No Talent No Jobba

I’ve been in a very weird mood tonight. I found myself terribly down, after a not-so-successful class this evening. We were doing non-verbal improvisations, which are actually not all that rare in commercial audition scenarios. I have a horrendous fear of improv and I crave direction; when left to my own devices I either come out brilliantly or fail horrendously. I was towards the latter end of the spectrum this evening.

Yet again, it was a question of trusting myself, and yet again I proved that I have yet to learn how. My teacher even told me tonight, “You’re wanting to get it right and you’re afraid of getting it wrong. You can do this, stop trying to convince yourself you can’t. You are doing it. You’re doing it well. So let go of that need to be perfect and have fun, because that’s what’s missing”. I almost made me want to cry, because his assessment was so frighteningly accurate and that’s historically such a problem for me – that need for perfection. Later, he told the whole class “You have chosen acting as a profession because you love it. Auditions are 10 minutes out of the day when you get to actually do what you love. Enjoy those 10 minutes. You can either see it as a life or death horrendous and monumental thing or you can have fun doing what you love most.” Very wise words.

In addition to the need for perfection as the root of my fear, I also know that insecurities about my appearance are most definitely at play here. I’ve been feeling like a gargantuan monolithic jaba the hut with pimples, wrinkles and cavernous troughs under my eyes. I’ve been feeling horrendous about my appearance; a situation not improved by the fact that I had to buy an emergency skirt this morning on my way into the stupid day job (because I did not spend the night at my own apartment last night; the post college version of the walk of shame) and it was a most depressing size.

So now I’m feeling like a monolithic pimply faced wrinkled black-eyed jaba the hut who’s completely devoid of talent and should just resign myself to a fate of perpetual stupid day jobs from which no apocalypse will even save me.

Of course this is exactly what my teacher was saying I should stop doing.

See, I’m wholly lacking in listening comprehension as well!

But tomorrow is another day, and I should just go put an end to this one so that I am not exhausted for the upcoming new day that will undoubtedly prove much better than this one turned to be. It was a long day of running all over town – from midwest to northeast to southwest at breakneck speed; it is no wonder I am feeling tired and down on myself.