“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
Earl Nightingale
It seems sometimes you risk going a completely different direction and it benefits you nothing. If anything it gets you chewed out and feeling pretty terrible about your work. But that’s not even the worst of it. I hate feeling like I let my scene partner down and last night I did. I don’t know what we did, I can assure you it wasn’t the play, but why did it go the way that it did? I don’t even know what was so wrong about it; and that is what kills me.
It was obvious that it was wrong but I cannot articulate why. Which leaves me back to square one in that I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like I take one step forward only to go 10 steps backwards. The same thing happened with another scene of mine this week. I let my partner down again. My work was lazy, glib, and not truthful to the given circumstances. I played in a direction that was all wrong. I didn’t earn anything of what I was saying.
Why do I keep going down these paths? What keeps me from putting my truth in the given circumstances? Why am I doing this? There is so much frustration in all of this and so much doubt. I have developed so little faith in my acting abilities. People who have come after me are taking leaps and bounds in progress ahead of me. But that’s the thing, I cannot compare myself or my journey to anyone else.
This is a big struggle and sometimes it seems like it has won and all I want to do is quit and give up. But that is just simply not an option. Should this have been me from even a couple years ago and I would have. So I am very thankful for coming to acting when I did. This race is far from over and even still just yet beginning. So I’m struggling, so I’m failing to process and understand at times, so I’m failing to keep up with some of my peers, so I’m failing to be that actor and artist I can be in this time, place, and moment? So what of it all? One has to be invested in their dreams for the long run, the present struggle and doubt is not a reflection of the long haul, unless one quits.