Even though we think that our official time as a mentoring circle is done, my fellow mentees and I have made plans to keep our meetings continue. We are hoping to stay on an every other month schedule, and we just had our first meeting this week.
I was a bit stressed out about this meeting because I was out-of-town until the day before. While my house wasn’t crazy dirty or anything, I really wanted to be able to clean before everyone arrived. And I had to figure out a time to get to the grocery store to get food for the group, but I had limited time. Fortunately, I had planned ahead and went to the grocery store late on Monday night after flying back home. And my job wasn’t too crazy on Tuesday, so I had some time to do quick bursts of cleaning between customers.
It ended up being another small meeting because some of the others ended up getting last minute conflicts (I’m working on planning future meetings better to hopefully prevent this so more of us can make it). But it is nice having a small group. The small gatherings always seem more like a hangout and less official, but that can be nice from time to time and I think that has allowed me to become really great friends with my fellow mentees.
Of those of us at the meeting, most of us said that we didn’t really have much of an update to share. I was one of those people. In the past 2 months, I really haven’t done a ton for my acting career. I did complete my UCB class and got new headshots, but beyond that I haven’t really done much. I’m still self-submitting for acting parts and I’ve got a couple of things that may be in the works soon, but that’s not really an update. I did end up sharing some of the things that are hopefully going to be in the works and got some great advice on them. But the main part of the advice was I couldn’t do anything until things are progressing.
But even with non-updates, I love hearing what everyone else is doing. I think all of us think at a time that everyone else is further along in their career than them, but it’s nice to see that that’s not the truth. Everyone has leaps at their own pace so there’s no real way to tell who is further in their career than others unless there’s something very concrete to compare to. It’s great to hear what people in other creative jobs other than actors are doing to get ahead in their careers and to learn more about that particular job path. The better educated I am in all aspects of the entertainment industry, the better in my mind.
With the non-updates, we spend most of the time just chatting about random fun stuff. We talked about travel, workouts, dogs, classes, and living in LA. It was a great evening to center myself after a crazy weekend and to help get my mind and career back on track. It was a reminder that even if you haven’t done anything for your career in months, you still have wonderful things to update people about and you shouldn’t discount what you have to say or share. And it was a great night getting to know my friends better and to realize that even though the mentoring circle ended officially, it’s just beginning for real.
