Just. One. More. Job.

This is always a "challenging" time of the year for me.

And one of the biggest "challenges" is that, as the year draws to a close, I always want to "end on a high note" (i.e. by booking "just one more job").

So I bounce between hoping-against-hope that "the year isn't over yet", and having to to reconcile myself to the fact that, at some point, if "the year isn't over yet", it might as well be.

Things traditionally slow down this time of year, and I doubt it helped that I had to book out twice in the past month or so - first for my head injury, and this past week for hernia surgery (My second hernia, by the by) - so while it's possible I could sneak in an audition or two over the next few weeks, 2008 is probably all but over.

And it was, career-wise, a disappointing year. I didn't book as many gigs as the previous year (Four this year, versus six the year before), and with the exception of the infomercial with John Cleese, the gigs this year, in a word, kinda sucked.

But I did still go out, and I did still book. I made money as an actor, as I believe I have every year since I came out here.

And that's nothing to sneeze at.

I got a check recently for the Yellow Pages commercial - for $391 and change - and the Coldstone settlement (For $1700) is waiting in the wings. And I periodically get small residual checks as well (Mostly for my Monk episode, but also sometimes for Nip/Tuck), so it's not as if acting isn't bringing in any money.

Just not what it had the year before...and by a substantial amount.

But more important than the money - ! - is the fact that, once again, I didn't do anything this year that really felt like "acting", and none of the things I booked were things that anyone's really dying to see.

And the point of all this, in my mind, in addition to making money, is to do stuff that actually entertains someone.

Well, maybe next year...
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On Tuesday, the day before my surgery, I went to a place on Olympic Blvd that advertised "Instant Headshots", had a mini photo-session (The photographer took a total of 23 pictures), paid the guy about $80...and am happy to say, got some pictures I can actually use.

(I wasn't happy initially - first and foremost, because I'm an ugly motherfucker, which can't really be helped - but the more I've "lived with them", the happier I've become; headshots basically just have to look like you, and have some personality to them, and as it turns out, I don't need to spend $400 and have a photographer take hundreds of shots to make that happen.)

I showed them to my commercial agent yesterday, and he picked out a couple he thought worked for our purposes (And I trust his judgment on this sort of thing more than I do my own).

And the fact that he didn't say "Congratulation Asshole! - You just blew $80, cause these pictures suck" made me pretty damned happy - I'm glad I have a cheap place to do decent headshots. That's a pretty invaluable resource.

It's something I've needed to do for a long time, and when I had to shave for the print shoot, it seemed a good time to take the leap (Since not only am I many lbs heavier in my current headshots, I also have a mustache).

When my agent saw me, in person, without the 'stash, he said it made me look substantially younger. Which to me, are pretty much "the magic words" - I'm very concerned about "aging out of my category", so anything that keeps me looking generically "middle aged" longer is a good thing.

It's a challenging period of time. The economy's gone belly-up, SAG and the AMPTP are still fucking with each other, and it's hard to know how I'm going to get from "here" to "there".

But that, my friends, is the goal.

Bigger and better in 2009.

(More to come...)