I’ve been going back and forth in my head lately about whether I should keep pursuing acting. Not because I don’t love it. I do. But because the hardest part of this career isn’t the acting — it’s everything around it.
The acting part is actually the easy part. You get a script, you break it down, you make choices, you show up and you do the work. That part I’m good at. That part I enjoy. The hard part is the constant not booking. The endless auditions where you never hear back. No feedback. No “hey, you were close” or “here’s what we went with instead.” Just silence. You send your tape into the void and then you wait. And then you wait some more. And then you check your email forty times a day until you eventually stop checking because you already know the answer.
It messes with your head. You start second-guessing everything. Was the tape good enough? Should I have made a different choice? Am I wasting my time? Should I just focus on my career at the restaurant and stop chasing this thing? These are the thoughts that creep in during the quiet stretches when auditions are slow and nothing is happening.
The People Around Me Keep Me Going
Here’s the thing though. Every single time I bring up these doubts to the people around me, they all say the same thing: keep going.
The Chef at Delbar told me something recently that stuck with me. He said that out of all the restaurants he’s worked at and all the employees he’s had that were actors (and there’s been a lot), I’ve been the one that books the most. That caught me off guard. I don’t always feel like I’m booking a lot, because the gaps between bookings feel so long. But when someone on the outside looking in tells you that, it puts things in perspective.
I also see what’s happening with my acting friends. All of them are getting fewer auditions than I am. Some of them aren’t getting auditions at all. And the auditions I am getting aren’t for small stuff — they’re for big projects. Real projects. The kind of stuff that moves a career forward. I don’t book them, but the fact that I’m in the room for those is something I need to stop taking for granted.
Representation Matters
On top of all that, my agent and my manager still believe in me. They’re still submitting me. They’re still pushing for me. If they didn’t think I had a shot, they would have dropped me by now. That’s just how the business works. Representation doesn’t hold onto people out of charity. They hold onto people they think are going to book. The fact that they’re still in my corner says something.
The Quiet Is the Hard Part
I think a lot of actors go through this. You have a stretch where things are moving — auditions are coming in, you book something, you’re on set, you feel like an actor. And then it goes quiet. And in the quiet, all the doubt rushes in. You start comparing yourself to other people. You start wondering if you made the right decision. You start thinking about what your life would look like if you just gave up and went all-in on something safer.
But then a friend reminds you that you’re doing better than you think. Or your Chef tells you something you didn’t expect to hear. Or you get that next audition for a project that gets you excited again. And you remember why you started.
I’m Not Stopping
So yeah, I’m still here. I’m still auditioning. I’m still working the late shifts at the restaurant and taping auditions on my days off. The doubt isn’t going anywhere — I think it just comes with the territory. But neither am I. The people around me see something that I sometimes can’t see when I’m in the middle of it, and I’m choosing to trust them on this one.
If you’re an actor going through the same thing, talk to the people around you. Not just other actors, but the people in your everyday life who watch you do this. You might be surprised by what they tell you.
Simon Shih 