Don’t Sweat Not Getting The Part. Your Time Will Come.

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In the past couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to audition for some of the most popular shows on TV; House, Criminal Minds, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and Cougar Town.

Great shows, right?

No, those shows are horrible! They stink! Don’t watch them!

Ok, that’s not true at all. I just had a brief moment of not-booking-the-role bitterness. These are actually great shows and they’re Season Passed (is that a term?) on my TiVo.

A couple of weeks go by and I’m lying on my couch watching TV (shocker!) when I turn on the episode of Modern Family that I auditioned for and there was someone else playing my part. He wasn’t anything like me. He was another race, size and type.

In the next weeks, I watched the other episodes I went out for. House had cast a short, nebbishy guy. Criminal Minds gave the part to an actor who was about 20 pounds lighter and gaunt (the role was a weasel landlord), Cougar Town cast a woman and Parks and Recreation was completely written out.

Now, granted, I wasn’t going out for huge roles but I realized that the actors that were cast were perfect for those parts. Those parts weren’t supposed to be mine. You get the roles that you’re supposed to get.

I know I could think the opposite way: My resume would be killer if I had booked these roles. My bank account would love me. I’d get the opportunity to audition for bigger roles.

But, I hate to say it, maybe things do happen for a reason.

One of the million reasons that I love this career is that you never know what can happen. One minute you’re working at a boring tech support job telling someone to re-boot their computer for the umpteenth time, the next you could be cast in a civil war movie (Gods and Generals) where Stephen Lang is yelling at you to stop being a wimp.

That’s what happened to me.