Saturday I had my final for Advanced Acting for Film. Next week we watch the final cuts so I’m looking forward to that but the filming we did on Saturday sort of firmed up some ideas in my mind.

I had the chance to have an on camera experience that I did not really enjoy.  Up until this point I’ve always felt lucky that I have had the experiences with acting and crew and material I was having fun with. Up till this class, I have only done acting and film work because I love it so much, I’ve had fun with it – it was simply – playtime.

I felt though that I need more tools so I signed up for this class which was the antithesis of everything I’ve ever found pleasing about the sport of being an actress. It was simply – work.

I don’t think I would have had this revelation had I not had the experience. I watched myself on screen and camera for the multiple cuts after working for weeks on the same scene. And quite honestly I can say – it was obvious – in this new frame of experience that I was not in my element.

I have struggled for a long time with how I want to talk about this class. While I consider it valuable and really dug the teaching and tools by Barry Hunt, I am also at a place for the first time in my life where I’m questioning how badly I want to do this for a living.

That questioning in and of itself has made the whole experience worth its weight in gold.

When I was working on Hex with peeps in SE and on Animals with my friends – I have had the luxury of choosing my experience. I could choose the level of involvement and fun even when we were shooting till 3am and I didn’t get home till 4 after a full day at work and 20 hours of being on my feet – I had a shitty grin and although I fell into bed exhausted I burned with a light that was fulfilled and warm.

After class on Saturday I went home and paced, then went out and drank too much. I texted friends to join me for pool – I reached out on a massive scale for contact which I haven’t needed to do in a really long time. I drunken texted and I pushed boundaries in an attempt to meet a need in me – a sense of something lacking. I did not have the warm glow of satisfaction, that sense of having lost myself in a story and character and lived another lifetime and come out of it forgetting what time of day it was. For the first time, I was entirely conscious as I performed in front of the camera and with my scene partner. I was conscious and therefore damnably self-conscious.  And it showed.

Is this because I didn’t choose my level of involvement? It is because I was assigned work rather than picking it? Is it because I was given a scene partner rather than earning one? And if this is the case… how can I expect to take my acting to the next level? How can I ever hope to jump if my sense of fun is dictated by a sense of being in control? Because I can pretty much guarantee that the dream I have of acting on a large scale means I will have little or no control over what I get to do and who I work with.

On a different note but also worth examining is my scene partner.  Great guy.  No fun to work with.  I’ve fought with myself over the wisdom of posting anything negative about my experience with him but it does directly affect the way I think about this class and my future as an actress. Working with him brought out the latent elitist I hoped I never had in me. My frustration levels capped about three weeks ago and I locked myself in my room to meditate on it with this in mind.  I had this conversation with myself, “Athena, if you want to be a writer/actress you are going to be working with people who may push your buttons, make you crazy and infuriate you to no end. Are you good enough to take it? Are you a good enough actress that you can do a scene with someone you want to throttle and not let anyone suspect that you would happily commit harm? Are you that good? Because if you can’t pass this test, you have no place in this line of work.”

Several times in the last weeks I have been face to face with him – a great guy, and the way I prepped myself is, “Athena, how good are you? Pass this test. Find the good in him and play to it.”

I felt entirely disingenuous. Fake. A feeling that sits on my skin like oil and I hated it. HATED it.  I could tell it affected my interactions with everyone in my class and it bothered me that I felt like I had to maintain a veneer of artificiality with people I might like to make friends with – and there was no emotional contact because of it – and that bothered me more.

It is not in my nature to be so fake and it irked me deeply and each time it did and I returned to my scene I would ask myself, “Athena, how good are you? Because this may be what you will have to learn to deal with. How good are you?”

Here’s where it bent my brain. TOTAL mind-fuck.

I did this all to myself. I made the choice to struggle with my scene partner’s lack of experience. I made the choice to let it bother me. I made the choice to not let myself play. I made the decision to be less than I knew I was capable of being and I allowed myself to become self-conscious because I didn’t claim my truth and ability.

I made a choice to be shut down and fake and the ramifications were ten-fold a down hill spiral.

I made a choice that brought me face to face with a person in me that I don’t like.  A person I didn’t know I was capable of being, and I don’t want her to have any foothold in my persona.  At all.

All of this brought me back to the very first indicator of something being wrong. I was not having fun. The whole reason I do this – is because it is fun.  Even on days when it feels like work and I’m tired and burned out – I still love it and it’s enjoyable.

Why was this experience different? Why and when did I make the choice to let it be other than that? I suspect it was around week four but I can’t be certain yet.

It’s food for thought, and a glimpse at a potential trigger that I believe is important enough to find the root of. This could be the key to something about my ability to go further with this craft and I feel like this awareness of my dark side and unpleasant experience has uncovered a way to help me understand it better. Plan A hangs in the balance of understanding this.  

In an attempt to boost enthusiasm for the 90 day challenge, I went to see the Dr.  At first I thought she’d be upset with me for going off the thyroid, but ultimately she was calm and told me, “going off your thyroid for six weeks (how long it takes to get a clear TSH reading) is not going to kill you.” Then she followed up with “It’s your body and if you feel like you need to do that to understand it better I can offer support and advice, but if I feel like you are in danger of hurting yourself or doing harm I will give my opinion, and I hope you will listen.”

Fair enough.

So then we went on to talk about everything that I’ve done to make changes. Drinking a gallon of water a day, tripling my protein intake (which puts me at a normal persons level of protein finally compared to what I was before), bringing my carbs to a normal intake, lifting more, and still doing the treadmill. I feel great, with a few notable exceptions; my skin is crazy dry and brittle still, losing lots of hair in the shower and over-compensating for some fatigue with coffee, still not losing weight.

Still, compared to where I was six months ago, I feel fabulous.

On an interesting note, about weight I am still trying to purge the weight thing out of my mind.  This experiment was never about that. When I started I wasn’t thinking I’ll lose a ton of weight. But my disappointment about the scale staying stubbornly at 170 is a pretty good indicator that I really did have the expectation at the back of my mind about what a change in health would do to my appearance.

I have a lot that needs to be organized in my mind about this development. Obviously, I would prefer a healthy strong body over the “ideal” appearance, but there is a trigger that I need to dissect and make sense of.  I’ll keep you posted.

For measurable results there are definite changes happening; my under things are not fitting quite right. My bras are having to be cinched and my panties are riding up in ways that are both unusual and irritating.  Although my pants don’t fit differently, my underwear suddenly doesn’t fit my ass right anymore. WTF? How did that happen!?

Also of note, I wore a shirt yesterday and noticed that the sleeves were much tighter than I thought before, my arms are getting bigger and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Less lifting may be called for. So despite not losing weight, my mass is shifting somehow.

To prove this and keep tabs on it, I scheduled an appointment to have my body mass evaluated. Evidently some electrode thingy that tells you what your body composition is. Pretty cool.

I also scheduled a full panel blood work to see what my cholesterol has done since including more protein, an iron test, thyroid and a few others.  I will have a printout to show if I’m making headway.

So there you have it. There has been a sort of quasi-progress in my challenge and it’s encouraging enough to keep pushing forward. Other 90 day related things are also coming along.  Making headway in some relationship ideas and also working toward my goal for the fellowship but I do keep hitting the snag of time. Fitting in time to focus on all the changes at once is becoming a bigger challenge than I originally thought.

Okay, guys, July 2nd is the halfway mark! My tests are scheduled for the 3^rd.  So I will be pushing a little harder, trying a little more and I’ll check back in.

What about you guys? Do you feel like you’ve made a measurable difference in your life? Do you feel better with your changes that without?