SUNDAY
26 October 2008
This morning I woke up early, and the plan was to drive into Burbank to have a coffee and spend a few minutes preparing for the seminar. I had a Starbucks gift card Hank sent me for my birthday. Yes, Hank my dog. Sidebar: I asked my ex how it was possible that Hank’s income was currently exceeding mine, such that he could afford to buy me gifts. I’m was informed Hank is doing some modeling for Abercrombie & Fitch and also testing a new line of Prada dog booties. Hmmm. As photogenic and booty-loving as Hank is, I’m not 100% convinced. If it’s true, I think I should be netting some of those residuals, right?! Regardless, I’m grateful for the thoughtful gift.
Anyway, in Burbank I fired up the Verizon GPS to get a 20 on the closest Starbucks. Unfortunately, all the closest Starbucks that kept coming up were on-site at Disney Studios or on the Warner Brothers lot. DANGIT! I can’t get to those. It’s unfair and downright mean for Verizon to offer them up as suggestions when I can’t access them without a three-picture deal.
I manage to track one down on San Fernando Boulevard, find a rock star parking space, go in to order… and my gift card is gone. Oh HELL no! There was still $11 on that thing! I ordered my tall decaf coffee and sulked for a while before I was seminar-bound.
My friend Tori is one of the coaches in the seminar. As soon as I walked in she asked how I was holding up. I talked about my whole housing/employment quagmire and she suggested maybe I need to revise my goal for the seminar, noting I needed to tend to these very basic needs. I was still exhausted from yesterday, and I know her intentions are for my greatest good, but it wasn’t a conversation I was ready to have at that exact moment. Unfortunately, it came out something like, “Tori, I am so overwhelmed right now with everything, and spent all day yesterday getting to full speed with this other goal,. Now you’re asking me to make a complete 180, and I can’t even process that at the moment, so LEAVE OFF!!” OK, I didn’t say the last little part. Since she reads people’s energy, she likely sensed I was at my saturation point and didn’t press further, bless her heart. I took a few deep breaths and did make a point to speak to Suzanne (the seminar leader) before the day’s lectures began. She helped me make some revisions to my course plan.
Sunday was another amazing seminar day. One of the highlights for me was the idea that this Hollywood thing is really a big game we should be having fun playing, otherwise why do it?! Suzanne talked about this in her morning lecture, likening it to playing with our toys when we were kids AND deciding who you want to play with. Her husband James, a writer and showrunner at Fox who was one of our guest speakers for the day, reiterated it in our small group Q&A with him. It puts everything I’m doing into a very different perspective, and I’m grateful both Suzanne and James embody this philosophy. It’s such a great way of thinking about things… and all of life, really. We are here to enjoy it! To feel good! To have fun! With all their success, they are living examples that it works – and the fact they want to share that energy with other people in the industry is inspiring to me. Yes, I’m sounding a little like a broken record, but that’s OK. Sometimes you need to hear something 50 times before it sinks in.
After two days in close quarters with all of these seminar participants… I am more strongly motivated than I have felt in a long, long time. I’m expecting great things to come out of Flash Forward, and am equally excited to see what everyone else in the class will achieve. At this point, however, my brain simply can not process any more information. Quite frankly, I’m amazed I can formulate sentences at this time. As much as I want to jump into the work tonight, I think I need to sleep and recharge so I don’t crash and burn.
LA365 