One of the biggest downsides to pursuing an acting career is that I am not in that much control. I know that I could create my own work, but that still requires things to happen that I don’t control completely. And with bigger auditions and jobs, it depends on me being called in by the casting director to audition and up to multiple people if they want to hire me. Even with all that uncertainty, I love acting more than anything and could not imagine not pursing it.
But I do crave having creativity in my life and I can’t get that always from acting. It’s tough because I’m not creative in other traditional ways. I can’t draw and actually get frustrated because of my lack of drawing abilities. I’m not really a writer even though I write on here and I’m working on a book. Or maybe I am a writer but I don’t find it a creative outlet? Either way, writing doesn’t fill what I am looking for. I’ve tried so many other things that could fill the creative need in my life and I never have found something that fills me like acting does.
I’ve come to the realization that nothing will be as good as acting is for me. I kind of knew that going into trying to find more creativity in my life. If something made me feel as great as acting does, I would go do that instead. But I still hoped I would find something even though I didn’t think it was possible. So I had to change my mindset so I wasn’t looking for a replacement for the creativity of acting. I was looking for something to supplement acting.
I still probably have some searching to do but at least for now I have found a few things that are adding that creativity I crave in my life. First, the work that I’ve been doing for my union slate has been creative when I wasn’t expecting it to be. The direct work that I’m doing isn’t necessarily creative because I am posting on social media. There is a bit of planning that I guess is a creative thing, but I’m not sure. But the unexpected creativity that I have found with that is that I have been working with our graphic designer (who is a close friend of mine) directly to come up with ideas for what we want to post. While I am not the person doing the creation of the graphics, I do get to have some input with what we are doing. And that’s been awesome.
I’ve also done a little bit of work behind the camera. Working behind the camera is not something that I love or want to pursue. But I guess when it’s for something that I am passionate about and want to be a part of no matter what, I do enjoy it. I can’t share too much about what I worked on, but it was with many of my friends. I was in charge of helping with teleprompter work which really has no creativity involved. But I was sitting right below the camera to run it and was very close to what was being filmed. Getting to watch someone work through different takes was something I normally don’t get to experience. While I’m used to different takes when I’m filming something, I usually am a part of that scene too so I can’t just sit back and watch the process. It was almost like getting to watch an acting class with someone who is such a talented actor. The day I was behind the camera was actually a tough day for me before I got there. And while I was there and after I left, I was in a much better mood.
I still want to find other ways I can be creative that I have the ability to control. I don’t know if that means finding things that I haven’t tried that I can do or to find a way to make writing feel more creative. I would love any suggestions you all have because I know that being creative does make me happy and I want to have as much of that as possible.
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Continuing To Find Ways To Be Creative (or Podcasts and Online Shows)
Productive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time)
Figuring Out The Next Step (or I Need To Keep Acting)
Being Proactive (or Bringing Acting To Me)
You Are The Union (or Finding More Ways To Educate Other Union Members)
Finding More Ways To Help Via Social Media (or Continuing To Share Good Things)
