So, at the top of every month I make a few goals. Sometimes it's a goal I made at the top of the year, sometimes it's a goal that carried over from the previous month, and sometimes it's a new thing that popped up. Of course normal day to day life still has to happen, but I try my best to go for these goals I set. However, this month I set a handful of goals... and didn't meet any of them. But looking through my planner I crossed out a ton of tasks on the daily. So what happened?
Now of course somethings came up. I got a few book trailers requested (which I'll share at the bottom) and I did need to spend several days reviewing audio for A Firm Place to Stand's audiobook. However, those didn't consume my whole month.
After a bit of time, I thought about why I wasn't getting some of these goals done. It's hard to admit, but I think I'm trying to do too much.
Hey, I love being busy. But right now I've been trying to juggle: launching a podcast, sharing my short film on the film festival circuit, writing my next film project, and trying to maintain/grow a voiceover career. Not to mention single handedly maintaining a house, working retail, taking care of business paperwork for taxes, searching/applying for a better job, and ya know just regular adulting things.
And I'm not trying to complain about doing these things. For the most part I love what I do. However I started to beat myself up for not progressing in any of these fields at the rate that I wanted to.
In the middle of the month, I decided to reach out to some professionals in the fields that I wanted to work. Which by the way I highly recommend if you're hitting a wall and wondering what you're doing wrong.
What they said boiled down to one note: "Focus."
It was the kick in the butt I needed to hear. I was trying to juggle too many big things at once. And while I had fun doing them, I wasn't building a career. So, I had to think about what I wanted as my priority.
My first thought was, "well the Podcast is paying me." So at the very least I'm focusing on the podcast. Who knows if it will be extended, but for now I'm going to release the first season of Ace of Hearts this year.
But as a long term career move... I had to think about what would be bring me the best chance of succeeding and/or what would bring me the most amount of joy.
Voice Acting or Filmmaking.
And after a lot of thinking and talking to friends/family, I decided that it was time to put my pursuit of Voice Acting away for now. I'm going to focus on writing/filmmaking for the foreseeable future.
I want to say first off, this was a tough pill to swallow. I've been working on my voice acting since 2014 when I first took classes at Edge Studio.
However, I've grown a lot. I've learned a lot. And the world of Voiceover has also changed a lot. I don't look at it quite the same way I used to back in 2014. So, I think it's for the best to put it away until a time I decide to pursuit it again. And I might, I have no idea what the future will hold.
I think the decision is for the best. I'm hungry for writing and filmmaking, to make even better projects. Heck for the past two years they've been what I talked about the most in these blog posts, which was also a pretty big indicator that this was what I really wanted.
As I share this news to everyone, I feel a little sad that I'm not going to be working on voice acting. But I'm excited to dive into the next thing in my adventure. Which is...
Writing
After talking with a lot of other writers and filmmakers I decided to work on a couple of ideas to have "Pitch" ready. That way when I pitch, I have other ideas at the ready, but not necessarily full scripts. Just the basics enough to tell the hook, the plot points, the themes, the characters, etc.. So, I'm trying to have four ideas at the ready: Scare Actors, Celebrity Status, Killer, and The Sacred Witch. These are just four stories I have pretty well formed in my mind. And I'm planning filming a proof of concept of one of these later this year.
Scare Actors Status
I'm going to be releasing Scare Actors as clips for Instagram, Youtube Shorts, and TikTok. I've been hard at work editing them to format the new frame, and I'll be releasing small clips about 30 seconds to a minute on all the above platforms staring later this month.
I'm still submitting Scare Actors to film festivals. I haven't heard anything yet but I'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as I hear anything!
Ace of Hearts Podcast
We're still in production for Ace of Hearts, my entertainment lawyer ghosted me so now I'm looking for a new one.
I had a few people show interest in being guests but for different reasons they had to pull out. So, I hit the casting pages. I'm just looking for one more guest with experience of international dating.
Month of March brought:
I had the pleasure of making two book trailers for two talented authors
My mom! Such a supportive mom, and a talented author. I was able to make this trailer to help her promote The Veil.
Dani Pettrey, a very talented and critically acclaimed author, asked me for some help to promote her book The Shifting Current.
I also decided to make a Voice Over website just to have it out there. This website you're currently looking at is going to get a serious makeover pretty soon. If anyone reaches out to me to record for them, I'm more than happy to help. I'm just not going to be searching for jobs and opportunities in VO for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for reading! If you want to follow up on more frequent updates, as well as see some joke videos I make from time to time, feel free to follow me:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maddy.goshorn/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaddyGoshorn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maddog_goshorn/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maddygoshornvo/
Also feel free to check out Determinal Velocity's (My Production Company) Social Media Links (Admittedly there's a lot of bleed over, but hey give a like when you can!)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeterminalVelocity
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScareActorsShow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scareactorsshow/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@determinalvelocity?lang=en
Website: https://determinalvelocity.com/
Thank you for the support!
Maddy "Gos" Goshorn