The Constant Struggle

I’ve spent the past four days in a wonderful world of make-believe. On Saturday and Sunday, I shot a promotional video for the government. On Monday, I replaced the regular stand-in who had an audition in Montreal on one of the many MOWs that shoot in town. They liked me so much that they figured out a way to keep me around for an extra day. I love being on set. The energy you find there is unlike almost anything else I’ve ever experienced. But all that’s over and done with now and I’m back to my everyday life. I feel like someone who’s been high for a while and has just crashed back into the harshness of reality. Needless to say, I’m kinda bummed.

I’ve realized lately that my life is a very delicate balancing act. I’m not just leading a double life anymore, one where I have my acting world and everything else; I’m actually leading a triple life. You see, the “everything else” is now actually divided into two parts: my day job and my family life; and I’m finding it harder and harder to balance it all.

The realization came somewhere around the same time my mother probably realized that this acting thing may not be just a hobby or something I’m going to grow out of eventually.

To me, it’s simple. The dream is to become a working actor and that dream consumes my entire life. Everything and everyone else therefore gets pushed aside in order to accomplish that dream.

Well, that’s how it is on paper anyway. The practicalities of it all are what I’m now having trouble dealing with. I sense I may be pushing my luck with how much time off I can take from work. I hurt people’s feelings because acting obligations force me to back out on previous commitments. I feel like no one wants me to succeed in this endeavour; that everyone would be much happier if I could just settle down, go to “work” on a regular basis, and find some comfortable, quiet routine where my biggest worry would be what to make for dinner that night.

But that won’t make me happy…