Image via Flickr by The Tire Zoo
Last week, I traded emails with a friend whom I've worked with in career coaching. I asked how she was progressing with the goals and action items we'd talked about, and she said she hadn't made as much progress as she would have liked because she's been dealing with a lot of life stuff, like health issues in her family, transitions at work, and changes in her housing situation. She said she was in need of advice on how to juggle the pursuit of her acting carer with a full time job, family issues, and the other things life has been throwing at her:
"I always find that I put my career stuff last -- that I feel guilty taking time for it when there are other things at hand."
Anyone out there not recognize this? I certainly do. When other parts of our lives demand a greater share of our attention than usual, we find ourselves in a lose-lose situation; we feel guilty for neglecting our careers in favor of other things, and we feel guilty for neglecting the other things in favor of our careers. How did we get ourselves into this mental mess?
There's a lot of mythology about being an actor. Many of us have had it drilled into our heads that if we don't want it more than anything else in the world (which we equate with prioritizing it ahead of everything else in our lives 100% of the time), we won't make it. Some of us believe that if we're not focusing on our careers, we're being lazy/avoidant/complacent/afraid/etc. Some of us have internalized those things so deeply for so long that we've developed resentments about them, so as soon as a feeling about our career comes up, it kicks off an argument inside our own heads that makes us want to run even further from anything career-related.
Here's the thing. All of that stuff is just another manifestation of the voice in your head that we talked about a few weeks ago. When you set the voice aside and think clearly, it becomes easy to see that focusing on things like your family, your job, or your home life when they need attention is incredibly healthy. It's what therapists call "self-care." I can think of a couple of actors I've known who really did focus on their careers at the expense of everything else 100% of the time, and you know what? One spent several months living out of his car, the other ruined several really important relationships, and neither of them has an amazing career. So you're not missing out on anything fantastic by taking care of important, non-career-related things when you need to.
So what can you do to keep the voice in your head at bay and avoid career-stallout when life demands your attention? First, be honest about what you can handle. If you're grieving the loss of someone close to you, you just had a baby, or you've experienced some other all-consuming life event, cut yourself some slack. Set a reminder once every two weeks or so to check in and see if you're ready to start thinking about your career again. It's ok if the answer is no, even for a long time.
Eventually, you'll start feeling like the answer might be yes. Once that happens (or if you're dealing with things that are not quite so overwhelming), start with the trusty, familiar, basic goal of doing one thing every day for your career. Just one thing. One postcard. One email. One tweet to a decision-maker. Look back at what you were working on before life went crazy, let go of the projects or goals that are no longer timely, and refresh your memory on the ones that are still relevant. Assign yourself a handful of small, doable action items... And do them, one at a time. Allow yourself to remember what it feels like to make incremental progress. Notice that it's possible to work on your career while also nurturing the other important parts of your life. See what it feels like to step outside the all-or-nothing paradigm and find some balance.
Finally, remember that having a full and complex life makes you a more interesting actor. It may sound like a cheesy 'silver lining' way of thinking about things, but those messy relationships and conflicting priorities and dramatic developments and your imperfect attempts to deal with it all are what make you unique. When you come back to your career after a period of doing battle with life's challenges, you'll be carrying more tools and experiences than you had before, and your work will be the richer for it.