writing longhand), and some that are working out the many kinks that happen as things move along.

They all hold my attention and are equal parts thrilling and maddening.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

3.2 The One About Focus

I just started reading this amazing magazine.  I had no idea that it existed. I’m always tickled when that happens, I always think it’s such a great idea.  It reminds me of walking through the Bass Mills Pro Shop looking for Christmas gifts for my uncle, the camper, and finding things that make so much sense! ( A portable camp shower/toilet shelter?  Brilliant!)

Odd, I know.  But I love seeing a good idea.  Especially when the good idea works for me.  (Sorry, portable camp shower/toilet shelter.  We shall never meet.)

The magazine is called “Success”, and last month, Ron Howard graced the cover.  Ron Howard was in Toronto a few years back, I was fortunate enough to be in the audience to hear him talk before one of his movies was being screened.  He’s one of those people that I don’t really know everything about, but what I do know, I like.  His face on the cover was enough to make me want to delve closer into the magazine.

The article was charming, low key, much like I imagine he is as a person.  But one thing in it really stood out for me:  (and this is a looooong quote, so please forgive me) “You know those tense, tense days when you’re spinning a lot of plates, something’s going horribly wrong and you are struggling with it and it’s just miserable and shitty?  I learned a long time ago that if I would just take a moment and sit down and say ‘All right, this is miserable, but what is my job today? I don’t like much of what’s going on right now, but right now, this moment, what are my tasks?  And if I can identify the most important task, what is it?’ And then just go do it.  Whether it’s trying to keep an actor who’s concerned about the script from withdrawing from the project or whether it’s trying to work with the studio to solve a budget problem or whether it’s to try to creatively deal with the fact that you just lost a location that you need to shoot in the next day.  What it is that feels crummy and hopeless, if you can just address it and say, ‘This is all I can do today.’  Whatever it is, it helps me identify that and do that and not let the noise of a thousand crises overwhelm me.” (Success Magazine, Jan. 2011, “How to be the Nicest Guy in Hollywood” written by Amy Anderson)

This strikes me.

The last few months for me have been both incredible and craptacular. Tense.  Wonderful.  Stressful. Sometimes overwhelming.  A lot happening all at the same time.   An out of sorts kind of time, where I find myself and those around me thrown about, where the status quo gets blown out the window, and all you’re hoping for is a tiny bit of peace before you go to bed so you mind isn’t spinning with what if’s and why’s and I wishes.  Seeing that quote has made me consciously aware of the calming power of focus.  Focus on what I can do, not what I can’t do.  What is actually in my control and what is not.  It’s something that everyone does at some point, but when you become aware of what it is, it is no longer random,  it becomes a tool you can put into play when you need it.  It’s no longer something that’s hit or miss and you wonder why sometimes you can get through some things and other times you can’t, it’s purposeful.  And the times that I find myself struggling, I turn back to the idea of “What is my job today?  What can I do today, right now?”

And I can breathe again.

Re-training your way of thinking is not an easy task. :)

But there is a way I want to live my life and that requires effort.

And paying attention to my behaviours and the patterns ingrained in them is a part of that.

But the portable camp shower/toilet shelter isn’t.

Yep.  Never, ever gonna have use for that. :)

3.1 The One About the New Year

Wow.

It’s a whole new year and I’ve been terribly neglectful here.  So much has been going on in my life, professional and otherwise, and I remember many times my intentions to write a new blog, and it seems my follow through on that has been sadly lacking.

However.

New Year, new intentions and new businesses. :)

That’s right, I am in the beginning stages of starting a new business, which I will post here at some point.

Or many points.

It’s already been a fascinating process.  The really cool thing, tho, is that, as many ideas as I’ve had in the past about starting something, the way so many of my artist friends have done, they usually fell to the wayside.  I had some interest.  A passing interest.  But not enough to keep my interest.

This one keeps my interest.

I also find it horribly exciting.  It’s something I’ve loved  doing for a long time.

And I have no idea what I’m doing.

Rewind:  I know what I’m doing on the actual service side of the business, it’s pulling together all the other elements:  domain name registration, websites, breakdown of services, getting the word out.  For every one thing that needs taking care of, seven spring forth and start batting me about the head.  When I finally nail one thing down to start with, I realize something else has to be done first.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d confuse this with me procrastinating, but no, I am actually trying to accomplish something.  My table is strewn with paper, lists, daytimers with the hope of straightening out a way of going about this in an organized fashion.

I think the best I’ll be able to hope for is, perhaps, a pattern of disorganization that I can follow in the future.

Happy happy everyone.   :)

2.4 The One About Deconstruction

I really enjoy deconstructing things.

From a story standpoint.

Not from a, say, tearing a lamp apart to see how it works standpoint.

I mean, I could tear a lamp apart, but after that, it’d be pretty much useless and then I’d have to clean it up and find ways to recycle the various parts I’d torn asunder…..

Story deconstruction, by comparison, is much easier.  It’s something I’ve been doing for a long time, way before I was conscious of the fact that I was doing it.  It’s just something you pick up when the tv has been your friend for as long as it has been mine. It’s also interesting to me because, psychologically speaking, I have a fascination of people and why they do the things they do in the way they do them.  I question myself all the time for the same reason:  why am I acting this way?  Where is this coming from?  Why am I saying this when I mean something else entirely?  Of course, people are generally oblivious to when I’m doing this since it’s a scrum taking place inside my head and not usually out in the world.  I probably look pretty much the same all the time, regardless of the thoughts whizzing through my brain at lightning speed.  And the multi-tasking that goes on up there isn’t always terribly helpful  in real life.  It can really stress me out.  And there are times when my “I am consciously turning this off” button seems to be in need of repair.

But when it comes to storytelling, it is absolutely brilliant. Writers, good ones, anyway, work their butts off to stay one step ahead of the audience.  They look at their story and throw as many angles as they can at it, trying to come up with different ways of surprising us.  And there are still times when I can see it coming.  It makes me feel like I have a delicious secret because I can appreciate the payoff in a whole other way.  Deconstructing is going back over the story to see what tidbit was planted where to get to the point where we go “Oh, yeah!!!!”  And when you’re writing a spec script, the way I am now, deconstruction is a tremendously helpful tool.

If you’re not a writer, you know when you watch a new show, and you stick with it and usually, by the end of the second season you go “It took some time, but they’ve really found their groove now” and everything starts to gel in a way that takes you on incredible rides as time goes on?  This is what I’m talking about finding.  The show has been well enough established that the writers themselves have a better handle on a) how it works and now b) how to make it work for them.  Characters are solidified, relationships have stronger impacts, the patterns emerge.  We deconstruct the show to reveal the patterns, so that when someone reads that spec script, it sounds like the show because it follows the same patterns.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a show or a film and made note of the time the ‘problem’ was revealed, or how many act breaks there are.  I automatically look for it.  (The show I’m tearing apart now, I randomly chose a second season episode as one of the three I’ll be looking at, and it had two acts.  TWO!  It weirded me out and I felt unfinished.  We’ll see if this is a running thing or just luck of the draw.)

It’s funny, but I get a very settled feeling just thinking about all this.  It’s kind of a comfy, you-belong-here sort of feeling.  I enjoy it.  I understand it.  And I like that I can make my own shows using the same structure, and, hopefully,  create characters people care about, and deal with them in a heightened, yet realistic way.  It’s a cool way to relax and blow off some steam.  Sometimes there are things out there in the real world that you can’t or don’t want to deal with.  But you can on paper. That can be satisfying on its own.  Especially when you can go back and look at everything analytically to see why things happened the way they did and when.  But for one action, anything can turn out very, very differently.  And when you look at the shows you love, episode by episode, the best ones seem to be laid out in a very logical fashion:  a led to b which led to c and suddenly Niles is hosting a dinner party with a bird stuck on his head.

And it all makes perfect sense. :)