A Zak Barnett Studios long-time student and enthusiast of all things acting and self-discovery, Ava Marilyn seeks to capture the essence of the studio in her writing through her weekly personal experiences and epiphanies and her findings about the deeper self and others. Through these diary entry-type updates from someone actively studying and working through the industry, she hopes to provide an insider’s look into the studio itself, its practices, and its impact.
As my time of rest quickly came to a close, and I had to start not only being a grown-up but a grown-up in L.A. chasing what feels like an impossible dream while also trying to survive in this ghastly expensive city, I encountered a few epiphanies.
What I used to think was wasted time has actually become invaluable in setting me up for what’s to come. As one part of life has ended and I’ve been consumed by grief because of it, I’ve been challenged to ask myself some grueling questions about where I’m going and what the purpose behind my choices really is…
In class not too long ago, we talked about an individual’s willingness to change. I like to think I’m totally open to it. I change all the time, right? Bring it on. But after further reflection, I began to understand that I don’t actually change; my surroundings do. My environment changes not because I want it to, but because it just always does and always will.
So the change I feel internally is almost never an active choice but rather a symptom of my exterior circumstances. Of course, life is constantly evolving; with or without us, time does not stand still. But I believe some kinds of change are ours to dictate. There comes a point in time when we must identify an area in our lives that we wish were different and then take the action to make it so.
In this discovery, I realized I’m incredibly reluctant to change. I sink my teeth into things and hold on with a painfully persistent bite, praying nothing and no one will ever leave me. I cling to an ideal, a person, a history, a routine. If I’ve poured my heart into something, I refuse to believe it could ever be time to move on. Because to me, change has only ever meant goodbye.
My so-called inability to change, or rather my unwillingness to, comes from my refusal to release. To let go. To trust that the time I spent with someone or doing something had value, and even if I am faced with an ending, that value does not depreciate. And maybe the only way to truly honor something that was at one point the most important thing in my life is to let it teach me that the only real constant in life is, in fact, change.
Zak said something recently that struck me deeply: “We change when whatever something is doing to us outweighs what it’s doing for us.”
To me, this means we redesign our lives when the hurt becomes all-consuming, to the point where it no longer feels worth it to stay.
But releasing can feel like losing. If I heal, that means it’s really over. We stick with pain sometimes because it’s what we know. We don’t want to be thrown into the unfamiliar. We stay tethered to people through shared misery, and when we grow beyond that pain, it means something else has to end. Like a dying and a resurrection. Death must come before new life can take root.
This carries over into my acting in more ways than I know how to confess. I often feel so attached to my instincts, to the range of human emotion and expression I actually understand, that I end up blocking discovery and risk. My gut is never wrong, never leads me astray, so why shift to a new course of action when I am perfectly content with this one?
Well, because maybe after some time, what once worked or felt right no longer is. In acting, maybe this is a process or an approach that has become stale or uninspiring. This doesn’t mean I should stop trusting myself or ignore my intuition. But perhaps, if I am going to choose real change in my life, my relationship with my craft also needs an upgrade. When instinct becomes the one thing I trust, it keeps me holding on with a death grip to what I know instead of releasing myself into what I could learn.
If I refuse to release, I’ll only end up being dragged. We can carry everything with us, even our pain. We can make it our friend. We don’t have to forget the fact it happened, but rather release its control over us. We can carry the memory without carrying the burden. Eventually, if we’re to transform, we have to relinquish control. Only then can real change occur, propelling us into forward motion.
