Summer Stories: Tony Hale & The Anxiety of Being In Between
The emotional and social burden of looking for work is heavy. Part 2 in a series.
Hi, it’s me. What are you up to? How was your 4th? My garden is poppin’ with flowers, berries, and herbs right now, and I’m about to pull up my garlic that I planted last September.
Today’s newsletter is the second in a series of five stories intended to distract you while I work behind the scenes to update All The Things leading up to my newsletter relaunch on August 2nd.
If you missed it, you can read the first story HERE.
Tony Hale & The Anxiety of Being In Between
Today I wanted to share with you a 37 minute Fresh Air Interview with Tony Hale. I love love LOVE his character on VEEP - he plays the Vice President's body man, David (like Charlie, on The West Wing). He's also Buster, the younger brother on Arrested Development.
In this interview with Terry Gross, Hale talks about the anxiety of being in between jobs and the awkwardness that takes over when people ask you what you're up to, or what's next for you.
Oh man, did I feel this deeply during the seven months in 2018/2019 that I was looking for work! I mean, most dummies find a new job before they leave their old job, but not this dummy! I had a significant time gap between jobs and it was brutal on my confidence and small talk game.
Here's a quote from Hale in that interview:
"I think in this business you get the question of like, 'What's next for you? What's next for you? What's next for you?' You don't go up to a dentist and say, 'What's next for you?' 'Oh I'm doing this molar and I might do a cavity.' Since we're freelancers, people are curious, which I think is great, but you kind of always want to have something in your arsenal. I don't think it's right, but in your head, actors can be like, 'I want to have something coming up, to have something to talk about' which is a really unfortunate way of thinking."
Clearly it's not just actors who feel this way — I think every human wants to avoid feeling unwanted or like they’re not good enough.
Bryan and I used to joke about how it sounds more palatable to tell people you are freelancing rather than unemployed. These days, since COVID left many people without jobs for a significant period of time and layoffs are currently happening in the big tech companies, I feel like being out of work carries less of a stigma now than it did back in 2018. Back then, being unemployed carried an emotional burden and a tricky social stigma. Or maybe it was just me? I was embarrassed, and as the weeks and months went on, I assumed everyone wondered what was wrong with me that I hadn’t landed anywhere yet.
This is where the freelancing narrative comes in handy while making small talk at holiday parties!
Another thing Hale mentions in this interview is that he tends to play anxious characters, which he draws from his own personal anxiety. We know this as writers, that when we write and create from a place of vulnerability, we find the best comedy inside us, and the best dramatic arcs — real stories from a real place inside of us feel authentic and universal.
One of my favorite books on this topic is called Writing From the Inside Out, by Dennis Palumbo, which I read in 2006 (I’m probably due for a re-read!). The over-arching theme of the book is this: love what you do, because the rewards of writing won’t always come in typical or tangible success, so our reward must be IN the writing.
As a Hollywood screenwriter-turned-therapist-for-creatives, Palumbo1 encourages writers to lean into their idiosyncrasies as a way to fuel our creativity, reminding us that we’re all a little free-spirited, difficult to nail down, temperamental, and haunted by our own talent.
But in a good way.
Embracing my quirkiness as a writer and leaning into the dark and twisty Jen provides the raw material for my stories. This grist for the mill mentality feels second nature to me now and maybe to you as well, but in 2006 when I was struggling with what to write about while paralyzed by grief and postpartum depression, Palumbo’s book encouraged me to write about paralyzing grief and postpartum depression. It was cathartic for me, and readers responded with comments about not feeling so alone anymore.
Anyway, the Fresh Air interview with Tony Hale is great, and I hope you give it a listen. I didn’t get into it here, but Hale also talks about his struggle with contentment — the struggle to want something, finally getting it, and still not feeling satisfied.
Raise your hand if you relate to any of this!
*raises hand*
I'll be be back next week with a story about a keynote speaker I saw who's people-management style is the example I want to see more of in the world (because people don’t leave jobs, they leave shitty bosses). She's amazing, and I can't wait to tell you about her.
Until next time,
Jen
Join the Conversation
Do you have a story about a time when you were in between something? Was it exciting? Scary? Debilitating? How did you talk about it to other people? How did you talk about it to yourself? I'd love to learn from your stories, because I personally feel like I'm always in the awkward in-between or not good enough headspace.
Writing credits include Welcome Back, Kotter! and My Favorite Year.
I was laid-off from a start-up as it cashed in its chips in 2018, and even in that we-built-it-and-they-didn't-come framework my ego took foreverrrr to recover. ("But I've always been hyper-necessary !!" it kept repeating every time I looked in the mirror.) Anyway. To deal with the social awkwardness (yes, much worse in those years, generally speaking), someone told me to say I had been, "promoted to customer." Still makes me chuckle.
In between stage: parents dying. Worst in between for me ever.