Sunday 10 October 2010

The best laid plans...

Well here I sit on my sofa, desperately trying to recover from a half marathon for which I was woefully undertrained. Yes, I did finish it, thanks for asking, and I am actually quite pleased with my time.

As soon as my knees stop feeling like they've burst into flames I can start training properly for the 2011 London Marathon as the sadistic gits who organise it have given me a space. Oh well.

You get a lot of time to think when your mashing your feet into two useless slabs of meat and bone. As soon as you stop thinking about how far you've run or how far you still have to go, you can find yourself taking stock of your life.

You see, I had a dream. I mean, we're not talking Martin Luther King levels here, but none the less I had a dream. When I turned 39 last November I told myself that I would be a full time voice artist by the time I turned 40. It's not that I don't like my job or the people I'm forced to work with, it's just that I have aspirations that transcend the nine to five and, after having tasted a small degree of success, certainly felt that I wanted more.

So I built the website. I did email campaigns. I blogged. I tweeted. I even sometimes just picked up the phone and cold called people. I genuinely felt that I was making all of the right moves but sadly, one year later, and I will still be going into the office tomorrow.

What I have realised is that I have not been realistic about my efforts. Being a voice over is not like being an actor. You have to view yourself as a business, and as a business, just how much work do I expect to get by promoting myself for a couple of hours every month? Exactly.

I know now that it is time for me to get real. To use every spare moment of every single day promoting what I can do and just how well I can do it. The waiting world is not looking for me, I need to go and look for them.

The plan is simple. Go on my holiday, switch off from the pressures of the world for ten days, and then come back and take this business forward at full throttle.

To any agents reading this, I'm totally up for representation, but only if you work like a dog with a rag in its mouth!

I will keep blogging while I'm away in Israel so stay tuned.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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