Planes, Trains & Automobiles...

What a week of traveling I had! The week started in Virginia; wedding for one of my man's best friends from high school. It was so much fun! It was nice and casual and cozy. No stuffy decorations, uptight bridesmaids and uncomfortable seating arrangements. It was buffet, let's get drunk and dance in this crazy humidity like no ones business kind of fun! And I made some new friends! My absolute favorite thing about the wedding was chatting with people who are not in the entertainment business at all! For the first time in months I had conversations about things that are genuinely important in life, other than, "how many twitter followers do u have?" (um...are you following me on twitter yet? @ColleenBoag) ;). It was refreshing and reinvigorating! Just what the doctor ordered.

 Next stop was home, sweet, home. I got to hang with my new nephew! Relaxing, right? Ha! Absolutely not! What a little doll. He is one of the smiliest babies I've ever known, that is when he's being held. If you put him down he will attempt to climb you, cuz, nobody puts baby on the carpet! Oh man! Every day around 2pm I needed a nap! Did I get one? Usually not. How do my sis and bro-in-law do it?? I give them major props! I was exhausted and I was only there for a week! I cannot imagine that full-time. Oy.

 Then next and last stop for me on this crazy crazy week was VEGAS! I was meeting up with friends for a surprise dirty thirty. It was great! I can't really divulge more than that since what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas! Wish I had gotten to spend more time there but I had to return to LA a day early because *sigh, unfortunately (please read sarcasm here) I got a callback for a feature I auditioned for a few weeks back! And then luck of the draw I was scheduled for a second audition for yet another feature later that evening. I was out of town for 8 days, in three different cities and it feels very surreal to be back in LA and back to the grind. I needed the getaway and feel ready to get back to it! Big things are coming...big things!

What's your fave getaway?

Flights are How Much?!?!??!

Is anyone else getting overwhelmed by the gas prices these days??  Yikes!  I'm always happy when I'm able to walk somewhere and save .011 gallon of gas, so I don't have to visit that horrifying gas station, spend $25 and only see the needle go up to a quarter tank.  Ugh.

I believe this is directly affecting the price of flights as well.  This year has already been a challenging one navigating the discount, cheap flight websites almost every day to plan for a hefty number of trips I'm taking this year.

I'm very excited to be taking these trips, don't get me wrong.  I'm visiting Vegas, I'm flying home to visit my new nephew, baby John, I'm flying internationally to Italy to be in my best friends wedding!  It's all fabulously exciting and very much worth my time, but my bank account keeps frowning at me...

As a 'starving artist', I find these prices to be even more daunting.  All things I want to do and I will end up doing, even if it means months of raman noodles and no cable ;).  Whatever happened to the days of discount travel sites actually offering discounts??  I've been searching for cheap flights on hotwire, orbitz, priceline, etc, and it seems to me that the prices they spit out are what you would pay if you were going to the airline site itself.  I miss the 'good old days'...am I actually old enough to say that?

It's so funny when I reminisce about 'back in the day' when I would stop at the gas pump on my way back from senior year classes and I'd sift around the floor and seats of my mazda 323 hatchback and find about $2 worth of change.  I'd walk inside to the clerk, "$2 on number 4 please", and I'd have a decent amount of gas to get me through the week.  Heaven.

Well, prices are rising...so I hope minimum wage gets on board soon enough, or I book that next big Tim Burton film and get a chance to pay my entire family's gas for a few years!

Got any secret good advice on how to save money on flights or at the pump??  Let me know!

Ooh, for those of you with smartphones, there's an app called 'Gas Buddy' and it tells you the price of the gas in the area you are so you can find the cheapest.  At least you may only spend $4.60 as opposed to $4.89  ;)

Fear of Flying

All of us actors have this internal 'fear of flying'.  No, I'm not talking about the actual process of soaring thousands of feet above ground in a big metal machine that might as well be a bomb.  I'm talking about the fear that as soon as we book a flight out of town, that agent we've been hassling for months will finally call us in for a meeting, or that casting director we've been going to workshops with finally wants us for the perfect role, or there are so many audition notifications piling up in our inbox that we know absolutely that we have just missed our one shot at fame and will now forever be a failure.  Or at least for the next ten years, until our 'big break'.

Ugh.  What a ridiculous fear we actors live with.  It's so ridiculous but it stops many of us from living our lives.  Which is a huge mistake because living our lives is what makes us actors.  Experience, emotions, memories, and moments, that's what we draw from as actors and if we forever remain in the city of Angels, sitting in front of our computers pressing the refresh button in hopes that a new email will pop up that says, "Thanks for your great audition!  We've cast you as the lead!"  Then we will continue to suck.  I mean SUCK as actors.  As artists.

It's a long lived fact that as soon as you book that flight you've been dying to book for your best friends wedding in Italy, you'll get a huge opportunity that seems to fall out of nowhere other than the cloud of irony and into your lap.  What ever should you do?  Well...flights are often refundable if not changeable and yes, maybe you lose a $100 here or there.  But have you not already spent thousands if not millions on your career; headshots, classes, workshops, producing your own shorts, reels, biz cards, coaching sessions, blah blah blah, so what's another $100 to ya for the opportunity of a lifetime.

Now I'm absolutely not suggesting you skip your best friends wedding.  I'm simply suggesting you don't go a week early like planned, but still make it in time to see her walk down the aisle and kiss her prince charming.  Just like in the movies...

Live your life.  It's your only job as an actor.  An artist.

Welcome to the first post in my new blog.  I'm not sure what I'll be writing about but I guarantee it'll be good...thanks for joining me!