I was made aware last week that a friend of mine won a Daytime Emmy Award. I am ridiculously proud of him. But..there's a part of me that can't help but wonder what my life would become if I had won a Daytime Emmy Award. If you think that was out of my reach...you are wrong. Even I didn't know how close I was to such a thing. My dear friend who won this prestigious Hollywood award won for doing the same exact job that I spent a good part of last year doing. And it was a job that he said I was better at than he was, so...yeah...potentially I could've had one.
That's an interesting bit of knowledge to sit with. As most actors have done in the past, or possibly do before they go to bed every single night, I have spent some time talking into a toothbrush in front of the mirror accepting my Grammy, Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe. I have also rehearsed my answers for James Lipton's famous "Inside the Actors Studio" interview, and of course I've done the celebrity questionarre at the end of each Vanity Fair that comes to my mail box. Sometimes the answers change, most have been the same for years. I guess I'm dying to share those answers with the world some day. The point is, ever since I was a little girl I've fantasized that I was on Star Search, Kids Incorporated, You Can't Do That On Televion, MTV, SNL, Curb Your Enthusiasm, any Woody Allen picture, or even an Almodavar...you name it, I've wanted to be a part of it. But...have I REALLY wanted to be a part of it?
This is the question on the table today.
"Do not have a fallback career...or you will fall back on it"~ Rosie O'donnell
"I slept on the kitchen floor of a woman's apartment when I first moved to New York"~Jennifer Gardner
"You have to want it like you will DIE if you don't get it"~Jennifer Lopez
Jeez, I could go on with those all day long. There are crazy stories from tons of successful Hollywood types of not having enough money for food, hitchhiking to auditions, crashing auditions, sleeping their way to the top (Pam Anderson), you name it...a lot of major Hollywood players have done it.
I've never considered sleeping on someone's kitchen floor so that I can afford acting classes. And yes, this is what people have to do...those classes are $250 a month...add all of the other ridiculous expenses of pursuing your 15 minutes and that could leave anyone homeless.
Now, I gave my pursuit of the acting thing up quite a few years ago. It didn't seem worth it to me. Nothing ever does if you don't really believe you can ever achieve it, but I think it's more than that. As we've seen from the music industry, if you want to have anyones attention for more than five minutes, you have to get naked and sell your artistic soul to the devil. Don't let Lady Gaga fool you...she's making compromises. I'm sure of it. P-p-p-p-Pokerface p-p-p-Poker face. Really? THAT'S the message you've been longing to share with the world? I don't think so. That woman has to put the good songs in the "I can sing them to myself in the shower cause the world has ADD and the record companies won't support me if I put quality out there...I'm a PERFORMER...not a songwriter...for now" file. And don't get me wrong, she's able to do A LOT, I'm just saying...she's only putting the stuff out there that will make a record company money. She's got other songs and other messages. And if she doesn't...then that only goes to prove my point further.
Now about that Emmy...That job didn't seem worth it either. It was a production/director job and I liked the actual WORK, but I didn't like the atmosphere or the energy of the workplace and I knew that there was no way I would ever be happy losing sleep to make television. If I had known I could potentially win an Emmy...I might have re-thought that, but...I made my decision and I have to live with it. If they called me tomorrow...I wouldn't show up, so...I guess I don't really want an Emmy that badly after all. But I guess I will always wonder what it would've been like to have one.
The fact of the matter is, I don't fit in to the Hollywood lifestyle. I've tried various ways to do so and they've never worked out. As much as I've THOUGHT I've wanted certain things, whenever it's come down to it...I've never gone above and beyond to achieve them. Until now...
Thank goodness for Yoga. I will be starting my second stretch of training and I've been studying Yoga philosophy and some other Yoga related materials since I've been out of training. I dove right in to teaching and it felt very natural. I like the idea of being my own boss and of not being in a field where I am going to be judged according to some arbitrary standard that has no rhyme or reason. I'm going to be out there helping people and growing as an individual. What higher Honor need one receive than to know that they are a part of the solution?
"Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?"~Coldplay
I think all I've ever really wanted out of life since I graduated from high school was to know what I wanted to do for the rest of it. It has taken me a VERY VERY VERY long time to figure this out. Unfortunately our society doesn't see fit to give anyone that much time to figure out something so important, so as a result of such a slow process, I've spent a lot of time hating myself simply for trying to figure out who that SELF is and who she wants to be. Shame on society for setting it up that way. And shame on me for not telling society to go FUCK ITSELF!
I have only one regret in life at this point and that is that I didn't believe that I could have the things that I wanted. I'm going to be spending a lot of time working on forgiving myself for that, and for accepting those things that may have passed me by.
Now all I really want is to be free of the "rules" and "standards" that come from nowhere and are upheld by faceless nobodies. I will be the only judge of my life's work. I don't think that I need an Emmy or any other award to tell me that I'm good at something. I already knew I was good at it. I chose to not follow that path. It's hard to reconcile 36 years of mental and emotional programming, but that IS all that it is...programming. And I have control over all of that now. I am the master of my mind and my emotions and it is freeing, but it does take work. For the first time...it doesn't FEEL like work. That's when they say you've found your true calling...when you can take something you feel passionate about that you enjoy doing and you can make a living at.
Thank freakin' God. It took me long enough, but I think I'm here. And the good news is, I don't have to sleep on anyone's kitchen floor, I don't have to fall back on anything else (nor do I have to fall ONTO--or under anyone else), and I most certainly don't feel like I'm going to die if I don't get it. I've already got it.
And the winner is:
Me:)
