I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t the year in review normally come closer to New Years and you’d be right. In a normal year, but the last 12 months have been anything but normal. March of 2020 is when everything went to hell and life as we knew it stopped. My birthday is in March, the 12th to be exact. I remember going out with my wife for my birthday on March 14th to celebrate. We ate dinner and saw a movie, our normal date night routine. It would be the last movie I have seen in the theater. Not long after that, Georgia shut down due to the Pandemic. We had to adjust to a “new normal” in those “unprecedented times”. Lord, we had to cook! That was scary enough in itself.
But in the midst of all the strife, my job as a voice actor had one of its best years to date. Voice actors work from home anyway for the most part. Are we “essential”? No, but we don’t go to an office for the most part so we kept chugging along. Then something amazing happened. Zoom. People started offering classes via Zoom from all over the country. Marc Guss and Joan Baker offered the “State Of VO” every Thursday at 7 PM where we got to ask questions of someone involved in VO from celebrities to producers to agents. I’ve had some employment opportunities that have come from connections I made on there. Atlanta Voiceover Studio was offering industry pro workouts on Zoom weekly then monthly. I’ve gotten to read for some pretty big players thanks to those meetings. Zoom workouts and get togethers with other voice talent have become common. It’s so easy to get together that way. We are scattered all over the place. My Friday meet up group has folks from Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, North Carolina, Florida, California and Canada. What are the chances we’d be able to meet up somewhere other than online? Zilch. We are able to realize we aren’t alone in this world and in this business. Knowing you’re not alone in your struggle to make it in this business is everything.
I’ve worked more often in the last 12 months than I can remember. I have to admit, a lot of it is due to the pandemic. I don’t mean I’ve done pandemic ads, I just mean I’ve had more access to more training and opportunities that I would normally have. I tend to look at the pessimistic side of things, but in this case, the silver lining is pretty shiny. How have you dealt with everything over the last year?