Highs and lows are exhausting, even the highs. Brian, Joey and me on the first move (stop saying nothing, I’m good), the question Leeann asked me that I’d never been asked, why every emotion layers down to love and how an actor uses that, Obi-Wan on feelings, and the fantasy draft that proved our anger was about us.
Galatians 6, a man reaps what he sows, and Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Brian, Joey and me on the phone call to your mom that changes a stranger’s day, the rock steps Brian climbed at the cabin, my one-year-old and the DVDs, why I got up at 3:30 for a show I could have prepared over the weekend, and the three-step takeaway: be honest, adjust, track.
Hebrews 12:28, a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and an hour with Brian and Joey on how to be that in life, at work and on a stage. The old tree and its roots, a baby’s diaper, my kitchen floor torn out by a restoration crew, the car Brian talked me out of by asking one question, and the student I told to sit closer to my desk.
What fear actually does to your body, why naming your own reaction is the first move, the stand-up class where five of twenty raised a hand, and the exercises we use in the room to walk toward it on purpose.
The first show of 2021 and the launch of season two, with Brian back in the room. Philippians 3:13-14, three honest weeks where I lost my goals to worry, why you have to have a why before goals mean anything, and the framework: a dream goal, five years, this year, this month, this week, today. My three months out of the Arizona summer, Brian’s river, Joey’s voice in sports, and the rule that goals should pull you out of bed instead of making you push.
Joey took the microphone alone for this one, with a slide he made himself, and told a story I had only heard in private: the year he was told he could not graduate on time, the year he hid from it, and what finishing did for him.
Elizabeth Selby, a teacher and new mom, felt called to submit for a feature film shooting in New Mexico, drove herself out there and opened the movie. Then she spent a weekend crying on camera for thirty hours and went back to work numb, and asked me what to do about it. Get to versus have to, giving yourself a timer, what to do with the role where you were only a silhouette on HBO, how to track acting expenses, why your network is your net worth, and a director who signed a film reel for an extra.
If you’re an actor you run a business, so Joey, Brian and I brought on my college roommate Joe Laux, a financial planner at Silverhawk Financial. The ice cream truck we ran in college and what a negative business taught two kids about partners, inventory and licenses. Then Joe’s top ten: surround yourself with the right people, start with the end in mind, have the conversation about expectations, put your own mask on first, check your credit, manage risk, track your money like a business, get rid of debt, save early and often, and number one, invest in yourself.
Brian, Joey and me on ageism in both directions: the 15-year-old who belongs in the adult class, the 20-year-old who was scared to teach, an 18-year-old rookie dominating the playoffs, my one-year-old and his basketball form, and Bob Nimlow, a Golden Gloves boxer who started acting in his eighties, beat the twenty-year-olds for a role written as a young priest, and called it one of the best things he ever did.
Joey’s story, told by all three of us: out of a basement and a Fortnite squad, a job he turned down first, and a mop. Why doing the work when nobody is watching is the key to everything, and what it took for him to believe it.
Danielle did the self-growth workshop, kept the journal, said the affirmations, and still felt like she was spinning her wheels, and she’d walked into the first online masterclass half-prepared because it wasn’t the real thing. What I told her: you took five steps back and you’re still ten ahead of everyone who bailed. Now start over, on purpose.
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