pinkhairthing

Dear Pinky,

When you are trying to pickyourselfup, brushyourselfoff and startalloveragain, what do you use as motivational tools? Or do you use them at all?

Signed,
Fallen, but Trying to Rise Again

Oh yes, I use motivational tools.They are called margaritas. But seriously folks...

First, there are a few quotes I like to have up on my wall:
1. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Meaning, no harm in failing, no harm in being a beginner.
2. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. This is maybe the deepest thing ever written. It's corollary is:
3. Think small. If you look at everything you have to do, it is overwhelming, demoralizing, and usually seems prohibitively expensive. But if you look at the next 3 small tasks on the list, you can usually have them done by lunch, or at least have put in the phone call.
4. Sometimes you just have to say "What the fuck?" In so many ways. Yeah it's a lot to do, but what the fuck else am I going to do? or Everything is fucked up, oh what the fuck, I need a margarita. or Yeah, it is a big risk and there is no way of knowing if I will succeed. What the fuck? I am going to do it anyway.
Finally, a small handful of ideas about faith. Like:
5. Something like Act as if ye have faith, and faith shall be given to you, or There are guides and spirits all along the way, who will befriend us, or It's gonna be OK, it's gonna be ok, it's gonna be ok chanted over and over again.

So I mainly go from a positive mental attitude place. I was watching these two old ladies walking into a swedish restaurant today at about 11:45 for an early lunch and I envied them their time in life, but that is crazy. The adventure in life is not knowing how things are going to turn out but kind of trusting ourselves to be scrappy and resourceful in adversity, and generous and thankful in times of plenty. Plus, almost everyone who reads this blog is rich in love, and you can't buy that shit. The other really effective stress out time thing I do is called "worst case scenario." I figure out what is the worst that can happen if I fail at whatever endeavor, and I go from there. It usually isn't all that bad, and is never worth stressing over.

OK, so all of that is nice and easy and it helps, but there is one other thing I do. It's called "best case scenario." I look realistically at what I could attain by taking this risk and going on this path, and I evaluate if it is worth the cost. This was how I stopped acting and thought of something else to do with my life. I realized that I never wanted to make any compromises in my acting, and I only wanted to work with people I respected on projects that inspire me, and I didn't want to be in some dumb movie even if someone wanted me to be, which it was kind of looking like no one ever would. I saw that I would probably never earn a living acting, at least acting the way I wanted to. So I thought about what I really wanted, like, to be my own boss, to help other people, to take time in each week and each year to travel and breathe, to wear jeans to work. Simple stuff that makes a difference in the daily grind, and I talked to friends and family, and I made a really big, really strange decision that literally no one anywhere saw coming.But it was good and right for me. And then I just believed that I could make it happen, and often faltered and freaked, but got a lot of help and support, and I am sort of getting there, somewhere, to an early step of having maybe made it. And I wasn't really kidding about the margaritas. Sometimes I just got good and drunk, and sometimes that helped.