obelisk

I haven't posted very much lately. In fact, i feel I've been letting a variety of social connections slip over the last few months. I've got a lot of friends--espeically my theater friends--who I used to see all the time that I don't see too much anymore. I have in part made up for this social lack by spending too much time at my neighborhood bar--which isn't such a bad thing as I know a number of great people who hang out there, but it both sucks my time and leaves me with too many hung over mornings.

I've noticed that I tend to isolate socially when i've feeling frustrated with my life. For the last year or two I've been working on getting somewhere with my commercial acting career while planning to move to L.A. And I've taken a lot of necessary steps and made some progress--but I can't say I've had much in the way of real success. It took me ages to get my VO demo, to get new hearshots, to get them printed and then further ages to land an agent. And now, I've gone to a shitload of auditions since getting my agent 9 months ago, but haven't landed a gig yet. It's getting me down. I wanted to move to L.A. with some credits under the belt and my SAG/AFTRA cards. Now I can't figure out whether I stay and plug away here in Chicago until I get somewhere, or whether I should just cut bait and head to L.A. But of course I'd be completely new there and could spend the next couple of years just trying to find an agent, not even getting the auditions I'm getting in Chicago.

So, I'm frustrated. And when I'm feeling that way, I tend to not see people unless they're the people I see every day. Let me put it this way: if someone on seeing me is likely to ask, "how's that acting thing going?" or "so when are you moving to L.A.?" or even "what's new with you?", I've been reluctant to seek out contact with them becuase I feel I don't have an answer to those questions that makes me happy.

Which on a basic level is pretty counterproductive to my mental health. The problem here is basically me, I know, not my friends. The judgement I don't want to hear doesn't come from them, it's just in my head. But still...

Anyway, I'm going to work on countering this tendancy of mine.

In a round-up of good news in the life of the Obelisk, I just recorded an industrial VO that despite being non-union and unlikely to lead to anything more, had a really stupendous talent fee. So... it's money, and that that's good. And I'm still enjoying the improv classes at Second City. I'm auditioning for their conservatory program which would get me... well, mainly the opportunity to continue paying them money for classes. But I like the classes and I think they only take about 1/3 of the auditioners so I'd be happy if I got in.

That's all for now. I'm going to look at the nekkid chix. Here's one of my recent headshots, btw. It was taken in the NW corner of downtown portland. I like to think of it as my NYPD look.