The Wall

At some point in your acting career, you will experience the wall. The wall is a featureless obstacle, a barrier around which you feel you are unable to negotiate. Marathon runners experience it when they race, for them it is a total lack of available energy, often around Mile 20. For you, it is mental energy.

First off, acknowledge that in any career, vocation or calling, you WILL experience this, often even in your dream job, but actors feel it hardest because they are their own work.

On the way you will experience many obstacles, rejection, lost opportunity, fatigue at driving two hundred miles for auditions you didn’t get or were nit suitable for, all these will contribute to the wall. You may lose motivation on the way, but that’s nothing compared to when you hit that wall.

If you think it’s bad now… As unhelpful as that is, prepare yourself, the wall is coming.

But.
Let’s collect some rays of hope in a jar for you.
You work very very hard, and you should take time to recognise that.
Ask yourself regularly, am I at my most prepared for any audition that comes up?

Do you have KILLER audition pieces, or are you trotting out the golden oldies?

Do you get disappointed because that part was soooooo yours? Do not invest in anything that isn’t already yours, that way is very very painful. If you do not invest, you will not feel the pain of loss.

Are you upset that you use your skills but still don’t get the result? Please remember it takes many years to master a skill, if it doesn’t come within a year, perhaps you should give up…

Because that’s what so many do.

But let me tell you something for sure.

Those people never succeed.

If you truly want to succeed as an actor, you must overcome every obstacle, learning from it, as if it were a personal lesson, nothing is entirely good or bad, but an opportunity to learn.

And when the wall comes and a proper job for an adult feels like the grown up thing to do, quit acting and spend the rest of your days in regret, or bite the bullet and live with the shit life throws at you.

The pressure will be intense and you will want to give in, but no marathon runner gives up on the 25th mile. You are on the mile, act like it.

You can do this.
You work very hard.
You worker harder than offers do.
Your passion for acting impresses even your peers.

And when the wall comes, get ready to start climbing.