I haven't worked for over two months... again. I am having a love/hate relationship with the film industry and it is complicating my life to no end. I really love my work and just want to be able to do it. I actually think I was born for the job (I just wish I had realized that a lot sooner) and now having done it for the past 5 years, it has spoiled me for other work. I can't stand the thoughts of an office job (unless it's the one I recently applied for at Club Penguin, where my youngest works, because that would be a great job and fits my skill set exactly) but, back to the original thought, I need to work. If I take a job not in film, then I may as well kiss my film career goodbye and I don't want to do that, I love it way too much. But I can't stand the uncertainty of it. Even when I am working on an episodic show that is going to last 5 months or more I am always, in the back of my mind, wondering if I will have another show to go to when this one is over. So you can imagine that I never get any peace when all I am doing is movies of the week (MOW's) that take three weeks or less to film. The stress is killing me. And the lack of work is about to kill my credit rating.
I just moved out of my house. The house I have rented for the past three years, making it one of the longest I have lived in one place in my whole life. I loved that house. It perfectly suited my needs. I had two spare rooms that my daughters could stay in when they came for visits. It had a view of the mountains out of the front window, and the kitchen and dining windows faced south so that the room was flooded with sunshine, when the sun shone. It was a relatively quiet neighbourhood, if you don't count the teens across the way who liked to hang out on the street at 2 am after an almost weekly party and talk (read:yell) for about two hours. Ugh. I won't miss that. My kids are very sad that they won't be coming back to that house ever again. It felt like home to them and they loved it. But having worked very little this year the bank account has dwindled down into the over draft and the credit cards are slowly maxing out one by one. I hung on as long as I could, longer than I should have really, and now I am without home. A kind friend offered to let me move in with her, into the room her traveling daughter usually sleeps in. I gratefully accepted and now here I am.
I sat in my new room the other day looking at the few DVDs I brought with me, the one shelf of books, my iPod docking station and my laptop and a horrible thought struck me. I had just done what I had always been dreading but thought I wouldn't have to face for another 25 or 30 years. That is, taken the beloved contents of one large house and condensed it all down to what would fit in one room, choosing carefully the things that would keep me occupied and others that I loved. In other words, the dreaded move into a full care home for the elderly. I realize this isn't quite that, I will be leaving here in a few months and hopefully to my own condo or suite, but it was a shocking moment all the same.
There is always the hope of some work in January, but that seems less than likely unless the SAG actors can think with their conscience and not their bank accounts and do the right thing and not go on strike. The industry has not recovered from the writers strike yet, I can't imagine what another one will do to it in this economy.
Meanwhile am on a mission. My daughter, as you know, is getting married in February. Yesterday I went out with a friend and my plastic money and looked for a dress to wear to the wedding. After trying on several hideous concoctions, I found one I loved. Only problem, the largest size they carried was about an inch short of zipping up the last four inches. I bought it anyway. And now I am determined to drop one dress size in the next 6 weeks. It's not like I have anything else to do. So I am off to walk on the Fort to Fort Trail at a rapid pace and get the heart rate up and the scale readout down. Wish me luck.
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