Thursday, March 26, 2020

Things I DON’T miss during this time off

Happy quarantine!  Hopefully everyone is social-distancing and surviving in this time of COVID crisis.  I know it’s a stressful time and I thought maybe I could recap some of the things about the industry that I DON’T miss during this time-out from auditions, castings, and shoots.




Holds
Seriously though -- isn’t it a relief to not be on hold?  While holds are great in many ways because it means your child might have a job coming up, there is always that sense of the unknown and the vague stress about what plans you might have to change or back out of in the event of a booking.  We’re on hold for a job next week and I’m not even worried about it since it came before the NYC stay-at-home requirement, so I’m quite confident I don’t even need to worry about that.

Parking tickets
I’ve been cleaning off my desk and came across an old parking ticket and thought, wow, how great is it that I’m not playing parking roulette and trying to decipher whether something is actually a legal spot or not?  I used to be a “never pay to park!” person who somehow always managed to find a spot (but it took a lot of time) and I probably messed up on about three or four occasions and paid mightily. In my old age, I now just use the Best Parking app, which usually gives a good price BUT sometimes you over-pay if you reserved for over an hour and you ended up in and out under a half hour (you know, that magically cheap period of time in the parking garage that is the teaser price they put out front on the sign).  But, no driving into the city, no paying to park!

Fake families
My daughter and a fake mom and dad in their Easter finest popped up in a Facebook memory, and I thought it’s nice taking a break from fake families.  Now, there’s really not much wrong with fake families -- in fact, they have always been very professional and kind people who have been really great to my child.  Cannot complain about that! Now, what is massively wrong with fake families is that they tend to be -- no joke -- a minimum of twenty years younger than I am. Twenty years.  So when I see my daughter pretending to be the daughter of a twenty-six year-old, it’s a real bummer. They are also so significantly more attractive (and thin) than I am. So a break from feeling old, ugly, and fat?  Nice!

Christmas in the Spring
The great thing about working in the spring and summer is that you get a little taste of Christmas on many sets.  I remember the days of my daughter not understanding she couldn’t open the fake presents. (Thank you, wranglers, for your help with that!)  But Christmas in the spring can also be a little stressful. You think, wow, if I’m really in gear this year, I can do my holiday shopping early!  Get ahead of the game! Maybe even organize all of the decorations in one place in the basement! But no, that never happens. And when the holidays actually do arrive, you never got around to any of that and the whole be-prepared spirit just blows away.

Early dismissals and absences from school
This is a double bonus!  No jobs or castings/auditions means no stress about those absences adding up.  Wait, what? AND no school to actually miss? No mental calculation about what time you can do the pick-up and still get in over half the day?  Score! My daughter’s school has a very organized online program, so if she were to miss a day, we would need to call in an absence so she is not just missing from her ZOOMs and assignments.  But again, no jobs so no worries about missing school!

Friday auditions
I just had to put this one because my daughter seems to magnetically attract Friday 5:30 audition times.  And living out in CT, there is a massive amount of weekender traffic from NYC to CT. I usually figure three hours to get home on a Friday (we’re about 1:45 TO the city), so about double the drive time in.  Now, no worries about those appointments and… wait for it, even when things do get going again, apparently everyone is already in CT (the people on my town Facebook pages are so ginned up about the “NYers” coming out to the country).  I can definitely say I do not miss that Thursday afternoon email about the Friday audition!

What are you NOT missing during this time off?

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Stay safe and healthy!