Sunday, October 9, 2011

Hitting Pause.


I was invincible.

Hopping from show to show, a day here, a day there. I was on about as many different shows as there are days in the week. Such is the life of a day player. But this time, not only was the money rolling in pretty decent, I was also on a winning streak.

The calls I'd get were a mix of old friends and new contacts; each day was either filled with familiar faces or new friends. And just when I thought I'd finally get a day or two off, my phone would ring again with a new offering. It was busy and I loved it.

And each shoot was different. Commercials, features, music videos... Valley, studio, downtown... Call times at morning, noon, night...

It was hectic at times. It was often sleepless. And I was having a lot of fun.

Bouncing from crew to crew, from set to set, proving myself to the new crews and holding my own with the old ones, pushing myself to take the next job and do just as well on it. I was proud of myself. I was proud that I had built up enough of a reputation that my phone kept ringing. I was proud that I kept giving 100% to each job despite still being tired from two days ago. I was proud that where so many others would've taken the weekend off to recover from the craziness, I just kept on truckin. I felt like I was unstoppable.

And then, one morning, that all stopped.

I woke up feeling more tired than usual and my throat felt like it was on fire. I tried to shake it off. I went to work anyway, hoping that this crummy feeling I had would disappear as the day wore on; as I was distracted by cable runs and lamp placement.

I drank warm tea with my breakfast. Got some pills from the medic. But nothing seemed to help. And as the day wore on, I noticed my feet were dragging and I groaned at the thought of moving another light, no matter how small it might be.

That's when I admitted defeat.

I told my Best Boy I needed some time off, and thus ended my stellar run.

I finished out the day as best as I could and when I got home, I immediately took a hot shower and went to bed, where I slept... and slept... and slept...

It was as if everything had caught up with me at once. All the short turnarounds and missed sleep. All the heavy cable and late nights working in the cold. All those times I didn't rest when I should've... It all came back to bite me in the ass.

I was invincible. I was unstoppable. I was in demand. I was on a roll.

But that all came to a crashing stop with a sneeze...

1 comment :

Niall said...

These are the moments ehn you have to take the responsable route and admit your human like the rest.

Had a day like that three weeks ago. Week five of six on a show. Started the week on a 18hour day, then a 12 hour day with a short turn around. showed up for day three looking like 20 miles of bad road.

Got about 7 hours in then I started to fall asleep while standing up. Nearly faced planted a few times and came to the realization that I was either going to kill my self or some one else that day. Walked over to the best boy, he took one look at me. I didn't even have a chance to ask to go home, he told to go to my car, take a nap then go home and get some sleep ready to show up to work for the next day to work my ass off. Which I did, gladly

It was a rough pill to swallow but to admit defeat is sometimes the smartest and safest thing to do. You get one body, it's you most important tool for work. Take care of it.

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