Day Nine of My500Words

My 500 Words - Day 9: Educate Others

Day nine of #My500Words challenge challenged me. Well, I let it. I should have just dropped it and moved on to the next one or improvised something more enjoyable. But I am a notoriously stubborn determined person and I won't be beaten. It wasn't much fun and felt a total chore. So today's writing comes with a smidgen of petulance.

Of course, I am adding the usual disclaimer that the point of these daily challenges is to write freely and to flow creatively without self censure, without pausing to check grammar, spelling or punctuation. So there may be horrific examples of both.

10 Things About Being an Actor that is Pissing Your Friends off

1) You are ALWAYS going on about it

You are always going on and on about acting and which production your are currently working on, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, your blog, your website, which you constantly share on your social media channels. Maybe explain that this is your business. It earns you money, which stops you starving to death, meaning you can still be there for them to listen about their real life dramas. If you have the time that is...

2) You never hang out any more

Your friends think that you don't like them any more. You are always busy in the evenings and on weekends. You always have excuses for not coming out to play. You are in rehearsals, in performances, or on a course somewhere. Doing the admin. Doing marketing. Updating the website.Writing. Researching. They don't realise that whilst they are relaxed on their sofa, watching something or other on TV on an evening, you are still working. 

3) When are you going to get a real job?

When you do have an evening that you are free, you still won't go out because the pay for actor's sucks and you can't even afford to pay for rent and bills, let alone scrape enough money together for a pint. They don't understand why you won't you get a proper job. Oh, for heaven's sake just go out. Once they realise you can't afford to buy them a drink back, they won't ask you to hang out again anyway. And it's not like you have time to socialise anymore anyway.

4) Wish I could sleep in all morning!

When they message you, you are either still asleep or in your jammies still. Some people, especially those who haven't had a lie in since the 1900s, are a bit grouchy with those who do get to wake up without an alarm clock. But whilst you are in rehearsals or up on stage, emotionally tearing yourself a new one with past trauma, they are snuggled up under their duvet, dreaming about their next annual performance review. They can probably even afford heating and aren't entrapped under their warm duvet.

5) I'm your MOTHER!!

You meet a squillion people. You are always in an out of different groups of actors on different projects, doing courses, attending events, watching people in other productions. Well, volunteering for theatres so you can see the shows because you can't actually afford to see them yourself. Ah, the irony. Your friends will not understand how you can fit an entire book's worth of words in your head, but then names seem to slip out of your head like....like....what's that really slippery stuff called? 

6) It's all about you, isn't it! 

This is a photo of me in costume. This is me performing as this character in this play or film. This is the headshot I keep for my online profiles. This is me tagged with the rest of the cast at the aftershow party. This is a little something I wrote and will be performing. I will create a video so you can all watch it too. Do you want tickets for the next show. No I can't get you a discount, but I'm in it. You can tell me how great I was and buy me a drink in the bar afterwards. Oh SHUT UP already!

6) What are you talking about?

They haven't seen Beckett, Brecht or Pinter and only pretend to like Shakespeare to look clever, when they've actually hated it since school. They don't really care. Check the eyes. It's all in the eyes. If you look very carefully, you can see that they are actually really wondering why those little oranges have different names to big oranges.

7) You must totally love yourself

They think that you are a arrogant and narcissistic. You must be, to get up on stage and enjoy having people stare at you all night. Always posting photos of yourself online looking all different and stuff. Even though they have a constant stream of pub selfies, with an identical photo-face in every image, airbrushed to within an inch of it's pixel. That's different. That's real life.

8) You still not famous yet?

You imagine that because they haven't seen you on Netflix, in an advert or even so much as in the background in a movie, they must think that you are a failure. They do, but in life, not in acting. They don't care about acting. They think it's a hobby. What they are really concerned about is when you are going to earn enough to get a round in, for a change.

9) Arty Farty

They don't know what you know so assume you don't know anything. Performing artists can just pretend anything and that must be reeeeeally easy. Not like real stuff, like math and shopping.

10) It's all About Acting...

You don't care about much else except acting, or writing stuff to act, or reading stuff to act, or watching other people act.....and yeah I'm bored of writing this now... I'm going to go learn some lines...

Today's wordcount = 970