Jaylee: Pilot season is coming. I am reloading the ammo.

The underlying pace of the tone of your new script of this new year has been set. The start of the first act has begun with the goals of your new year, the next adjustment to your character’s spine, their objectives, their tactics… You.

There is a drum, a fast, heavy rhythm beneath your conversations, your walk down the street, the way you carry yourself.

Pilot season is coming.

It is almost here. You feel the frost. The fire burns stronger within you.
And yes, you’ve got your t’s crossed, you’re dotting your last i, you’ve got your ducks in a row… It is at this time that I start to reflect on what is most important to me, that will get me through pilot season.

Story.
Characters.
Life.

Yes I know that there is the bear of confidence, and working out, and being in class. I am reloading that ammo.
But at the end of those mounting crazy weeks – it is the storytelling that I have done that I will look back on, and feel proud of. That I have done my job. And the end result doesn’t matter really, because in the end I went in and did my job – I showed life.
And I think that is truly important to remember. Everything else is feather down.
The story, your work, that is your insurance, your bread and butter.

And I know its easy to forget that. To be preoccupied with the other stuff, like what color your border to your headshot should be, or what font is really “you”.
I get it. Its easier to spend hours over everything else, because the results are instant, and they’re less scary to tackle, because they don’t hold what you love so dearly, what you believe in so passionately.

But we should always be absorbing life as much as we can. Ingesting and digesting as many characters and stories, and traits, and perspectives, and understandings we can, of the life that we live everyday – of the lives around us.

Someone recently invited me into their vulnerability, and shared with me their extremely difficult situation. I apologize, as out of respect to them, I am going to have to be somewhat ambiguous of their situation and circumstances, but the message should be loud and clear.

They’ve been going through a very rough time, fighting their own battle, a battle that many go through. They are not a particular friend of mine, some would judge them to be not the most personable, but they needed an outlet, support, and I had the privilege of being that person.

And I have only known this person for a very short time, and upon hearing of their situation, I started to reflect on their first impression upon me. On our interactions. On the interactions that I observed between them and others. And of how others spoke of them. Each was of course different, but then similar. And then I related it to their situation that they are going through, something they have been going through for a long time, but have yet to have found it within themself to overcome. After a unique close view of them, their spine, the reasons of their use of language, and they way they interact with people, as I took also a bird’s eye view of their life they shared with me, and placing all judgements aside, I perceived a unique sense of strength. Something that was new perspective for me in relation to this situation that many go through, and of their own way of being strong, of which many would interpret as weak. And I began to understand them as a person.

It’s amazing how much our experiences truly affect each of us, and shape us.

We’re going to be the privileged receivers of many different scripts and sides, stories and characters over the next while especially, and of course relatively over the course of our lives. And in this particular recent encounter, I derived the importance of not judging them.

There are going to be characters, and stories that don’t particularly tickle our fancy, and others where we just hate them.

But I think our job is to understand, not judge. And I think we need to find that small opening where we see some light, and dig as much as we can until it opens a world where we can enter the character, the story. Each character possesses their own kind of strength, with their own justifications of motivation and objectives for life.

But the other stuff can get in the way so lovingly. We need to get our anthropological-sociological-psychology scope on.

I view it as the actor’s binoculars. And then we probe over our findings with a magnifying glass. And then with a microscope. And then with our humanity. Our understanding. Which is therefore why it is so important to expand it. As much as we can’t even stand it at times.
Because we will be so rich with life, it would be hard for a story and character to turn us off.
And so, I wish you so much life this pilot season.

You’re ready when you give yourself the green light.