Reader,

Last Thursday I had a commercial audition I needed to get through fast.

I had Bruce Springsteen tickets with four of my friends and I was the driver. My first pickup was at the exact time my audition was scheduled, so I got there an hour early, hoping to get in a little earlier and be on my way....

For context: The casting director was Dan Cowan. When I owned my restaurants years ago, I catered his wedding. Before that I had waited on him at Campanile, Nancy Silverton's first restaurant. Even though I was auditioning for him, I knew I probably wouldn't get to say hello. Commercial casting directors are a bit like the Wizard of Oz — magnificent, essential, and entirely behind the curtain. I just checked in with the person at the front desk and settled in to wait.

There were about 30 actors in that room. I knew at least 25 of them.

I mean knew them — not casually. I'm talking about people I've been crossing paths with in waiting rooms for decades. The mom category, the dad category — at least three of them had been series regulars on television shows. One woman I'd known for years was also on her way to see Bruce that night. We figured this out and had a moment of solidarity about it.

It was genuinely warm in that room. It was also — underneath that warmth — a little heartbreaking.

Because the narrative was there too — and nobody was whispering it.

The industry is slow. Nobody's working. Everything's contracting. Said out loud, confirmed, co-signed. The way it gets said by people who've earned the right to say it, which makes it feel less like a story and more like a weather report. And maybe it is a weather report. It's just not the forecast for every single person in that room.

And here's the thing about that story: social media confirms it constantly. Your feed becomes a Greek chorus of everyone else's fear dressed up as industry insight. Which means by the time you walk into an audition, you've already been told twelve times today — by people you respect, people in your exact situation — that this is a bad time to expect good things.

The narrative of a slow market is real for the market.

It is not automatically real for you.

Here's what I mean: In 2014, my commercial agent lost his house — that's how bad the market was then. I was also out of town for four months that year. And unlike now - this was pre-COVID, when self-tapes for commercials simply didn't exist - you showed up to the room or you didn't get seen. Which means every audition I booked had to happen in the eight months I was actually here, in person, in the room — no workarounds, no shortcuts, no exceptions.

That year I booked five national commercials.

A GoDaddy commercial with Jean-Claude Van Damme, filmed in Vancouver, in which I owned a flower shop and JCVD showed up to do the splits and motivate me. (This happened.) A Prego commercial in which I reflected on every bad hair decision I'd ever made in my life but was absolutely confident about choosing Prego over Ragu. An Allstate commercial in which I was married to a Steve Zahn lookalike and we had four completely feral children. A Comcast commercial in which I played the weird mom to my even weirder, obnoxiously Harry Potter-obsessed kid. And a fifth one I've apparently blocked from my memory. (Some of these masterpieces are on my commercial demo. You're welcome.)

My agent was losing his house. I booked five nationals in eight months.

I wasn't ignoring the reality of the market. I was just — somehow, maybe partly because I'd been away, partly because I wasn't in the rooms absorbing the frequency — not marinating in it. The signal I was transmitting had nothing to do with what everyone else was broadcasting.

That's the thing I keep coming back to. The market's story and your story are not the same document. They can run parallel for years without ever touching.

I still know that waiting room feeling. I'm not suggesting you perform positivity or pretend the slowdown isn't real. I'm suggesting that what you swim in shapes what you think is possible — before you've made a single move, before you've slated, before you've opened your mouth.

Curate accordingly.

Hit reply if this is confusing. Or if you want to tell me your own version of this. I'm here for it. 🙋🏼‍♀️

Hot Off My Brain 🧠 & Other Good 💩: A Curated List of Stuff I'm Lovin'

Some of these links are affiliate — I'll always flag them with a 💸 so you know. I will only ever share stuff I truly love and actually use. Your trust is worth way more to me than a few ill-gotten shekels. I swear. ✋🏼

📖 What I'm Reading: Ben Meer's Staying Calm in Stressful Situations → I found this at a moment when I needed it, which is either the algorithm being helpful or the universe being smug. His reframe that stress is just your body signaling that something important is happening — not a malfunction, not a character flaw, just a signal — feels right to me. Also his Carl Lewis "run at 85%" note is going to live in my brain forever. Apparently the fastest humans alive already knew that white-knuckling it is slower. Cool cool cool.

🤳🏼 What I'm Following: @successwill on Instagram → I found this while doomscrolling, which is either ironic or a small miracle. Positive, inspiring content that doesn't make you want to hurl your phone across the room — already a rare thing. But one post in particular made me stop mid-scroll: a roundup of good news from around the world that no one is talking about. A women's gym in China charging membership every 37 days (instead of 30) to account for cramps. Uzbekistan requiring men who raise a hand against a woman to leave the country. A stem cell treatment in Japan showing real results for Parkinson's. Finland — happiest country on earth, led by five women. Great Britain about to ban boiling lobsters and octopuses alive. If none of this is in your feed, all of it should be.

🩷🫶🏼 What I'm Wrapped In: This faux rabbit fur throw blanket → I got the pink one because I am, at my core, a 13-year-old girl trapped in an adult woman's body and I have made my peace with this. I know it's April, but this is not about warmth — it's about softness and safety and that maybe I am really Linus from Peanuts without the existential crisis. (The existential crisis is separate.) I got my mom one for Christmas. My dad immediately usurped it. That is both a five-star review and a cautionary tale. Do not leave this blanket unattended near someone you love.

Ok that's all from me for this week. Write me back and tell me your good news. I'm here for that, too!

Adria​
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P.S. If someone forwarded this to you, they either really like you or they're tired of being the only one who has to think about this stuff. Either way: Subscribe here 💌