As an actor, there can be times where you think to yourself “what the heck is this all for?” If you haven’t booked a job recently, or it has been a slow season without a lot going on, you may feel like getting down on yourself and annoyed at the industry and maybe even the world. But let me tell you something, how many jobs you get booked on, called back for, and audition for are not the same thing as how well you are doing in your career necessarily.
     This is exactly why you need to develop your own way of monitoring yourself in your career and see how you are doing for yourself, independently of anything you “have no control over.” This allows you to take that extra bit of control in your career and will make you feel independent of the Casting Directors, Agents, Managers, anyone or anything that could potentially feel like an extra step or a “block” in getting the job. Here are some things I like to personally keep track of:

-My own feeling in the scene: I like to do scenes in my acting class that I have already done. It allows me to see how much I have improved in my ability. I will do a scene once and feel weak at certain points or lacking emotion in one line or another. The next time I do it (after some good time has passed) I will see the improvement. Maybe I feel it the entire way through, or maybe I feel like I nailed a certain line way more than I did the last time.
-Memorizing lines: This is something that has seriously improved for me over time and is still continuing to improve. How quickly can I memorize dialogue? How well does it stick? I love to see how far I have come when I watch my early self-tapes and see a bit of struggling here and there, or that I would still be holding the script. Now, I am able to heavily familiarize myself with the lines on the cold reading and have it mostly down.
-How comfortable I am with my developmental technique. This is proven to me in how much faster I can develop a character now than years and years ago. I used to have trouble wanting to sit down and do the “work” of acting. I now consider this to be the “fun part”; and love to take a seat and really get my preparation in before any audition or callback.

     So there are plenty of ways you can judge your progress in the industry that doesn’t have anything to do with anyone other than yourself. This is what keeps me feeling like there are things to improve on that I can do on my own, here and now, and that I am able to take control of my career just a little bit more each and every day. Set goals, accomplish them, and then set new and bigger ones!

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