 This is my second year doing self-tape may last year. I think I only did like one or two and it was just really poor planning. I didn't even start planning. I was just like, oh, I'm just going to do it. If I don't get ready for self-tape may right now, it's just not going to happen again this year because I am an actor who currently has a full-time nine to five job and I have a life. I have a full-time nine to five job that doesn't have anything to do with acting. I'm currently not actively submitting for paid work due to a few things in my life, but I would love to do self-tape may, which is a self-tape challenge. In May, you do 16 self-tapes and you can submit them if you want or if you just want to do them for yourself. It's created by Audrey from Audrey Helps Actors, the podcast. I think it's a fun concept because humans, we have a hard time holding our self-accountable for wanting to get better at certain things or having habits. One of the things Audrey says about self-tape may is to have a purpose for it. You want to fall in love with acting again and you just want to have fun with your self-tapes or you want to get really good at a certain kind of self-tape. I was thinking about what I wanted to do and one of the shows that I love, and I know a lot of people love, is Abbott Elementary. It would be pretty fun if I did all Abbott Elementary self-tapes. I want to finish all 16 self-tapes this year, but the purpose of my self-tape may this year, I wanted to be to have fun and to practice my acting, you know, all of the different parts as far as like getting good again at memorizing and getting good again at like really diving yourself into the story and the text and all of that, you know, theater kid stuff. If nothing else, I have myself to enjoy acting with at home. I didn't realize I was going to be so emotional, but right now this like, this acting, this self-tape is the only acting that I have. It makes me really sad because I love it. Oh no. Maybe I should stop thinking about it so much and just do it so that I can relax because clearly finally talking about it out is making me really, really sad. Okay, stop being, it's okay to be emotional, but I am trying to concentrate and instead of preparing for self-tape may, I'm like processing all of this other pain. Let's stop like having a therapy session right now and really concentrate on getting ready for self-tape may. What have I been doing? I've tried to sit down to read the pilot of Abbott Elementary so many times and then I get distracted and I do other things. So I'm almost to the point where I'm just going to print the entire pilot and then go from there. I don't have like that many days to get my scenes together because I really, really want to get my scenes together before me first because the rest is fun. It's memorizing, it's working on the scene, it's recording it. So I'm going to sit down right now and read it because I have time so I'm going to force myself to do it. I am not prepared. I'm feeling a tiny bit frustrated. Like honestly not that as frustrated as I probably should be that I don't already have all of my scenes. And now I'm not sure if I'm going to do all of my scenes from Abbott Elementary. I'm feeling a little bit indecisive, but also I wanted to just take a look at the self-tape may scripts from Castability because I know they give you 20 scripts, but I'm wondering if they just give you 20 scripts in the form of the scenes they put out every week instead of like giving you a whole PDF of all of them. So I logged on to Instagram on my laptop to try and find that and then I went on my app and I also couldn't find it. I'm on Instagram on my laptop and it looks like Audrey was she put what the thing is for self-tape main if you don't know every year so that you don't just submit a bunch of random self-tapes. She asked you to include something like a piece of tape or a sticker or a button. She said the thing you must wear or show or write down on a paper and show in self-tape every self-tape this May. So I know you are not a cheater, pumpkin eater, is a bobby pin. It's just a bobby pin. That's super easy. Also like I would love to do more scenes from the office and I also wanted to just have the scenes today so that I can get started tomorrow. I think I am making my life more difficult for no reason. I'm just getting very like flustered of like oh I don't have my scenes today and May is tomorrow but I have a scene that I want to do tomorrow. It's going to be a Janine scene from Abba Elementary. There's so many other shows that I am excited about and other scripts so I'm not going to do all Abba Elementary or at least that's not my intention right now if it ends up happening cool. I have at least this one. I'm going to start memorizing it and see if I can do it tomorrow. I'm definitely going to go into my planner and write down which of these I am going to be filming certain self-tapes because then I'm also going to upload it to Instagram and just have fun with it. I have my bobby pin because I am going to do a personality self-tape because I was really trying to rush a scene today that I chose yesterday. It's pretty short but I haven't even had the opportunity to have fun with it and do what I want to do the self-tape main which is complete 16 tapes and have fun doing it and just getting back into the process. I do very well with habits so I think if I continually have myself do all these self-tapes after my nine to five if I get a rhythm going I know that I'm going to enjoy it so much and feel so proud of myself and get so much better in acting again because I feel so rusty. And what I'm going to do today is a self-tape. I've booked jobs through doing this through answering a question. I just need to not put myself down and tell myself oh you're just lazy you just didn't prepare you just you know all of these negative things that I'm thinking I don't want to hear it me. So I'm going to do a tape answering the question of what my favorite item that I have in my home currently is and it'll show a little bit about my personality and my perspective in life. Let's do it. Let's do a self-tape. My first self-tape a self-tape may. Here's my pen and it's the sweater. It says I cry a lot. First day of self-tape may. If you want to do self-tape may too don't feel pressure to do all of 16 even though I feel very pressured to do all 16 because I really want to do all of it. But I'm going to go have dinner and work on my next scene for the week. Now it's time to do my second self-tape and it is a scene from Abba Elementary from The Pilot. Wonderful sentence structure. One of my biggest well one of my problems anyway. And then it took me a little bit to get back into it. I just wasn't finding scripts that I was excited about. A realization that I've had recently but really I've been feeling like this a lot is that when I am by myself or with like a non-actor I get really in my head about like oh I'm acting. Sometimes when I put on my self-tape audition gear up I get really in my head of like okay it's acting time where if I'm just rehearsing and playing around and like sitting here I feel more free but I feel the best when I am just able to like to really just get into the character and not think about what I'm doing really just like saying the lines and feeling it and that's why I like Meissner technique because to me that is a lot of what the Meissner technique is it's like being realistic in what you're saying and feeling versus like I have to accomplish this during this line which is fine too it works for people but but for me personally I think that's the best so I'm just going to play around with this monologue from Bridesmaids and have fun with it right here. I think you're ready even though I didn't necessarily do a self-tape that I would turn in for an actual audition I'm still very happy that I'm telling myself like keep doing self-tape mate like maybe we can still finish it even though it's May 26th because I just spent the last hour playing around with a couple of scripts one of which I've done before for fun on YouTube and the other one it just it just has like fun chaotic silly energy and it was it was fun playing around goal accomplished as far as what I had told myself that I just wanted to play around with scripts and have fun but I just did that for an hour. I decided to revisit scripts that I've done in the past but I was like I can still do it so I had done a monologue from it's the Regina George monologue talking about Janice Ian and I did that one in college for the KCACTF if you guys know those like college theater competitions but that was like one of my monologues I don't know why I decided to translate it into Spanish I just got off of my nine to five job and I am so tired I'm just debating whether I want to or have the energy to do some self-tapes right now and I feel like I should I feel like I should try because I know I'm going to have fun I know once I started doing it I'm going to have a lot more energy I mean just like a second ago I was like no I'm just going to go lay on the couch and drink water but even just talking to the camera right now I was already giving me more energy I should try to do at least one self-tape I have a few fun scenes and monologues chosen for this maybe after I do one I'm like hey this isn't so bad maybe I can do more I mean it's already up anyway well self-tape may is over and I didn't post two of these self-tapes that I did what I learned during the self-tape may and especially going through so much during self-tape may really was like feeding into my exhaustion of being stressed I'm really happy because I've missed acting so much and I'm so ready to get back to work and do commercials do tv film whatever in the last few days when I was reading script watching tv shows to see oh what characters do I remember do I like it was a lot of fun to find monologues or find scenes where I was like oh yes this in April and even at the beginning of May I wasn't really finding things that I was excited about so I wasn't going for it you know once I was like you know it's gonna be fine I'm gonna find things that I like and let's just enjoy it that's when I started really like playing around with the scripts and memorizing them super easily and just having a really good time that I just would not even though I was like I really should give myself grace I should take a break like what who am I trying to prove like I still didn't give up because I was really just trying to get back into acting and I was really just trying to have fun again with acting because I've taken about a six-month break because my best friend passed from cancer and I just I just didn't want to do it I wanted to do mundane things like a day job not have to feel so much I guess that's probably why like I was already feeling so much in my every day like non-artistic life that I was scared if I went onto a script and it had me you know feel more I was like exhausted of feeling so much but this self-tape me really has inspired me to get back into it so I'm gonna start up my casting networks actors access account again and start submitting and get back into it at the end of last year I had decided that I really didn't want to do like anything else other than theatrical work but I changed my mind this break that I took really taught me like I like acting and pretty much every form I am working collaboratively with filmmakers to create things and that's really really cool but also it's fun to audition for these commercials and it's fun to be in commercials so I changed my mind I'm still going to be auditioning for all kinds of work and I did contact my agency and let them know that I wanted to start auditioning again and within an hour they sent me another audition so I've already sent over my first audition in like six months and speaking of MDT because it was MDT who I contacted the winner of self-tape may is actually also represented by MDT so that was pretty cool and I messaged her and I was like hey we're both represented by MDT congratulations on winning self-tape may I'm excited to hear her interview because Audrey usually does if I'm assuming if the actor wants it they usually are invited to come onto the podcast and I believe that they post that like at the next season I want to keep practicing of course because it's so much fun and it really gets me into it and I want to improve to prepare for next year self-tape may because next year, Audrey next year I am doing 16 self-tapes I am going throughout the year to choose scenes that I'm going to do next year for self-tape may I'm not going to like record them or anything but I'm just going to be like oh that would be a fun practice I do want to still practice on my own so I have to find for that but there's going to be other scenes that I'm like okay that I really want to work and practice and have a really good self-tape a couple of July's ago though I did do a self-tape every single day so I know I can do it and if you want to see that it's right here it was the entire month of July