The Perfect Time to be Perfect

You figure, when you get the house sorted, then you'll be ready. Or maybe after the winter, when the sun comes out and you can stand being outside more.

You feel like you just need to get that annoying script out of the way before you can focus on the one that's truly 'you'. You'll just act in one more zombie film before you really take the time to figure out what you really want to be involved in.

It always manages to be five miles further down the road.

It's a bizarre side effect of creativity --- you always feel like you're doing the thing you need to do, so that you can get to the thing you really want to do.

Even those people who are doing the really deep 'personal projects'. Most of the time they're dying to get them out of the way so they can finally go and do what they really want to do, which is probably a zombie comedy.

I've just completed a project that's been around my neck for half a year that I didn't want to be there in the first place. And another project, something I've put a huge amount of energy and commitment into, is now not going to happen. Although these may sound like negative things, in many ways it's freeing. I feel like now I have the chance to really focus and be me.

The failures are difficult, though. Because you have nothing to show anyone. You can't take them to 'The Museum of Near Misses and Full on Failures', all you have is a blank space where an accomplishment should be.

But then again, everyone has this. The path to success is tempered with rough terrain, full of obstacles and let downs. There are so many bad projects out there, so many terrible people to collaborate with. Can you expect to miss them all out? You can't.

Sometimes we fail because we're no good. Mostly, we're just with the wrong crowd. People are scared of committing to lovers, but throw a producer their way and they'll sign the worst of deals. I signed a bad deal in 2007. I wasted two years helping someone else make a terrible movie in 2008 and 2009. After that I tried getting something off the ground with a producer who could never really get to grips with who I was and what I was trying to do.

I only say all this because I feel like many of you will relate to it. Many of you have had hard work, failures and sleepless nights disappear into unaccounted for history. People just don't see the work you put in. You have to counsel yourself through the bad times, cause everyone else thinks you're cruising.