New Prospects

The downside is that I have been stuck at home. I have progressively lost motivation with writing, an issue that worsens in times like the present in which I have neglected a consistent workout routine. But as I began to help my mom book her international accommodations for an upcoming trip, she suggested that I could join her for a leg of the journey using her air miles if I helped with her taxes. She has struggled to tackle the taxes for years, and I am no accountant, but I am all for helping her with it. So we have made progress with that, and since we have both been to Scotland, we decided that we would hop on over to Budapest, which, as it turns out, is likely a far more cost-effective trip. Plus, new country and city!

But first, I need to talk to the director of this pilot on Monday. Hopefully a lot of my questions will be answered then. If all goes well, I will be able to confirm shoot dates and get the okay to go on this international trip. Or be told that they will need me on set a lot more, which would also be great news. My current favorite thing to do is act on set, and my second-favorite is to travel to a new place. Since my first favorite thing will pay me money and has potential to make me significantly more money in the future, I will be happy to cancel or cut short my second favorite thing to accommodate the first favorite. An ideal situation would be that we shoot it, I go on this trip with some extra cash to burn, the series gets greenlit, and I finish up the trip while they write the script, and I come back ready to shoot the rest of the season. Oh what a dream it would be!

Also, my car should be finished tomorrow. It might even pass inspection, but if not, I am used to dodging the police. And at the least, I should be safe to drive around for acting roles in the area, which I was unsure about when I first left the car.

Finally Something

It has been weeks of sitting around. I submit for auditions and wait... wait... no car, so I just wait... I write jokes... I wait... I ran out of liquor... I wait... I still have not been doing cardio... I wait... Then last night, I got an audition for a movie role. And the casting director has worked on some major productions! Of course, this shoot potentially happens at the same time as my other one. But they said that they would work around my schedule for that one. So who even knows.

After sending out so many submissions, it is always encouraging to get even that one audition. It reminds me of why I am doing this. Having had the few chances so far to dip my feet back into the industry, to be on set, what I have learned is that it is euphoric. Acting on a set is drugs. I want to do the drug of acting to the point that it makes me physically ill. Pushing my own limits while coordinating and trying to empathize with everyone else involved, bringing something extra to the table when possible, all of it is just so good. It is a nice magical thing to me, because if I suddenly had plenty of money, most of what I can see changing is my geographic location, but it would not scratch that itch.

Comedic Breakthrough

In the last standup workshop I did, I had my usual, a list of new one-liners. When I organized my notes afterward, I was disappointed at first. Only a couple jokes seemed good enough to move into my "ready to perform" section. But when I rewatched the stream to take more thorough notes, I was much happier, because two of my jokes were okay as they were, but were also sort of begging to be expanded a little bit. So I did that. And wow, three jokes that would otherwise have lasted maybe 30-40 seconds altogether now could potentially make that time on their own. And best of all, two of them are very much in the style that I was originally aspiring to write for my standup, though maybe leaning a little more in the direction of Demetri Martin rather than Steve Martin.

The guy working on my car finally got back to me today to officially say that I either needed to sell the car, replace the hybrid battery, or see if the dealership can fix things. And since dealerships are expensive and I do not have a spare car sitting around, I said that we should aim for the hybrid battery replacement. So hopefully he can find one at a salvage yard for a decent price.

I still am not getting enough cardio in, but I am also not in that bad of shape. That being said, I really really hope that my car gets that battery replaced soon, because I really want to have a car that is not constantly on the edge of giving up.

Without Car Or Cardio

A week and a half without a car. It is rough. I have not done any real cardio since then, and workouts are never as thorough without a trip to the gym. Cardio is an antidepressant for me, so some days are harder now than they otherwise would be. The pilot that I have been writing is at around 40 pages, and so much of it needs to change, but it is so intimidating in its current format. I have at least two characters that I want to see more of, but how do I bring them back in? And when? I wish I had a writing partner who was on the same page as me, especially someone who wants to write and direct while I write and play the lead.

I would likely have started donating plasma again just to pay bills, but I cannot even do that without a car. So for now, the focus has been on writing more standup. I just keep trying to churn out one-liners every day, and hopefully that will pay off at some point.

Now that I have some idea how to turn anecdotes into standup, I do want to build them into a fuller act. At first, I just wanted to do the Steve Martin style, but as he said, it took a decade to build up that material. So pulling from life experiences rather than just a collection of nonsequiturs is likely a more realistic way to start. My idealized style of comedy is not necessarily what I get to start with.