Going back to Standard time has a nice feeling about it for I wake up to the sun rising once again. Seems to make the daylight longer which is what it is supposed to do. The flip side is that the day ends earlier which is not so bad as it tends to make me work harder to get done my work before nightfall. Ah how we trick the mind. Gurus say the mind is devious and will do anything to trick us into inertia and too much thinking and that meditation is a way to train the mind to better serve us and not be the master of our actions. I guess what I am saying is that it is hard to get going every day and not do my crossword puzzles and play some solitaire to wile away the time in play and not get down to work. I think I am not alone in this but boy I sure have to kick my butt to get into gear. This blog is one of the ways I am doing this for it is an obligation I have undertaken and now I am getting into the habit of just sitting down and starting the day with writing. Mind you, not quite to be honest, for I did do the Times and Washington Post puzzles first today. But I am getting closer to having this be the beginning of my day. Even obligations do not guarantee action. They guarantee attitude and by that I mean fretting if I do not live up to my obligations and then getting into a bad mood. Mind will go through all sorts of excuses and promises of being better tomorrow and much time is wasted just finding excuses and many hours are spent in mind which are really just a waste of time and then other things are more pressing and so we can move on and forget the obligation for another time. And to add icing to the cake of procrastination there is the fact that under all the mind shenanigans we have that real center of our being, whatever that is, that is always saying, just do it now and get on with it. I am not complex really, just human and it always baffles me how I may want to do something positive and yet my mind will put up road blocks of its own that oppose my better energy. Actors can be like that and some really wonderful actors have to be pushed and shoved and threatened and even yelled at to come out of their trailers and do their work. It is legendary the difficulty poor assistants by the star Winnabagos have sometimes. After years of knocking on doors to get actors to set I now usually will try once and if I have no success I will call for a Producer who after all is losing the money and has a vested interest to get the actor moving. It is often fear that keeps the actor locked away from what they do best which is perform. For once I say "roll camera" the actor is now laid bare to the world and captured for eternity. I can sympathize with them a whole lot and my little experience making the rap video for my web site caused me lots of moments of anxiety before I just got on with it. Fears of can I do it, and will I look not silly, all the ego stuff we all have when we go out and expose ourselves, came rushing forward whether I wanted it to or not. I was lucky to have the Assistant Director inside me too saying they need you now and pushing me past my mind hiccups and so it went well but believe me just getting to let the camera roll and the director to say action was difficult. Not that each shot was not difficult to execute for I have a totally stupid mind when it comes to repeating lines. I was lucky to have a director and cinematographer who were patient and supportive. I cannot tell you how often I had to do each line as I would mix up the words of a simple sentence or just totally forget them until one would have thought I was totally brainless. Luckily we were shooting on a digital camera and so the camera just kept rolling until I would finally get it right. If we had been using film stock the cost of the stock alone would have been in the hundreds of dollars. In fact the whole shoot only cost about 250 dollars. The camera was lent to us and everyone worked for free and the only cost was the two memory chips we needed to store all the good and bad takes. the rest of the money went for the turkey I made the day before with all the trimmings. We had it for lunch and it was one of the best turkeys I ever made. I am still using the soup stock to make soups which now that the weather is getting colder sure taste good and are warming as well. So I feel for the actor who must be perfect in his chore whenever the set is ready for him to be captured on film forever. The set has no heart in that way for it says, " Now I am ready and when you hear 'Action' do what the director wants you to do". The set does not care about your personal feelings or you at all other than, its your turn to do your thing. Pretty heartless demanding. Acting is hard for when the camera rolls you have to be someone else entirely and on top of that do it where you rehearsed it to be done, exactly as you did it in rehearsal and make it seem as though you had never done it before. Not easy. I respect actors and their gifts and if I could remember lines I would act more for it is such a pleasure for me to discover someone else inside of me to come out and such a pleasure too in entertaining others. I enjoy it but it is hard to do.