When ambition meets waiting…

The last few weeks since I got back from LA have been both the best and worst weeks of my voiceover journey and finally tonight I managed to get to the bottom of my recently soaring stress levels – frustration!

Let’s face it, if there’s one thing I’ve got it’s ambition. I know I won’t be satisfied until I’m doing commercials for Nike, video games for 2K and cartoons for Warner Bros. but at times that can make things really difficult. Ambition is a great thing to have as it drives you forward, gives the thick skin to deal with rejection and keeps you going when times are tough but at other times it can be a mighty anchor weighing you down.

In real terms I am still at the very beginning of my voiceover journey, yes I’m a working voice actor, yes I’ve had some big projects and clients but there’s still so much more to do. Since January I’ve been marching towards a major gear change in my Voiceover efforts and the trip to LA was all part of that, as was my new demo with Nancy Wolfson but invariably with any business (because that’s what VO is first and foremost) there will be times where you just can’t do anything but wait!

At the moment I’m chomping at the bit to get on the phone to agents, to contact production houses, to send out newsletters but I’m not quite there yet and when ambition meets waiting, stress is the result! A good example is my new website that is currently in the works (and the final piece before letting myself off the leash), we’ve been through a few design iterations and I’d just hit the “go” button with the designer when it suddenly became apparent that we weren’t going to be able to use the design I wanted (for reasons I won’t bore you with).

I was devastated, not only because I loved what we’d come up with but because it meant another delay and more waiting to get going. Now I could easily have just thought “to hell with it” and gone ahead with the site anyway, or decided to start putting my name out there but that wouldn’t have been my business brain making the decision it would have been my impatient one.

I guess that’s the point of this post really, something you’ll need to have to make it in any sphere is patience. Patience to pay your dues while you wait for your goals to come to you, patience to stand fast when all you really want to do is run head long in to something and patience to build your experience to the point where the goals of your ambition are within your reach.

So, what to do while you’re waiting to take your mind of it………write a blog post of course!