Paul's Corner

does the world seem too big to you?

It does to me. I have all these things I want to do but the world seems too big for me to fill it up. I want to write, play the clarinet, make beer, skate, make ballets, cook invent, play with the kids, read all these different books, laugh, do charity work, help people, spend time with my brother and his child, hang out with Mum, love my wife, mow the lawn (funny how those two go together), spend more time with my dad, go over seas, do plays, do movies, do something, make salami, brew great beer, perfect my sour dough, SURF - oh god get back into the waves, choreograph, write poems, walk across Australia, ride my motor cycle to anywhere and be free, visit pubs, talk to old people to find out their story(thanks Grand Ma Millie, go to the Folllies - jeeze I wish I could go to the follies in Florida what a hoot that would be!........................................

Does the world seem too big to fill?

I dont know if I am building one up or pulling it down, I only know that there is this wall. I am on one side and where I want to get to is on the other - the wall - is in the middle. I seem to be frantically pulling down bricks, but as I do, more appear - a bit like groundhog day or fifty first dates but not so funny.

I can think of several analogies, like when you are digging a hole at the beach - the sand is so soft and dry (and warm) that for every handful you lovingly and excitedly dig out another handful gleefully slides back in, or when you are dreaming that you are running but the harder you run the more you dont actually go or get any where, you dont go backwards you just dont go forwards.

I was going to call this post "happily depressed" a good oxymoron hey? A bit like "working actor". Yes I have a job coming up - six days of shooting over two and a half months and therefore as a working actor I am happily depressed. Happy because I have a job as an actor. Depressed because the commitment I must make contractually to the work is for two and a half months however I only get to shoot six days - mmmm figure that out! So for the next 73 days that I am tied to this contract I will be a Happily depressed working actor. I am an oxymoran.

Now before any one writes something will come up (a phrase that I am getting really tired of hearing and one that is starting to make my blood pressure boil) I am able to work - if something comes up - providing it does not clash with my said shooting dates.

Against the odds I am staying positive in an anxious slightly stressed and mildly depressed sort of way. Things would be better if only the bloody bricks would stay down!! Any way, back to the wall for me.

I have just spent the last hour typing this blog!! Well not just this line but about 100 others that I decided to eject for various reasons. Basically it was just your usual winge about the lack of work and the seeming lack of control over my career and to some extent my life.

I decided not to post it because I was being a poor old victim!

I keep going back to my destiny post and reading my affirmation, reigniting my commitment to those ideas, to moving forward and relinquishing my need to control the path. I keep coming back to this idea of control, that I as an actor have none and thereby sit in my own dark purgotory waiting for the powers that be to save me. This may well be true but for me as a person it is not true.

Heres a revelation: I have been defining who I am by the basis that I am an actor!! (in need of others to give me a job so I can be who I am) Well blow me down I am much more than that. Being an actor is only a small part of what defines me.

You know I was about to declare (and did in the post I discarded) that I was going to give acting away. Time to move on - redefine who and what I am. But now I realise that acting is 5% of who and what I am and I think it is time I approached life with the other 95% of me.

It is an interesting idea - how we define ouselves and in doing so how we strangle other valuable parts of our own make up.

I havent responded till now as I was hoping that I would have
something to respond with. Alas I have nothing. Well actualy that
is not true - I have lots of good ideas, many possibilities, a couple of
probablities and one night a week at the liquor store. That equates to $75
a week so far and as my kids and I currently eat through about $600 of
food and groceries a week (you have no idea how many roles of toilet paper
a family of five can go through in one week!!!!) I guess you could safely
say I have I have lots of good ideas, many possibilities, a couple of
probabilities and minus $525, plus minus the rest I have not told you about
because it makes me too tired to think about it! And makes me too F*&^$$* angry!

Other than that things are good.

Paul