Bons: I NEEEEEEEEED a vacation. Now’s the right time to go, right? It’s dead for another week or two before episodic season picks up? Please say yes. I need a break from Hollyweird!

Ha! I feel ya. I sure know how that goes. 🙂

But honestly, there is NEVER a good time to leave Los Angeles, because the second you book nonrefundable tickets to anywhere, you’ll get put on avail for a national commercial.

It just *always* happens like that.

I’ll never forget when the hubs and I were in Desert Hot Springs for a getaway (a quick one, like three days, right as we were also in a “we neeeeeed a break” stage like you seem to be) and Keith got the call to go straight to producers for The Shield, so back to LA we went. It just happens. And the farther away you are, the more stressful that call will be when it comes. WHEN it comes. Because it will. At some point, if you’re on this pursuit, that call will come and it’ll be the biggest one you’ve gotten (for later that same day), when you’re on another continent.

So, just live your life, make your plans, and know you’ve chosen a career that will sometimes cause you to make hard choices. You’ll either have to decline an audition, an avail, even an offer for a role because you’re too far out of town to get back in time *or* you’ll have to cut short your vaycay for the work (or possibility of work, which we all know could end up on the “bad” side of the coin). Either way, you’re sacrificing something.

To get to your specific question about timing, though, there is NO one time of town that’s “good” to leave, because in LA, something is *always* casting. Always.

The best odds, however, are between the Friday before Christmas and the Monday after New Year’s Day. Not because nothing’s casting then, but because everyone is more understanding about unreachability then, and they’ll likely give you a day to get back to them before moving on to the next actor (which will happen instantaneously if you’re unreachable in other times of the year).

Or even then. So… again, live your life. Take a break when you need one and just communicate fully to your team so that they (hopefully) don’t put you up for projects that cast right while you’re gone. But even when that doesn’t line up beautifully, just trust that it all works out as it’s meant to. Or… never leave town. Find “staycations” that provide you with a bit of rejuvenation without taking you too far away from your epicenter for opportunity. Up to you.

Whatever you do, enjoy it. It’s the life you’ve chosen!

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001838.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.