Tag Archives: workshops

Another Goal Setting Session (or A Quarterly Check In)

Posted on October 5, 2017 | Comments Off on Another Goal Setting Session (or A Quarterly Check In)

The podcast I work for has started to do quarterly check ins/goal setting workshops, and we just had our 3rd quarter check in this past weekend. I hosted it again at my house (even though it means I have to clean it also means I don’t have to worry about getting somewhere) and we had a really great group at the workshop.

A lot of what we did this time was the same as last time, but that’s not a bad thing since we aren’t in the same place now as we were 3 months ago. We started with just chatting together and getting to know each other before we moved on to the more serious work. But since most of us didn’t know each other, getting to chat a bit helped to make us all comfortable since this can be very personal work and we didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable sharing.

The first thing we did was the 4 Tendencies quiz by Gretchen Rubin. This was the same quiz that we did last time and I had the same results that I had the first time. I wasn’t surprised since I was pretty strong in what tendencies I fit into the first time, but it was still cool to take it again to see what happened. And I believe that nobody else in the group had done this quiz before so it was fun watching them discover what each thing meant and what tendencies they fit into.

After that, we worked on our personal reviews of the past 3 months. This was broken down into multiple sections. First, we wrote down what didn’t work. I had a bunch of things to put in that section, but I realized that there was a theme when I was writing. So many things that didn’t work had to do with me not feeling like I deserve something or am worthy of something or that I was letting someone else set the rules and guidelines for the situation. Some of this was related to dating and some of this was related to work. But so many thing fit into those descriptions and I hadn’t realized that until I was writing it down.

Next we wrote down what is important to us right now in life. This was more varied for me than what didn’t work. I had things like being more open and honest, working on union work and my acting career, strengthening my relationships with friends and family, and working on my fitness.

The next section was a two-parter. First, we wrote down what we want. For me, that included having success in my acting career, living within my means, having healthy and happy relationships, and getting into recovery for my eating disorder. The second part was what we wanted to live through ourselves. I want generosity, helpfulness, and being of service to come through me. I know that those are all pretty similar, but I feel like when I can help that I am at my strongest so I want to do that as often as I can.

The final section was what is next for us for the next 3 months to bring us to the end of the year. And mine fell into the ideas that I had written in the previous sections. I want to stop tolerating mediocrity in myself and in others. I don’t want to give up control to others because that doesn’t do anyone any good to just go along with things. I want to be more active in multiple aspects of my life. And I want to work on living a full life and not to forget to have a life outside of the routine I’m already in.

After we went through those sections, everyone had the opportunity to share and everyone did share. All of us are working through very different things, but that didn’t mean we didn’t learn from each other. I was taking notes as everyone else was talking and I got some great ideas that I know I want to use for myself. And after we reviewed what we had written, we all worked on some action steps to take to make sure we work on what we had written. For me, the action steps all boiled down to one main idea: stop taking crap from people and when I want to be involved in something that I should not worry about it and go for it. Obviously that is easier said than done, but it has given me something to think about.

We ended the workshop with some visualization and discussion of affirmations. Even though I use a daily affirmation app, I got some ideas for affirmations that are more specific to me and I’m looking into how to create some sort of affirmation alert for myself that randomizes which one I see. I won’t have time to work on that for a little bit, but hopefully I can do it during this last quarter of the year.

Even though I’m pretty big on goal setting for myself, having these workshops is so amazing and I always learn so much from them. I learn more about myself and what I’m thinking about situations. And I learn how I want to change things and create real action steps that I can take to accomplish them. It’s very empowering and I’m already looking forward to the workshop we have for the first quarter of 2018!

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A Goal Setting Experience (or Mindfulness Seems To Be A Theme)

Posted on July 5, 2017 | Comments Off on A Goal Setting Experience (or Mindfulness Seems To Be A Theme)

I’ve been pretty good about setting goals for myself. I set goals each year that I want to be able to accomplish in a year. I also set weekly and monthly goals in my Volt Planner. While goal setting is relatively new to me, I feel like I’ve gone in head first and really have embraced it. I like to have things to try to achieve and while it is frustrating when I don’t make a goal I’m learning how to be ok with that.

So when the podcast I work for was going to do a goal setting workshop, I was so excited to be able to participate! I ended up hosting the event at my house because it is a pretty central location and my living room is a good space to hold events like this. It ended up being a pretty small group, but I think that allowed everyone to get more out of this workshop than they would have if we had more people.

The workshop was based around the idea of the 4 Tendencies that Gretchen Rubin created. There was a quiz to take to help us figure out what type of person we are. Of the 4 Tendencies, I was a pretty even mix of 3 of them (Upholder, Questioner, and Obliger). I don’t know what I was expecting, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be the other type (Rebel). But to be a mix of the other ones was interesting.

I know that some of the reasons I’m a mix is because of my OCD and panic/anxiety disorder along with me wanting to be a perfectionist. But I totally want to look more into these things so I can learn more about each type and see if there is a way I can maximize knowing this to help me do better with my habits and goals for the future. I haven’t really thought about how I could adjust my goal setting process to benefit me so this was really educational for me.

After learning about what type of person we were, the next step was to work on our goals. I’ve already got so many goals for the year and I really didn’t want to cover something that I already am working on. We were advised to try to only set goals for parts of our lives that we need to work on. If we have a goal but are making good progress, we shouldn’t be writing it down since that goal is working.

So for me, the first thing I wanted to do was to write what is working in my life so I can remove my focus from that. The main things that are working for me right now are my day jobs and my exercise. I do have goals for both of those things right now, but I’m doing really great with them so I didn’t need to brainstorm more about it. And once I had that written down I worked on focusing on what I wanted to do.

I got it narrowed down to 3 aspects of my life that I know I want to set goals in. I want to have new goals in my personal relationships, financial life, and my recovery effort. I wrote down several things within each aspect that I know I want to accomplish in the long-term. Most of them are pretty basic, but again it’s always good to write stuff down. I don’t have a lot of variety in what I want to set goals to do, but those few things that I’m focused on aren’t necessarily the easiest.

For personal relationships, that’s about dating and friendships. I want to be more active on both sides. I need to set more plans and not have my relationships just be virtual (FB with my friends and online dating with dating). I want to be ok with being bossy or forceful with trying to make plans. I’ve been ok with being wishy-washy and not trying to get something scheduled. But I don’t want to be ok with that anymore. That’s how I can go months without seeing a friend or spend weeks messaging back and forth with a guy online. I want to be more aware of the relationships that I’m focusing on and not getting as distracted.

For finances, I want to stay aware as well. I’m doing pretty great with that so far but I want to make sure that it continues for a long time. Mindless spending is easy to do (especially with online shopping) and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to use shopping as a distraction for something else. And hopefully by doing that I will reduce my spending, get my debt more in control, and be in a better place financially.

And for my recovery, it’s a very similar thing. I want to work on being more aware. I want to use what I’ve learned recently in therapy and really work hard and seriously on taking those steps. I don’t want to make excuses for myself and to take responsibility for whatever I chose to do. I don’t want to let my eating disorder rule me. I want to be making choices, even if those choices are bad ones.

After writing down these ideas and 90 day and 6 month goals for each one, I totally noticed a theme. Everything is about being mindful and aware. I don’t know why this has become such an important thing to me now, but clearly it’s something I need to focus on. I don’t feel like I’ve been on auto-pilot, but maybe I have and I just didn’t realize it. Maybe I needed to combination of my appointment with my therapist and this goal setting workshop in the same week to come to this realization.

Whatever brought this realization to me, I’m glad that it’s more obvious than ever on what I want to focus on and what I think I really need to do. Saying that I’ll be more mindful is easy to say but hard to do. But I think that having some action steps and ideas is going to help me get closer to accomplishing this mindfulness now and hopefully things will snowball from there in the right direction.

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

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General Meeting (or Hanging Out With A Casting Director For Free)

Posted on October 9, 2014 | 2 comments

This week, I had a general meeting with a casting director.

For those of you who aren’t actors, a general meeting is when a casting director takes some time to meet with you even though they might not be casting something in particular then. They get to know you a little and sometimes you read a scene from an old script.

While this sounds like a great concept and it used to happen more often, sadly this is a rarity for actors to find these days. More often you will have to pay to meet a casting director.

Paying to meet a casting director is technically illegal, but they still happen. They are called workshops and companies promote them by saying that this particular casting director is coming in because they have to cast a certain role.

And to meet them, you have to pay a fee (and in turn the casting director who attends gets paid to be there).

I’ve always found this to be a bit sketchy. If the casting director’s job is to find talent to fill a role, why do we have to pay to be considered? And being at a workshop is not an audition for a particular role. It’s more like an audition to get an audition.

For non-acting jobs, it would be like paying to apply for a job posting that you found. Not paying a monthly (or yearly) fee for a site and you can apply to all the jobs you want. But paying $20-80 (that’s typically what it costs for each workshop) for each resume you send out.

That’s why I find it a little ridiculous. If you disagree with me, I first ask you to check out these two webpages. And if you still disagree with me, that is your opinion and I’m not going to stop anyone from spending their money how they want to spend it. I just want to speak out for anyone who is on the fence if they should be spending their money on workshops.

Those two webpages have information from Billy DaMota. He is the biggest anti-workshop advocate in my opinion and he is always happy to tell actors about free workshops around town (sadly there are very few). He seems to be looking out for actors as much as he can.

And Billy DaMota was the casting director who did the general with me this week. He took me out to lunch (he paid but because I was going to workout right after I only had a juice) and we had a nice chat. We discussed my background and a recent audition that I did for a project that he cast. We also discussed the podcast I work for (he was a guest on it in the past) and some guests that he has in mind for us.

While I didn’t audition for him for any parts, to me this industry is about building real relationships with people. I know that if Billy sees that my agents have submitted me for a part that he agrees I’m right for, he will bring me in. He wants to see me succeed as an actor.

And while I have plenty of friends who do workshops and have said that that is the reason that they booked a particular role, for me that is not a priority for spending my money. I need to focus on paying down my debt (it’s still not as low as I’d like it to be but it’s moving in the right direction) and getting into another acting class. And while there are many casting directors who claim that they will not bring you in unless you are well-known or attend one of their workshops (I’ve had 3 casting directors tell me this in the past year), I have actually gone into all of their offices without ever having to spend a cent. While technically I have not booked anything, attending a workshop doesn’t guarantee a booking either.

Basically what I want you all to know after reading this post today is if you are an actor, you don’t have to spend money to meet casting directors if you don’t want to. And if you need any advice from a casting director, I highly recommend contacting Billy DaMota and asking him. He’s more than happy to answer questions.

At least reasonable questions. Don’t ask him if he can cast you in something. šŸ˜‰

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Enjoying My Union Perks (or How To Take Advantage Of Things That Are Offered To You)

Posted on June 28, 2013 | 2 comments

I’ve been a member of SAG-AFTRA for over a year now. I originally joined AFTRA prior to the merger vote, and now I’m a member of the merged unions.

And besides having better work opportunities, better pay, and protection on set (something I could have used in the past), there are lots of other things that are out there for union actors.

First of all, there are free casting director workshops through the SAG Foundation. A big controversial thing in the acting world are casting director workshops that you pay for. I don’t want to start a debate on here, but my belief is that you should not pay to audition for a casting director. You wouldn’t pay to have a job interview in a day job, so why would you do it for an acting job? If you don’t understand what paid casting director workshops are and want to know more about them, I suggest watching this video.

The SAG Foundation also offers free screenings and Q&As throughout the year. In fact, the podcast that I work for did a live 100th episode at the SAG Foundation interviewing the leadership of SAG-AFTRA.

Another great thing through the union that actors can take advantage of is the SAG-AFTRA Film Society. You have to pay for the membership and you can only apply in the spring for the upcoming year. But there are free screenings for Film Society members about twice a month (I’ve already gone to “The Great Gatsby” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” and will be going to “Man of Steel” tomorrow). Plus, you get this awesome membership card!

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Another membership within the union that you can join is the SAG-AFTRA Conservatory. I’ll admit that I haven’t taken advantage of being a member of the conservatory this past year. I need to get better about that. However they do have a big weekend event coming up next month and I’m planning on signing up for at least 4 classes.

Also, as many people who belong to other unions know, there are discounts available to union members. This page lists just some of what you can take advantage of as a member of SAG-AFTRA. I personally use the IMDBPro discount. And a lot of my friends use the ATT discount (my cell service is Verizon and there isn’t a SAG-AFTRA discount for them).

If you are a union actor, hopefully I’ve given you some new ideas of how to take advantage of your membership. And if you aren’t a union actor, maybe I’ve made you think about joining. Either way, I have to say that for me, becoming a union actor was one of the best things that I’ve done for my career. And whether or not you are a union actor, if you have any questions, you should give SAG-AFTRA a call. They are so wonderfully helpful and really want to make sure that all actors are taken care of.

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