Jesse Ryder Hughes Blog June 1st/2007It has been a somewhat hard couple of weeks for me. With a startling revelation. I started feeling in the dumps. I let myself go. I have just been extremely confused. I have been trying to get advice from anyone I know about acting. Everyone is so unique in their opinions. This is what started to confuse me. I listen to people too much and help out as much as I can. It is a gift to be observant and I enjoy it, but when I get to the point where I am too overwhelmed by all the advice I’m given, from my parents, mentors, friends it gets to be too much. I’m keeping myself busy, but I sometimes don’t feel it is for me. It really sucks trying to please people. It’s worse than death. Because I haven’t been pleasing myself lately, I’ve started to quietly rebel, which is an awful thing to do. The pressure of being a reliable person, and what seems like is always expected from me, really got to me. It started slowly. I would start being late for work and procrastinating with my acting. The whole time I was aware of what was going on. I started asking more and more advice, different answers from different people with different experiences. I had some auditions, and all the work I put into them was lost in panic and fear of having that one shot of being called back by that casting director, destroyed. The funny thing was all the advice I got never seemed to me like the right answers. This is when I realized I was looking for an impossible answer. Everyone needs to be heard, but there are answers that only I will understand. All the advice in the world could never come close to answering them, you only grow with them. My emotions were going out of control. My passion raging with anger. Feelings were coming up that I never explore, because I’m always the nice kid. I accepted my full reign of thoughts and emotions and felt I grew as an artist and a man. There is an incredible amount of judgment and cynicism That is hard for me to understand in the business, but it still exists. I can only fight through it and pick myself up and grow with it. Let my positivity flourish. Use the will that I have, which is stronger than I realize at this moment in my life, and pull myself out of bed, look out the window at the trees and animals that create the sounds that make me feel alive. Grab a healthy breakfast, run, read, get out of my head and use patience and perseverance to fly. Find positive people excited about the same things as I am and push each other instead of judging and critiquing which is what we have the critics for, not us artists. So I’m on an uphill again. This depressing experience was so powerful and compelling and addictive and most of all safe. It was dangerous and scary. I never want to let myself go there again. I also realized I couldn’t be everywhere all the time. I started rehearsing for a new play. It’s a really cool play and I have an amazing character that I’m really excited to play. I want to get everyone I can out to see it, because at this point I know people are going to love it and people are going to hate it. Love can never exist without hate. I’m okay with that, because risk lies in there in the middle. Auditioning is crazy. It happens so quick. I come out of audition rooms floored. I am one of those actors that aren’t the greatest at auditioning, but when I get a job, I work my ass off and discovers specifics and am comfortable with everyone and everything around me. When auditioning , I become really unnatural and lose all the basics of acting, like objective. How does this happen? I am working with an actor to help me. I am starting to get it. Confidence and practice is what I am doing. Most of all I need to say fuck it, fuck off and fuck you, I am more than good enough to do this, no matter what you say. There is so much going on around me. So much to pay attention too. It is amazing. What people do and say. Where it is coming from. Nature. The universe. Buildings going up and coming down. New architecture. Crime. Love. Fate. The forgotten who are not forgotten. Jerks. Businesses. Families. I have been smiling at more people in the street . It sometimes catches people off guard. Some people smile back. An older gentleman talked to me. I like living life that way. It helps you get those little moments. If I don’t smile, I miss connection with so many people and I can see why people who don’t smile can become bitter, because they aren’t trying to smile, so no one will smile back. Smiling is worth it alone to will myself out of bed into the world I share with everyone and love.
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