For some reason, no matter how hard I try to slow dow, I can never seem to stop or get ahead. Since moving to LA, I've worked for some of the most ungrateful, holier-than-thou, stuck up people you could ever imagine meeting. And I'm proud to say, as of today, the stress will STOP. I just quit a job that will end the era of being someone's personal beeotch (for lack of better terms). I have no idea what I'm going to do to supplement the income, but something deep down inside tells me it will all be okay. There just comes a point in your life when you're totally fed up. To the brim. Can't take it anymore. Fin-ite-o!!
Here's some advice: when considering to become a personal assistant, EVERYTHING is your fault, nothing is ever done correctly, you can never do enough, you can never make enough phone calls, you can NEVER get enough price quotes around one single issue because of course, everyone wants the CHEAPEST price vs. the best people to do the job - you're always getting new assignments to pile onto all the other ones you have never had a chance to being fixing, and while ALL THAT IS GOING ON, you may have to drop your life, rearrange all the meetings you have scheduled at the house just to "chauffer" house guests all over town to do things like eat, see the city, pick up concert tickets, run to the mall...you get the point. And if you're good at what you do, you know, detailed oriented, then EVERYTHING becomes an issue. "Andrew, the bathroom light won't turn on. Andrew! The kitchen door handle fell off last night. And at the end of the day, The shower water doesn't get hot enough quick enough. Andrew! I can't find my car keys. Oh! And at the end of the day, no one, not a soul, says "thank you." And if by some trick of fate you happen to hear those words accidently slip away from your bosses mouth, rest assured that they didn't mean it. Not on a cold day in hell. They're just buttering you up to do MORE.
And that's honest advice, folks.
On a lighter note, I had an awesome audition today. For some ABC Family show coming out. I auditioned to play a 16 year old, so I'm sure I either look the part or I don't, but the casting director made it a point to tell me how talented he thought I was and said, "Andrew, that was great work. Great work." It was a tiny shimmer of light in a really dark day for me. Just that little phrase meant so much. I'm sure that casting director has no idea how much that meant to me. Of course, I had to act all "professional" and say, "Thank you, thanks a lot" as if to say, "What did you expect, that's my caliber of work all the time" - but deep down inside, I know like everyone else, I have good days, and bad days. I was just so grateful to hear those words formulate on his mouth. I had to read a 97 page script last night (which I love to do), and memorize 10 pages of lines for the audition today (which I also love to do), in the midst of this stress storm at work (which always distracts me).
Oh! One more thing about personal assisting: YOURE ON CALL 24/7. No one cares if it's 10pm, the weekend, your birthday, Christmas or a national holiday. You better find a way to get the dry cleaning, take calls and make crap magically happen.
So this morning, at 9am, I gave my two weeks notice. Enough distraction from my acting already!
But BEFORE I talked to my boss, and before I went to my audition, instead of frantically and furiously trying to memorize lines and give my character depth and backbone and create this three dimensional persona for the ABC casting directors, at 8 AM, I went to mass.
Going to church just clears my head. Makes me feel safe. It reminds me that in the end, all that matters is treating people the way you'd want to be treated, and being a kind, generous, loving person. I am so grateful for the peace and clarity that attending mass gives me. Nothing is too much to handle when I start my day off like that.
I love blogging because it's therapy. I get to ramble on and on to boil it down to one message:
No matter how stressed out or unappreciated you feel in life, you always have a friend in Faith.
