The Balance

You can only look for work for so many hour s in any day/week.

I tell myself that. And I try to adhere to it. More in an emotional way than in a logical and rational way.

I do my due diligence...I send emails, I make calls, I set up appointments. I do the back research, so that when I get there I have something topical to say and something topical to ask.

I have enough good clothes to be presentable, and I arrive on time.

I go at it hard.....I know it is a metric of seeing as many people as I can, for that time when they need me.

I wrote an ebook about looking for work in my chosen vocation..and the interesting thing is that I am living it now I am grateful to say that I GOT IT RIGHT, THIS SYSTEM WORKS.

I did get it right. It is a metric, and I am working carefully using my own prescribed system and as I follow it thru the funnel, I am seeing people. The tough part is that there is just not enough work for the many people at my job level. And, my years on staff took me out of the race...so my previous clients moved on to others....essentially I am back at the bottom of the ladder. Searching for work like PA...with a much smaller opening in which to thread the employment needle.

That is the hard part of it.

So, I go out and meet, I go out and greet....but, it is a harder sell. People are wonderfully nice and most of them either know me, or know of me. and, nobody wouldn't like to give me a gig...but, their limited gigs are already filled by producers that the directors know and have worked with and have the relationships with. I must wait my turn, must wait for that time when there is an opening for a new face.

And, unlike a PA, where we need more than one on any given day, there is only one line producer on any given job...so the metrics are not in my favor.

But I carry on, and will continue to carry on.

The balance?

Knowing this, keeping on, keeping on...while keeping my sanity and esteem in place.

TIME MACHINE--found! Alert the media!

NEWS FLASH....time machine found!

And it is something really old and ridiculously in our culture..yoga. Yeah, plain old yoga. Ivengar, power or Bikram....it is a time machine. Really.

On Sunday mornings, I like to walk to my gym to go to yoga class. I know we are supposed to refer to it as practice and not a class, but it sounds o pretentious...so, class it is.

Sometimes I drive, but it is a 15 minute walk, and I am in the free zone of listening to a book on audio.....so, I prefer to walk.

As I walk, no matter how compelling the audio book (THE WIND UP GIRL is what I am listening to now, and it is pretty doggone good), I consider what I will do after the class. A quick trip to Ross, an overpriced tea or coffee, or just what the rest of the day has in store for me. Whatever it is, I find myself dreading the hour of yoga. Despite how great it feels, despite how much I love it..I just want the hour to go by I have a list to attack, and my nature wants to get at it.

"You are a fraud," I tell myself.

Now, this is an ongoing piece of my internal dialog. You say you want to study yoga and how meaningful it is, and yet you are kicking this one hour to the curb in anticipation of........grocery shopping? overseeing 5th grade homework?....this listmaking in my head....trickey!

I will arrive, take my spot in class (back of the large exercise room, on the right) and sink into the practice...and it happens every time...at first I am stiff, and panting, but after a short time I am LOST in it. My body starts moving and that mind thing happens...I become present in class. The list starts to recede and I find myself sighing and moving and just being...all that cool yoga stuff...it actually happens.

THE TIME MACHINE AHS STARTED....

This hour is elastic...in the midst, it seems so long. How long will they make us hold plank? How long will I have to try to balance? I check my watch at various times and although I see time slipping along...I think that I am falling into a vacuum that will take me where it wants to go. Time is moving I know, but somehow, this hour jumps off the clock and calendar and does not exist except for me..... I dreaded it, and now I want it baaaaaack!

I skip the bridge pose and go right to the wheel. I am sweaty and tired now and I so wanna be a corpse and listen to the music and doze for a few moments. Officially the time machine does not crank til I sit up and and stretch and applaud the teacher and roll up the mat. But my list making monkey brain is trying to crank it up......I resist.....elastic, I tell myself....be stretchy.

In the 90s my husband enjoyed the cigar trend. He called them his time machines, because smoking one would slow down time.....you could not rush it and it made a space for you to do little more than savor and think. Now, I get it.

We can do this trick, we can crank it up, or slow it down...not easy...and not often enough.