Onward and Upward...

I'm trying to find a non-cliché way of saying "when it rains, it pours," or "it's either feast or famine."  But to be honest, the schedule's been so jam packed lately that I have barely had time to grocery shop and do laundry, let alone come up with clever ways of saying that I'm effing killing it right now apparently, in terms of booking work.  I meant to blog about this the other day but after yesterday, it was more important for me to write about Penny when I had the chance to sit down.

So, anyway, Edge Studio called me again last Thursday with a quick VO gig for the next afternoon.  Another $200 job that took under a half hour and I was able to squeeze it, miraculously in between NY1 and a scheduled rehearsal with Lacy that morning.

I've been lucky that it worked with my schedule both times but to be honest, as long as they're calling me with work, I will most certainly take great pains to clear my schedule because I want to be seen as available.  I also want more experience and more stuff for my reel.  So this makes VO gig #12 and with it I even passed another milestone/yearly goal of mine: get two VO gigs within the space of a month.  Hell, I just got two in as many weeks!  Not bad I'd say. Not bad.  It may sound funny but I have a Google Doc with all of my goals in each arena (music, voice over and film scoring), plainly listed and have been checking them off quicker in some cases than I'd imagined I would.  It's a good feeling.

This second voice gig from this past Friday, I felt particularly good about especially since it took me just under 15 minutes to wrap it up.  I was hitting the mark the whole time and only had to do a few pickups before the director, who had phoned in for the session, was satisfied.  In fact, if I hadn't suggested two different pitch levels with my voice to the director, we might have finished sooner.  He liked that idea and had me do a take each with the two separate voices.  This was a 90 second corporate promo for a telecommunications company that will be working closely with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.  Can't wait to hear the final result.

On top of everything, as usual, Lacy and I are still kicking it with almost a show a weekend these days and certainly for the next three weeks (this past included).  We played a small show at Alphabet Lounge the other day and, despite technical difficulties got to try out a few new things with me looping and even iron them out a little.  On Old Languages I figured out a way to capture the essence of the song with just a few layers of looping and it totally went over.  Lacy herself enjoys performing like this as well so we're really looking forward to playing on a Cable TV show in White Plains, NY called Alive with Clive this coming Friday, the 7th of June where we will be looping that song and Dancing out of the Dark as well as playing two others from the new album.  On Saturday the 15th we will be performing at Marie Christine Giordano's open dance rehearsal as well.  Some of the same stuff and we'll be drinking wine and hanging out watching the rehearsal afterwards too so that should be good fun!  More to come on upcoming shows.

Meanwhile, I'm mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted but have determined, throughout these past few months that I can totally pull this off.  In fact, there are a couple of things I have learned from this experience.  First, I like the feeling of getting up in the morning and getting straight to work.  There's something invigorating about the morning air...however, I can't imagine getting up much earlier than 7am and liking it as much.  Second, no matter how early I got up and no matter how little sleep I'm running on, there is no guarantee that I will fall right asleep when I get home at midnight.  Working hours like these on a sleep schedule like this is still nothing compared to the fatigue I felt after an overnight shift when I had been up for 24 hours straight.  Thankfully, I still have the weekends to recharge though.  Third, there is no underestimating the value of a few minutes of sunning in the park between jobs for my psyche.  Fourth, (and this is more a thing remembered and/or actually applied from my basic intellectual knowledge of a yoga), I don't have to be in yoga class to be practicing yoga.  Simply stopping and breathing when dealing with tough or stressful situations is, in effect, practicing yoga.  It's a mindset and it's a good thing I have it because I haven't been able to take class nearly as much these days.  Three days a week and one of my classes isn't technically a yoga class but some weird cardio-fitness hybrid coined "Sculptworks" by the YogaWorks brand.  It's fun but almost too "boot camp-y" for my taste.  And it hurts my abs.

Anyway, there's talk of more work coming from TruTV after my CNN hours are slated to dry up and CNN may still call me for weekend work after July.  And I have some film scoring stuff potentially on the horizon that it's still too early to talk about.  But for now, I'm tired and am going to stop writing and start trying not to fall asleep at work.  Daoust: Out.