There’s a thing that keeps so many creatives going. It’s that excitement about the possibility at the end of a project or a pursuit. This excitement is what can burn us out and threaten our health and stability, but it is also what makes it possible for us to push and excel when things are challenging. I encourage creatives to only use this excitement as a last resort, but to turn their focus to the work.
Reminder: we love doing the work.
We can stay motivated by celebrating the work, not the reward. We remind ourselves we wanted to be actors to act, not to get Tonys. We perform to perform. And we pat ourselves on the back for doing the work.
We don’t need passion to function. This is good news. We are not frauds when we’re working without passion. We don’t have to wait for passion to strike to do great work. We can still celebrate when we don’t even know why we’re doing our stuff.
A top human fear is public speaking. The common thinking is that entertainers are special because they’ve overcome that fear and that’s why they do what they do. Wrong again, common sense!
I don’t have much fear of getting up in front of a crowd. I first noticed this in second grade when another kid couldn’t stomach playing his part in the school play. I stepped in and did his line. I was the cricket and the lady bug!!! Who knows how disturbing it must have been to the audience to see the same actor in both roles! It was definitely less disturbing than leaving out the ladybug’s crucial sentence. The plot did not collapse and I was a hero.
Even though I’m rarely stage frightened, there are tons of pro entertainers who are. It’s hard to identify one link that keeps us all in the business, but rest-assured it’s not some lack of fear.
This concept produces crappy performers
When folks believe that fear of performing is what separates the audience from the showperson, things get skewed. Those folks believe they need to get over the fear, or cope with it. As soon as the fear is at bay, they are an entertainer.
There are celebrity entertainers that puke often before going in front of a crowd.
We don’t need to get rid of stage fright to be entertainers. Once we get stage-brave, we will not have achieved some mark of being good entertainers.
The job is about all the other stuff
The real job is so little about the courage to get on stage, or even the skills demonstrated usually. The majority of the job is showing up uninjured enough to do another show. We spend all day trying to not die so that we can do our 15 minutes on stage. Singers are trying to not get phlegmy, acrobats are trying to not pull muscles, comedians are trying to not get too drunk. We need to know how to travel, how to use our equipment, how to sleep enough, how to whatever to maintain.
There’s a lot of work that goes in to all the life stuff that people just don’t see on stage – and that’s great. I don’t need audiences to know about that. In fact, not sharing that part is a gift to the audience. I do want performers and would-be performers to know that there’s a lot more iceberg.
You’re not doing it wrong if you’re doing a lot of slog.
If it’s not worth it to you to slog for your moment on stage, this isn’t the career for you.
Live entertainment is made of proximity. We need things to be cuddled. People keep asking me when I’m bringing Scot Nery’s Boobietrap back and my answer is “When it’s fun to get together again!”
The best way to experience comedy is packed in, shoulder to shoulder. The front row is arms-length to the performer. The ceiling is low. The seating is dense. We are in it together. When something affects one of us, it affects all of us. We laugh and breathe together.
This is the tribal experience. The most amazing version of it was when I was performing on the street. It would be a complete mix of people from different walks of life who didn’t even plan on being in that spot at that time. They all came together to laugh and clap and celebrate humanity. Nobody was an outsider, there was nothing to protect. It was all “us” and no “them.” Doing what humans have evolved to do.
I’m in a resort now doing stage shows for people, but we’re not there yet. There’s still suspicion. There’s still personal space. There’s still masks and Purell. I don’t want people to stop taking precaution at all, but I do want a little bit to figure out ways to get people into a village together sitting around a fire and knowing that sometimes, we’re all one.
We need to show up. That’s our job as creatives. We need to show up in our power, with our value, and be ready to work.
Our job is not to reject ourselves. That’s the gatekeepers’ job and it’s great. Sometimes we’re tempted to…
Decide that a job isn’t for us
Tell the gatekeeper the reasons they might not want to pick us
This is selfish.
This is us trying to protect ourselves. This is not us serving the gatekeeper or anyone the gatekeeper is trying to serve. Let’s show up as our awesome selves. Let’s see what we can do next from our wheelhouse. Let’s move and bring power. Even if we’re not right for a job, bringing our power is inspirational and a relief to the people around us.
I’m not saying to get out there and do everything all the time. I’m saying do the next step in the process if it’s applicable. Test the limits. Maybe it doesn’t feel like we’re exactly right for something but we end up being more right than anyone else. We have trouble seeing our own value sometimes and it needs to be explored. Our imposter syndrome, or our fear of rejection can keep us from stepping up to the plate when the world needs us.
People ask me how to make it in the business, or how to break into Hollywood, or how to be successful. A lot of folks in showbiz laugh at these questions because they’re ridiculous, but they’re not stupid questions. The question is based on a common belief that there’s a global endpoint or a high-water mark, but the ridiculous part is that there is none. I don’t blame the asker of the question.
The way to answer these questions is by following two paths…
One path is get specific.
What does it mean to break into Hollywood? Does it mean to be set for life financially and have 10% of the US know my name? Does it mean to get hired to direct a commercial for one of the top 7 beer companies? If we figure out the specific meaning of success to us, we can work to achieve it. It has to be very specific, though and can’t have caveats.
The benefit of this is that we have clarity and we’re solving problems to get to a goal. Life is a game.
The downside is we can fail. It’s daunting to commit to a big goal. Also, when we accomplish our thing, it probably won’t feel like we expect. What then? Do we just stop our work?
The other path is to live in success.
If I want to be a screen writer and I sit down with a pen and paper this moment and start writing a screenplay, I’m a success. I’m a screen writer. If I want to be an actor, I can download a script, find someone else online that wants to read the script with me, or walk up to people on the street and ask them if I can act for them, then do it.
SUCCESS!
With this approach of doing, we have the opportunity to fill our time with the thing we care about and get better at it at the same time. That’s living a successful life.
If we want to make it in entertainment, one way is to make it… to make… to make actual stuff and live in the work.
The benefit of this is that if we feel successful where we are, we are more likely to feel successful in a few years when we’ve accomplished more. If we feel unsuccessful now, we are practicing that feeling. We will create more work and we’ll search less for meaning in the work besides the completion of it.
The downside is we can get bummed out not knowing our timeline. We can get distracted and possibly uninspired to keep growing.
Balance it out
We can find balance and flow in a combination of paths. When we get general about success, that’s basically a way for us to dive into distraction or depression. Getting specific can help us evaluate what we’re doing right now.
Celebrating the work instead of the reward gives us daily motivation and takes some of the pressure off. It reminds us why we’re doing it and helps us get straight about what matters as a creative: creating.
There are a bunch of magicians saying that when things open back up again online shows will be dead. Are they right? No cliffhanger here…
THEY ARE WRONG
Magicians were the most successful growing solo variety entertainment category during covid lockdown. They found innovative ways to engage and dazzle at-home fans. Many had their best financial year ever in 2020 due to the hunger of audiences and the popular access telecommuting provided.
Now, as people can start to go to live shows more, is it the end of online entertainment like magic shows? Heck no! Online entertainment didn’t start with someone eating a bat and it’s not going to end now, but this is definitely a time of pruning. Entertainers who wish to do Zoom shows or other video interactive live entertainment (VILE) can’t phone it in. We’re leaving the era of starting a soup kitchen for starving audiences and entering an era where VILE must come from a high end pastry chef. There are way more soup kitchens than pastry chefs and they’re way easier to keep busy.
Twitch, Youtube, Netflix, and the video game industry are all doing tons of real time interactive stuff online, so no, it is not dying.
As we’re making more VILE we need to add more empathy, more user experience expertise, and really exploit the medium for everything it has to offer. More than ever, audiences want unique and bespoke experiences. Automation can help us provide that. Let’s go!
Here we are! People are canceling things all the time, showing up late, disappearing. Timelines are expanding forever and we don’t know what’s gonna come up next. The reason is not because people are worse. It’s not because we’re worse. It’s because we’re better. We are flying through a meteor swarm.
Space Sucks
I’m always taken out of it when, in spaceship movies, they’re flying through a meteor swarm or some other bunch of objects, and they’re acting like they’re driving a car. When we’re driving on the road, we know the rules, we have lines to follow, and we assume most of the other objects on the road are going to obey the rules. Meteors don’t GAF. Also, a car drives in two dimensions while a space ship is going in three + there’s yaw, pitch, and roll. About a thousand more things to think about even if you were driving through space at 65 miles per hour.
It’s too much
BACK ON EARTH… The reason we’re messing up so much stuff; the reason we’re so slow on everything suddenly; the reason we don’t have the gusto we had is that there’s more stuff and every stuff-thing is complicated. We now have the responsibility to evaluate how we’re doing things. We now feel the responsibility to make our own choices about everything and to do it right for everyone.
Shoes used to be easier
We used to go to a store or a shoe store and grab some shoes that
looked good
Maybe there were 100 choices. We’re pretty good with 100 choices. Now, we have all the choices of the world. We can get them new, refurbished, preserved, custom, made to measure. We need to pick shoes that represent…
That’s just shoes. That’s just one small choice in our lives.
We want to be happy with our purchase. We know everyone else knows that we have every choice in the world, so if we mess it up, it must be because we’re dumb dumbs. It’s a lot of expectation. It’s a lot of pressure. This simple choice is not simple anymore.
It’s up to us
When we go through disturbing events like the pandemic, we’re not riding in a train anymore. We’re in a meteor swarm where every direction is an option and every obstacle is possible. We make thousands of decisions per day – from where to go for dinner to how to grab a door knob.
Now that we have more options than ever and a sense of more responsibility for making the world a better place, every one of these decisions gets heavier.
We cant solve it, and I don’t think we want to.
What we can solve is our impatience, or resentment of our new state.
I *made* an online fundraising event for a school. I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.
The credits roll. The credits in movies were weird to me for a long time and they still kinda are.
They’re long
Most people don’t read them
They’re not in a great order (not that I know a better order for them)
They thank everyone kinda the same amount
Didn’t everyone get paid for the work they did in the movie?
I am grateful
Yesterday, I put together a list of 20 people who helped me make the fundraiser happen. It was cool to see them in a list all together and think about all the things they contributed. I love being around driven creators, so it was fun to think about the things they innovated that I would have never done. I sent them messages thanking them and it was really fun.
Sometimes I can get really into what’s next – excited about ambition. I can get really distracted by that. I can feel independent and powerful in my fantasy of the future. When I put the brakes on, it’s hard at first… but then it lowers my heart-rate, reminds me of the beauty of others, and reminds me that I share in some of that beauty too.
If you haven’t read it yet, I wrote about the trust involved in hiring a creative and I think it’s pretty great wisdom from my past. Working with killer talent is super fun.
I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.
I love Parkinson’s Law. It resets me a lot. Sometimes I get lost in action. I forget that I have the power to define what ‘done’ looks like.
Banging my head against a wall
There is this one computer generated video thing that I’ve been trying to create for a long time. It’s a sequin shimmer wall.
The sequins dangle on nails and move with the wind. I love the way it looks and I’ve tried a bunch of times to make it look right completely from scratch inside a computer. I really wanted this effect for my green screen background in this online event, but alas… I have not conquered it.
The graphics guy I’m working with is super awesome and I thought maybe he could do it. I gave him notes, he made some tweaks, it didn’t come out right. I took it and tried a few things. It wasn’t working. I thought, “How long is this going to take? How much is this going to push everything else back? When will it be done?
When will it be done?
It will be done when I say it’s done. That means I can stop it now. If I want it done now, I can accept its imperfections, or I can find footage that is better and be done. I will find footage.
Sometimes this kind of pursuit gets so blinding that I forget the client never asked for a sequin wall. I never promised a sequin wall. I’m the only one (besides the graphics guy) that knows what I’m hoping for.
I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.
Sometimes the most helpful work to do next is sleep.
I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.
The other posts in this series, I’ve been trying to be vulnerable and transparent about my process and the mindsets that help or hinder me. I think candor is really helpful for all of us to feel connected and so that we can understand that our cloudy thinking is not the mile-marker to follow.
Today I had fun. I’m talking to and working with people that I TRUST. I wrote a post a long time ago about hiring and artist and how important trust is. Not only does this practice give me good results and let me relax; it motivates and inspires me. I love seeing people who are good at what they do. I love it when they correct me and tell me something that might be more efficient or more powerful in their wheel house. I love when they deliver on something impossible. I love it when they aren’t just reading my mind, but it seems like they’re predicting where my mind will be and then reading it. I love it when they surprise me with inspiration that is from another universe.
I think the trust goes both ways. The more I trust these incredible collaborators, the more they know I’m not going to snap at them, or waste their time, or disrespect their effort. That makes work easier for all of us and gives us the chance to boost each other up!
It’s a blast. It’s important to me to remember that unexpected things happen all the time, and I can focus on the half of them that are good.
I’m *making* an online fundraising event for a school. I thought maybe people would gain something by seeing my process for creating, rehearsing, collaborating, and performing the event… So, here I am sharing.
I’ve done it! That makes it hard. When beginning in entertainment, I had all the pressure behind me. The enthusiasm, the desire to see my visions come to life, the mystery. Now, I’ve done it. I have found success. Now the pressure is in front of me.
I feel pressure to stop
I have experience, I have resources, I have knowledge, I have network, I have jokes, I have money. It seems like things would be easier, and they are in many ways. The motivation pressure is often reversed, though. I have already done a great online performance, I’ve already impressed everyone I wanted to impress. I’ve already gotten validation from my parents. Now, I have the chance (in my mind) to lose all that by making something bad. It’s like getting in a fistfight with a toddler. There’s no winning.
How I overcome this resistance…
Remember generosity
Find motivation in my mission, not in outside validation
Remember than I’ve never done perfectly – there’s always better
