I’ve been onboard the Audacia off the coast of Trinidad for the past few weeks. It’s my first rotation in oil and gas after three and a half years away. After the first week, one of my coworkers told me he was glad to see the old Simon back, which caught me off guard until he explained that I’d been kind of an asshole the last couple of years before I left.
He’s not wrong. I was unhappy back then and everybody around me knew it. I was only there for the paycheck and I didn’t bother hiding it. Then I quit, moved to Atlanta and started acting. I was happy, but I was also broke. Budgeting got tight and any emergency dropped me in a financial hole. So the stress never really went away, it just moved from the work to the rent.
This rotation is the first time I’ve had both at once. The money stress is gone, and on top of that I can finally afford to fund my own film projects and put money into other filmmakers’ independent films. That’s the part that brought the old me back. I have a reason to be out here now, which is taking control of my own career.
I’ll be honest about what it costs, though. Going back to oil and gas means I don’t get to act for about two thirds of the year, but that sounds worse than it really is. The industry is slow right now and I was only booking 3 or 4 projects a year. Since going back to oil and gas, I’ve booked more acting work than I did when I was home full time.
Over the next year and a half I’ve got six projects on the books. Two are my own, funded through this job, and the other four came out of years of networking. All four are features and not one of them asked me to audition. My schedule is four weeks on and two weeks off, and every project is working around my schedule except one. I booked the lead in a feature that shoots next year for three or four weeks, so that one needs real time off. I’ve already given my boss a heads up. He’s been really supportive of my acting, so with this much notice, I don’t expect it to be a problem.
My agent and manager are both keeping me on for now, but that could change. I’ve already had to turned down two auditions since coming offshore. My agent understands, but there’s a limit, and if I turn down too many auditions he’ll put me on hold until my schedule opens back up. He told me he doesn’t want to part ways and that the hold would just be the fallback. My manager doesn’t send me out as often, so the schedule matters less there as long as I keep them in the loop. I did made them an offer; if something big comes along, I audition, and if I book it I’ll request the time off. They were happy with that.
Here’s the part I left out. We haven’t done any actual work yet. The vessel went through some modifications and all of it has to pass mechanical testing before we start production on the pipeline, so the boat is down and I’m on standby. The thing is, the pay is the same whether the boat is running or not. As long as I’m away from home, I get paid. So I’m sitting out here on a twelve hour shift getting paid to wait.
So I’ve been writing. I finished my horror feature, a zombie movie set in the old west called Dead Sundown, and I’m drafting a buddy cop movie now. When I get sick of writing I switch over to an app I’m building for the oil and gas industry. I even volunteered to extend the rotation, since my next film isn’t until the end of August. I want to work as much as I can when I’m not acting, because the more time I put in out here, the more money I have for film projects and the closer I get to the long-term plan, which is a twenty acre homestead in east Tennessee.
That’s where I’ve landed for now. I’m happier out here than I was last time and I’ve gotten more done in three weeks of waiting around than I ever expected to.
Below is a small bit of the offshore life.
