So, I had a panic attack on Friday. It was lovely. At the end of a long journey of auditions, I definitely had a panic attack in front of about 25 “important” people. I’m sure they didn’t know I was about to black out, they only saw a very nervous actress. Which is about as bad. I didn’t get the job, suffice it to say.

Auditioning is probably the worst thing in the world. I can’t imagine a more painful process. I tend to be hyper sensitive about everything, so the possibility of rejection or humiliating myself in front of people always threatens to trump what really should be happening: bringing my joy to acting. But the business of acting is always behind it: That I will lose they job by the way I look, that they won’t like my take on the character, that I’ll lose my confidence and my brain will betray me by making my hands shake or my voice shoot into dog-hearing territory. Squeak.

The lesson I would like to take from what happened to me last week is this: I cannot betray myself again by caring so much about pleasing other people. I can only do what I find joyous, and if they don’t like it, then I wish them good luck with their other choices. But by wanting to please people so bad, I abandoned my own artistic interpretation, hell, I forgot the words I’d said hundred of times. All because I wanted them to like me.

Never again 🙂