Thursday, May 18, 2017

Do What You Love Even If No One Is Watching

Sometimes life is full of disappointments.

Sometimes expectations don't get met.

Sometimes we imagine our life will turn out different than it does...

Yet sometimes it doesn't, and that's okay. When we can learn to not only live with but love whatever is happening in the journey that we are on the moment, we can truly find freedom.

I've been in well over 100 plus film/tv/web series/plays etc...in the time I've been in Hollywood and I haven't always enjoyed the journey.



Because I didn't embrace struggle or heartache, I wasn't thinking of how much stronger it would make me or the lessons I would eventually learn from it. I just complained about the pain and how uncomfortable those moments were.

I bellyached that I should be further along in my career than I am now.

But who said I should be?

My idea of 'making it' may have happened to others a lot sooner on their journey, but that's not my journey. And when I despise what I am going through, it robs me. It robs me of the beauty in the moment.

When I'm only looking to the future and daydreaming of what could be, I miss out on today, on the little nuances I should be taking in learning from and appreciating. Nor am I taking time to contemplate and question why I am where I am and what I specifically need to do to move to the next level if all I'm doing is complaining about where I'm not.

Sometimes we make plans and they don't happen, or they don't happen the way we envision.

I've now begun the process of finding my true happiness and what I am here on planet earth for, I used to think that acting and more recently writing, but I've come to realize that even that isn't really it, it's just the vehicle I drive on my journey, it in itself is not the destination.

At heart we are all story tellers.

Whether we tell our stories through numbers like a mathematician, through whittling wood, through the way we raise our children or arrange a flower bouquet, we are telling a story.

I then ask myself does it really matter if none of the many projects I've been in have become a huge success? Or if only 100 people have read my book?



No, it doesn't.

At least not in the grand scheme of life and what is most important and the legacy I desire to leave behind.

Does my lack of success in some people's eyes mean I give in or quit or get a 9 to 5 job? No, if I believe in what I do and it fuels my passion to live life to the fullest, I press on, no matter the difficulties or hardships because this is what I love, this is what I feel compelled to do, even called to do, like acting and writing are all wrapped up in my life's purpose.

And I believe that's true or I wouldn't have left my comfortable and predictable life and moved so many thousands of miles away to seek a new one.

 Does that mean I shouldn't put my work out there just because no one seems to notice or care?

Absolutely not.

Do that thing you love that you were made for that you would do for free even if no one were watching you and you never had an audience, a fan base or could fill up a theater.

If you quit because you don't have those things, then maybe your heart was not in your art or your craft but in the praises of men, and if that's all you're seeking, there are other ways to go about it, but the artist life is one of toil...toil at every level because once you get to the top, you toil to stay there.

Do what you feel compelled to do, whatever makes you happy even if no one is watching.

Stoke that fire in yourself or rekindle it if it's gone out. Step out, do more, do different, find your niche. If one thing doesn't work try another.


Don't die with regrets.

Give it every ounce, every breath, and then when you're old you won't be sitting in the nursing home wondering what would have happened if you had only went for it.