Lesson 0: Screw It, Take A Vacation

I’ve always been a fan of speed—I did the Usain Bolt in almost every photo during junior high. Even in my adulthood, I found myself emphasizing speed, not only in my career but also in the bedroom, to the dismay of many… but speedsters gonna speed.

As a speed-addled man, you can imagine how the pandemic changed my life. I spent almost every waking moment of my adult life chasing down an acting career. If I wasn’t working, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I even remember telling myself that if I wasn’t on Broadway by the time I was 25, I was a failure. 

Suddenly the pandemic hit and everything I had busied myself with every single day had become non-existent. Live entertainment was gone, my part-time jobs were gone, and I was stuck inside my New York City apartment 24/7. Those countless reunions over Zoom, video games, and random happy hours on FaceTime created a truly enchanting time in the early pandemic. The novelty quickly wore off though.

Now, it’s during this pandemic that I had a crazy realization: in my adult life, I had never taken a vacation. Maybe it’s because I had evaluated traveling for work as a vacation, or maybe I thought the time in-between gigs was a vacation in itself. But, it’s also because I never felt I deserved a vacation. That feeling is something that I feel is present in so many of my friends also in their 20’s.

I think that’s hot bullshit by the way. We all deserve a break. And, yes, actors love to act and that’s why they keep pushing and pushing because they’d rather be acting than waiting tables. But, y’all, acting is still work.

Anyway, I saw that I had never truly taken a vacation and decided to take a road trip, roping along my friend Casey for the ride from Tennessee to Colorado, to Arizona, and back to Tennessee in six days (a timeline I don’t recommend for anyone actually looking to spend time outside of a car for any duration of a road trip).

All that time spent in the car meant Casey and I had tons of time to talk, which was nice because when you’ve been talking to a computer screen for the past six months, you’ve got a lot to say. I remember listening to Casey talk about her sister, a young lawyer who had just landed a job at one of the biggest law firms in the country, and whose dream it was to climb some of the biggest mountains in the world, including Everest… Hold on. Rewind. A lawyer, with a dream to climb mountains.

Now, this next part is going to sound REALLY stupid of me, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized people are capable of having dreams unrelated to their careers. Yes, yes I know it’s super obvious. After all, as an actor, you play characters whose dreams are not tied to their careers at all. Noah dreamed of being with Allie in The Notebook, Steve Carrell dreamed of getting laid in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and my college roommates dreamed of me actually waking up when my alarm went off. 

What I mean to say is that even though it’s no secret that people have dreams unrelated to their careers, I had not internalized that for myself. After all, I was a young actor surrounded by others whose dreams were also to be stars. I made a friend during the pandemic, Maggie, who straight up told me her dream was to just live on an island. At the time I thought she was ridiculous… psh that’s not a real dream!

I had been living as a literal workaholic for so long that I wasn’t even aware of how I was moving through the world. 

I recently listened to a podcast where someone said that they had never had a career goal, what they had were life goals. They sat down once a year and wrote out what they want out of the next year from their life. These life goals could be anything from wanting to buy a car, to wanting to travel more, to becoming debt-free, or whatever. Those life goals would help him form his plan of action for the upcoming year.

Now, I had been living my life with careers goals—I wanted to originate a role on Broadway that wasn’t written specifically to be Asian. A lofty aspiration to be sure. But, I had never thought about what I wanted out of life aside from my career. 

First, I was never happy with where I was. I spent so much time seeing myself not achieving that career goal, that I couldn’t be happy with what I was accomplishing at the moment. Second, I had given no thought to anything I wanted outside of that goal. I began to have inklings of that through the pandemic. Thoughts like, “I want to go abroad” to “I’d like to live further downtown” to “I want to go on dates”. These were all simple thoughts, but prior to the pandemic, I didn’t have time to really dwell on them.

That changed during this moment on the road trip. I just had a realization about how broad my dreams could be and maybe I was restraining myself. I spent the rest of the trip looking at the landscape and dreaming of all the things I could do that I hadn’t previously considered.

I could live in mountain homes and hike day in and day out. I could get a tattoo. I could dye and perm my hair. I could actually travel around the world. I could visit my mom more.

This slow moment in time, riding across the country in a car, with my thoughts flowing freely, I felt more in tune with myself during this time than I had in the past four years.

By the way, I have a tattoo appointment at the end of August to get my first tattoo. I’ve promised a stylist who cut my hair last week that I’d be back for a perm and color and she could choose the color. I saved up all my miles so I could fly abroad!

There’s obviously more I want out of life, but I figured this would be a fine first blog post. I mostly wanted to encourage you to take a vacation or carve out a moment in time for yourself to examine what you want out of life before, once again, we’re go go going going gone.