On June 26th, 2015, at approximately 12:30pm, my teacher and mentor, Richard Lawson, said to me in the Professional Development Program 2.0 class that I should start a weekly blog. A blog that chronicles my journey as an artist. The highs, the lows, the challenges, the wins and everything in between. I’ve been studying with Richard for almost 10 years now and everything I have learned about acting and administration has been because of him.
Richard has seen my growth and my journey over these last ten years. He has seen it all: My laughs, my tears, my compliance, my defiance, my doubts, my growth and my evolution from follower to leader.
2015 has been no exception. At the beginning of this year, Richard challenged all of us in this particular class to step up our game and go after our personal projects with passion, enthusiasm, professionalism–or as they say on the streets, go after it like a maw-fucking pitbull with lock jaw. And every week, he wants us to present our progress and our logged hours to him and to the class.
So far this year, I have been averaging about 35-37 hours a week into my career. Not bad considering I work 30 hours a week for Richard. I presented my latest career administration statistics today and Richard said, “In each of you, I see the whole thing. Or I see the potential of the whole thing. So what I just saw for you was–cause I look at your journey as an actor and I’ve been part of your journey for a lot of years, so I’ve seen the progression. And I’ve seen the periods and I’ve seen the changes. And as I looked at the last ten years, I said, ‘Now what if he had blogged about that all along the way? What if on a week to week, day to day, week to week, no less than week to week, that you wrote about your journey as an artist? The artist’s journey. And you talk about the things that you do, the things that you did, the goals for the week, whatever it is in your blog that you want to share. That you would be speaking to probably all or some of every artists’ journey. So that people can identify with the–I hate the word, there are certain words that I hate. I refuse to use those words in my vocabulary. Words like ‘Overwhelmed’. ‘Struggling’. And so for you to blog about that could be a major thing because you’re blogging it from a standpoint of having the actions, the clarity, the organization, the artistic warrior, the postulates, the dreams and then the manifestations so that you postulate, there are categories of things. From week to week, you can choose the subject because the subject is clear. And you establish the subjects. And then this week I’m talking about postulates. Talking about work ethic and what a bitch that is. That from week to week, people tune in because it’s like, ‘Yo. Let me get behind-’ You know what it’s kind of like? It’s like getting behind the ambulance. In New York, if you see an ambulance, you will see motherfuckers who will fight to get in line because you know the ambulance is cutting through. So you see this ambulance and you see this trail of cars that are weaving through cause it’s the only way they can get through because everybody who’s not in that line is stuck. So what I’m saying is that for you to do a blog and to have that and you chronicle your journey, big. Big. So that when you get there, you have a lot of people who could testify. They followed the ambulance.”
So here we are. Chasing The George. Not a play on the Kevin Smith film, “Chasing Amy”, but rather, “Chasing The Ambulance”. When an ambulance is in emergency mode, they zoom down the streets with intention and energy. The ambulance is direct and cuts through traffic. Some people chase after ambulances so that they too can get to where they need to go. “Chasing The Ambulance”.
So week to week, I will be sharing how I am cutting through to achieve the things I
see and want for myself. And hopefully, I will inspire some of you on your own personal journeys to keep going and not give up.
Chasing The George 