Character Building Experiences

You're busy.

You're not busy.

Your rig is all tweaked out and ready for anything.

So why did your iLok stop working?

My dad used to call these moments "Character Building Experiences." And honestly? That's exactly what they are. Because everyday life doesn't care about your schedule. It doesn't care that you finally cleared your inbox, or that you were on a roll, or that this was supposed to be the week everything clicked.

It just shows up. Usually at the worst possible time.

Your post is exploding! Until it's not.

You land an audition. Then you lose three in a row.

You have a great session, and the next day you can't find your focus with both hands.

You forget something important, remember it at the last possible moment, handle it by the skin of your teeth, and spend the rest of the day a little rattled.

Sound familiar?

Here's the thing I want you to hear, because I mean it sincerely: no one has it easy. Not one person. We all have character building experiences. No matter how sparkly their pictures are, or how polished their posts look, or how effortlessly successful they seem from the outside, they are dealing with the same flavor of chaos you are. Different ingredients, same recipe.

They lose auditions. They have family stuff that derails a whole week. Their technology betrays them at the exact wrong moment. They second-guess themselves. They have days where nothing works and they're not sure why they're doing this.

You just don't see it, because people don't tend to post about the iLok.

There's a proverb that says "a smooth road never made a good driver." I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Because it's not just that setbacks are inevitable. It's that they're actually doing something. Every time you reboot the software, troubleshoot the thing that shouldn't need troubleshooting, lose the audition you really wanted, and then step back to the mic anyway, you're finding out something about yourself.

You're finding out if you're in this for real.

And if you keep knocking out the auditions? If you keep screwing up your courage, regrouping, and showing up again even when it's frustrating and exhausting and nobody's handing out gold stars for effort?

I think you've got what it takes. Not just to succeed…but to actually be happy doing this work.

The road isn't smooth. It was never going to be. But these character building experiences? They're not happening to you. They're happening for you. And look at you. You’re still driving.