Challenging the mind.

In some way I have always been somewhat jealous of people with routine - people who have the discipline to run a few miles every morning, who always read the newspaper and take the dog for three daily walks. Some of the people who do this can do it because they don’t have a lot going on in their lives, while many others are able to do it precisely because they have so much going on. Their life’s framework may be provided by their careers, and although they don’t do the same things every day, they have very disciplined ways of organising their lives, sometimes even making themselves do their required reading while on an exercise bike to ensure they take care of two necessary things at once, like Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts and MacArthur Award recipient.

I can’t seem to get into a routine at all, and in some way, I think I can’t do it because I want every day to be different. One of the things I love about voice-over work is that I usually have no idea what the day will bring, and whether it’s a big job or a small one, it’s almost always interesting and challenging. Last week I had two commercial spots to do for a new client in rural Michigan. The ads were for local businesses and had the potential to be quite ordinary, but they were far from it – one called for switching attitude several times within sixty seconds and included a quote from Micky Mantle, which gave me the opportunity to do a bit of research on Mantle and find a videotaped interview so I could hear what he sounded like. The other one required me to be the Easter Bunny! My client told me to get the recordings to him “whenever”, so I took a leisurely approach so that I could wait for the right Easter Bunny voice to come to me. The next day the producer emailed in a panic that the spot was airing after the weekend and did I need another copy of the script? So that Easter Bunny voice came to me in a flash and the job was quickly dispatched (you can hear the finished spot here). It was kind of a wild day, a lot of stuff going on. If I needed a lot of structure to my day I would probably be very frustrated. I did manage to get to my karate class but had to leave audio files uploading – something I don’t like to walk away from in case a problem occurs but I really needed the karate to help me unwind!

This weekend I tried climbing at a climbing wall. I’ve taken my kids to do this a number of times but had never tried it myself. Heights make me very nervous so I had to push away thoughts of fear and focus on the benefits and the physical challenge of it and was at the top of the wall in short order, ready to try a more difficult route. I couldn’t manage the harder route despite trying three times (I got to the top but had to use one or two footholds that weren’t on the route – of course the metaphor this offers for one's career path is obvious!) but am looking forward to going back next weekend and trying again. The people doing the belaying were college students and one of them has created her own major: wilderness studies, which I found simply fascinating. Now there is someone who is focussing her life on the unexpected and challenging. She will be leading wilderness trips and helping other people to achieve challenging goals, and I imagine this will require the ability to create structure and follow routine while being prepared for anything to happen. The ultimate in discipline! Something I don’t think I could ever do. In my life, being prepared for anything to happen is more about voice-over right now. This means having the discipline to follow a routine in certain areas, like making sure I am always contacting new people every week and following up. It includes challenging the mind with stuff directly related to voice-over, such as taking workshops or private training when finances allow or, something I’m doing right now, taking a dialects course in the university’s theatre department or (later in the year) more German, Spanish and French classes. I’m teaching myself to play the piano, which is not only great for exercising the mind but it’s wonderfully relaxing (and the dog loves it). And finally, pushing myself out of the house and into the world to try new things keeps me flexible and increases my ability to meet the unexpected and make the most of it.

Oh, and I almost forgot – it’s fun! See you at the top of the wall!

Discipline

Since beginning my study of karate over 5 years ago, I have had occasion to think about discipline in new ways. I’ve always chafed under authority, and here I am practising an art that requires something along the lines of obedience. Respect and courtesy are hugely important in Japanese culture, whereas Americans are known for being free spirited, possibly even rude and boorish. I have found that, just as I benefit physically from the exercise karate offers, my mind has benefited in many ways, not the least of which is that I can go onto the deck and try to turn off the part of my mind that questions authority- ideally, performing the choreographed series of offensive and defensive moves that make up the kata of karate is a form of “moving meditation”, and we can focus on it so completely that kata takes over and we in essence “become” the kata..

It isn’t that I accept everything I’m taught in karate without questioning it – it’s important to know what the moves are for and sometimes one is told to do things a certain way for a certain reason, but the moves and the reasoning are sometimes open to interpretation. But one of the challenges in karate, as well as in life, is to know when to let go and focus on one’s own training, not on what other people might be doing on the deck, how other people might be choosing to interpret kata, or courtesy, or focus, or any of the other components of the art or of life. Who is being asked to test for their next rank? Does that person deserve it? Have they been training as often as the rest of us? Is their technique good enough?

Whenever my mind starts going in that direction, I have to pull it back and remind myself that I really don’t “get it” when I allow myself those thoughts, and that part of the discipline and focus of this art is to turn inward and do the best I can to improve my practise of it, to help other people when it’s appropriate (e.g., if I’m conducting the class), and to otherwise ignore what other people are doing. A friend of mine who is now a second-degree black belt told me that although she used to get worked up about some of these things, she now tries not even to have the negative thoughts. That made a big impression on me. It’s a good aspiration for karate and for what happens to you every day on the street. It’s also helpful for voice-over and any kind of art or life work that requires you to offer your work up for criticism and rejection. Every day you send out emails or make telephone calls and attend auditions or record auditions at your own studio. All too often you get no response at all, and if your mind is overly active and you have a tendency to analyse everything to the hilt, you can overindulge in speculating about why. Why did that producer contact me personally for a custom read ASAP and then never even acknowledge my response, let alone hire me? Would I get more answers to my marketing queries if I timed them differently? Maybe I should have interpreted the copy differently. Maybe I was slightly too emotional when I should have gone for calm authority. Maybe I would have gotten the gig if I hadn’t had that cup of cocoa for breakfast. Maybe...

Enough already. Let it go. No, it isn’t easy, but it’s essential if one is to keep one’s balance and achieve a life of serenity and happiness. Clear negative thoughts from one’s mind so that the good thoughts have more room to grow. Keep them out of conversations with other people. Okay, maybe I’ll have to rush into a closet and shriek for a minute every so often to get it out of my system, but maybe after a while I won’t even need that. I want to be happy and I want the people around me to be happy too. Negative thoughts bring civilisation down. Can’t have that. I would like to have the discipline to do my life’s work to the best of my ability, to take direction where appropriate, and to move on when my goals don’t match those of the people on intersecting paths.

I'll report back in a few months, if I'm not too embarrassed about it.

Artwork by Christine O'Hara