I’m used to working remotely for my day jobs. It’s been that way for quite a while I do think I prefer working from home now. There are so many benefits for me personally to not have to go into an office every day. I know how lucky I am to be able to do this and that not everyone has this opportunity.
But for my acting career, there really isn’t a way to work from home. There are self-tape auditions and things like that, but it’s not exactly the same as working from home. Of course, there are several things I do related to my acting career that I do from my home (or just online through my phone) such as working on self-submissions, but when it comes to booked work that has to be done where the work is.
But what I didn’t realize was how much I could do from home related to my union service. I knew that I could do several things for my slate from home since I do social media and I pretty much run that from my phone. And when my slate has had some meetings and brainstorming sessions, there is usually an option to be there virtually. If there is an in-person meeting, usually you can call in to listen and participate. I can almost always make it to wherever we meet and I do prefer to be in-person to be a part of it, but it’s nice that calling is an option. And sometimes, the meetings my slate has are only phone calls and those are easy enough to be a part of.
But with union service outside of my slate, I know one of the things holding me back in the past was the concern that I couldn’t attend a meeting if I was a part of a committee. I had been an alternate on a national committee before and I knew that those meetings would have to have a call-in option as there are people joining the meeting from all over the country. And now, I do know that the local committees (or at least the ones I am a part of) have that option too.
I’m a member of the local organizing committee and the meetings are during my work hours. I haven’t made it to the union for any of the meetings, but I have called in for every meeting we have. I think being able to call in also goes back to working remotely for my day job since I don’t know if I could do this if I worked in an office. And I do sometimes have to jump in and out of the meeting call if I get a customer call since work is the priority, but I have been lucky that for the 90 minutes once a month that we have these meetings that we haven’t been super busy at my day job. And the co-chairs of the committee understand that I am calling in during work and that I might have to briefly leave the call to do work.
I can’t speak for all the committees, but my understandings is that they usually do have a call-in option since some members may be on set during a meeting and they want to give them a way to still be a part of it. And of course, if someone is working and can call in as I do, then being in a virtual meeting works too. I have tried to be on local committees in the past and wasn’t accepted. But I didn’t push harder to be on those committees because I was afraid that I couldn’t be at the meetings so it wasn’t worth it for me to try. But I should have just asked those committee chairs to see what would be possible.
I guess it’s just like with my fears of going to the local board meetings. If I had just asked someone for more information, I would have realized there was no reason for me to hesitate and I would have gone for it. I can’t go back and change anything I did in the past, but I can make changes for the future. And part of those changes include making sure my fellow union members know of these options so they know they can be a part of things even if something prevents them from being involved in person.
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