No end in sight
Posted December 31st, 2003 by Sean WilliamsI’m just so goddam tired.
This is one of those nights where it doesn’t matter how little sleep you get the nights before, or how sick you are, you just aren’t sleeping.
The last two nights have been, from eyethud to eyesnap, packed with nightmares. One featuring a dying man under my couch who was trying to get my attention by grabbing at my ankles. I deal with my nightmares pretty well, I lucid dream about 75% of the time, (so, y’know, there goes the theory that it leads to any kind of enlightenment). A lot of times in dreams when I’m not getting a straight answer from someone I’ll yell, “Aha! *You* can’t tell me, because *I* don’t already know! This is a dream, mother fucker!”
But the nightmares pale in comparison to my own fury about my employment situation. I’ve spent so much time in my life crying wolf about work that I guess I have to have periods of honest failure in order to make up for it.
My LA scam was this: I can’t get work because I don’t have headshots, I can’t get headshots because I don’t have any money because I don’t have any work. (Someone offers to get me headshots). I don’t want headshots now because I’m gonna lose weight. As soon as I can afford a personal trainer, which I can’t afford because I’m not working…
It’s bullshit, and I don’t know why no-one called me on it. The truth is, I wanted fame and riches and I didn’t want to do grunt work to get it, or, more accurately, the moment I humiliate myself to do grunt work, I lost my skill as an artist and the grunt work I actually do is usually bad.
But that isn’t the case now. I’m trying my damnedest. I really am. The acting thing? I don’t care if I make no money, I’m just trying to do the best work I can, and I’m trying to continue working because at least the quality of the work will remain high, and then when the financial opportunities present themselves, I’ll be ready and capable.
But the music publishing stuff is actually making me sad, making it hard for me to sleep. The employers who do love me and who send me work are dear people who have a couple thousand dollars worth of work for me a year. Sometimes more. And I like them a lot as people and I really enjoy working for them.
But every other thing I have tried to do has been met with… God, there’s no resistance, no nothing. It’s been met with giant smiles and accolades for my skills and promises of work that simply have *never* materialized. “I’d love to work with you,” says I. “We’d love that as well, you’re fantastic! We’d like you to be a part of this project!” says they.
And then I wait.
“We should really be rolling by October 1, the middle of October at the latest…”
And I’m still waiting.
God, I’m really stinking good at this stuff. I can do it for them, or for anyone, for practically no money. I’m a relatively talented guy, but more than that I can tell talent from three long city blocks away, I can find you exactly what you are looking for and I can get it from someone hungry and willing to work cheap. And YOU KNOW IT. YOU’RE the one who TOLD me this.
I wanna marry this awesome girl and I want her to have a better reason for having babies with me than my fucking crooked tooth gene. I don’t want her to get choked up when I give her diamond earrings because she knows I can’t afford it. I want her to get choked up because they’re too damn big to wear on her ears. I want to get her earrings that she hates because they are so big. I want her to wake up in the morning with pillow filling covering her head from where the giant diamond ripped out divets.
I don’t dare to dream to be a well paid actor, I just want to act and I figure the rest is gravy. But I really should be a well paid producer, both in terms of theater and recording. I am in a different place now than I was in LA, I don’t have a scam, I’m actually trying to make everything happen as well as I know how. It just isn’t happening yet, and since I know I lied to myself and everyone else for so long, I hope this isn’t retribution.