There are many days when I have no auditions, classes, or work, and I wonder what I should be doing. There are times when I realize I have been at the gym for an hour too long because I simply have nothing else to put my attention on, so I spend my time exhausting myself. Sometimes I feel creatively bored. Sometimes I need an outlet other that auditions and classes to express myself creatively and artistically. That’s where my box of ideas comes in handy. Literally.

A fun idea for those days when you are bored or artistically frustrated, have a box of ideas of things to make, perform, learn about, do, and each time you feel this way, open up the box, take an idea out, and do that thing. This especially comes in handy if you are having a slow season as an actor. This pilot season had been weirdly slow for me, and although it picked up right at the tail end of it, I had spent a month or so wondering what my next move would be. I wanted to keep myself active as not only an actress but also an artist.

It is important that you keep moving along in your career, even if there isn’t anything to necessarily move onto. If you don’t have a job waiting for you after you finish your current one, create one for yourself. Write down your ideas, put them in a box or a jar, or something, and whenever you feel the downtime and need to flex your creative muscle, pull them out again. Many a time have I had an amazing idea for something creative and thought, “Oh there’s no way I could forget this, it’s THAT good.” Well, think again, because I have forgotten pretty much every single one of those.

Keep yourself in motion as an actor and an artist and know that the busier you make yourself, the busier you will actually become. It’s a fact of life, like a magnet attracts metal, work attracts more work. Have a great idea? Write it down! Save it for later, or if you have time to work on it and create it now, get the ball rolling. There’s nothing stopping you from constant creativity, so you might as well take as much advantage of your ideas as you can.