Advice, plans...

My apartment is currently rather spartan.  Sounds echo off the walls.  It's the end of an era, as my cousin has moved out, leaving half the apartment empty, and I'm now awaiting the move in date of my first non family member/non-spouse roommate since senior year of college.  I've been lax about writing lately but have had a lot of things on my mind as the season changes.  Moving into a different head space on a lot of things.  Revamping plans and thinking about the future...the long future. 

It's a hard thing when you start to look at where you are and where you want to be in a decidedly arbitrary amount of time.  You start to feel overwhelmed and that you may never get there even though you've certainly made strides.  You have to sort of remind yourself that you certainly haven't been idle.  Look at what you've done so far.  Acknowledge it, pat yourself on the back.  It's hard. 

This advice, while here referring to the entire scope of my endeavors, was packaged amongst the advice I got slung my way by a voice over agent about a month ago.  My new voice coach has these classes where she'll have a slew of her students read for a chosen agent that she has a connection with.  This particular night I was the second to last person to read and it must've shown that I'd let my nerves take over.  I told her my voice over history in a nutshell, as the other students had done, maybe leaning a little too hard on the point that I had been frustrated with my lack of progress.  While she had some definite critiques for me, she was rather generous with her praise of my accomplishments.  So, I felt better and really brought my A game for the next agent a few weeks later.  That agent was a little hard to read unfortunately though. 

I really made a great choice picking up this coach.  Having been a casting director and an agent at one time or another herself, she has all sorts of remaining connections in the voice over world.  I've made the decision to have her help me spruce up my demo and vary it a bit so it's not all the same stuff and it has some range to it.  And then I'm going to show it to every agent she puts me in front of.  That's the best part about this new partnership honestly.  My coach knows I'm not just doing this for fun and has a plan to get me to a point where I can be a "big fish in a little pond," as she put it. 


This is part of the plan.  Yes. I have a plan.  It's multi faceted after all and both music and voice over play into it.  And it's even rather fluid as I keep checking in with it. 

With things seemingly falling apart all around me in the TV world (CNN just lost some people and Comcast is merging with Time Warner Cable), it's motivating me to really make a push to get things happening.  Music is on hold, it seems, except for the fact that I may be playing at a yoga class in a few months.  Ambient stuff, live looping the guitar and everything...been composing a little bit there too.  But, finding enough time to practice is proving a bit of a challenge. 

Nonetheless, the passion is still there.  There's talk of collaboration here and there, of finally getting a practice space with Brad, writing another piece with Tania (both were over at my apartment hanging out Saturday night).  And "The Life" remains a rather tentative yet exciting ball in the air.  The pitch bible for the first season and the pilot episode are about to be in the hands of some very influential people. I'll say no more. 

Ultimately, I'm hoping that voice over proves to be lucrative enough as to afford me more time to put into the music, so that I can bank on other things besides "The Life," and whatever the next Indie film is that comes along.  We shall see.  Again with the waiting.  Anyway, just some thoughts to let you know I'm still alive.