Today I was blue. This became apparent when my dearest friend with two children called me up and her children were chattering happily in the background. Every 2 seconds she had to gently reprimand them or address them: “You will get Elmo when we get home. Do you want Elmo? Do you want Elmo? Then please listen to Mommy. (silence) Thank you.” Then she cheerfully said: “See this is what you have to look forward to!” When she said that I felt miserable.
In the morning I wrote a bit but felt very tired. I free-wrote, I worked on a line or two on the one woman show. But I had a very difficult time writing and ended up packing up and heading home after an hour. I even booked a job for Thursday and found some way to make it a negative.
I called my friends who are actors/artist types who don’t have a 9-5 situation. One musician friend, who just came back from a tour, said that downtime can be difficult to deal with. He made me feel better by saying that it was a very real issue and not something to minimize. He said: “I just came back from a tour where crowds of people are cheering for me and now I’m in my apartment by myself and feel like: ‘This sucks.’ “. As artists, we experience the extremes of the joy and exhilaration of performing to mind numbing, soul sucking work or boredom. Striking that happy medium is a challenge.
I spoke to another actress who also agreed that battling boredom was difficult but she had learned to plan her days which helped.
It’s something that I’ve learned that is challenging and I’ll have to find ways to address it instead of being bogged down by it.
Afterwards, I went out for a 30 minute walk in the sunshine. That was helpful.
hottie actress momma 