It makes me think of something I came across several years ago when I was submitting my demo to music labels, hoping for a record or songwriting deal. There was a label that I would have loved to be on, and I eagerly went on their website, researching how I could get my humble demo in front of the powers-that-be.

According to their website, you could submit an unsolicited demo to them, addressed to the guy who handles those things. His name? Vinyl Couch.

At first my brain accepted it. I think I registered it as “Vinnie” or something similar. But then I looked again, and really processed it. Ha, ha. Funny, guys.

I have to wonder how many hopeful artists sent in their demos to Mr. Couch. It kind of made me sad that this label was having a laugh at the expense of hundreds of artists.

While I decided against sending my demo to Vinyl, I do use him as a litmus test of legitimacy in the entertainment world.

Stay busy.

Seriously – it’s Murphy’s law or something. When your schedule is packed to the brim, that’s when all the good opportunities come up.

Of course, the downside to being so incredibly busy is that all you want is a day off to relax and recover.

Sigh.

It’s easy to feel like you suck when the phone’s not ringing, and your email inbox is empty, and your calendar is one blank page. I’m going through that lull right now, and thinking (as I usually do in the darkest of my “I suck” moments) that maybe I should just give up and go do something better with my life. Like underwater basket weaving.

I was at my day job when a patron came in and checked out a book. Same old, same old. As always I was polite and friendly and wished him a good day. He asked me, “What’s your astrological sign?”

He said he was fascinated by things like that (and fortunately seemed genuinely interested, not like he was sleazily trying to hit on me). And I’ve noticed that people in Los Angeles really are into horoscopes. So I replied, “Can you guess?”

He said, “Taurus?”

I shook my head no. “Aquarius.”

We made some small chat about where in the sign my birthday fell, and he started to walk toward the exit. Right before he left, he turned around and said, “That’s a sign of genius, you know.”

I decided to take that as the universe’s way of telling me that I don’t suck, after all.

One of my big goals for the week was to sit down and record some cover songs and a video audition. The deadline is coming up, and I know I won’t have time in the next week to do it, so it had to be this week.

On Wednesday, I thought I would sit down and at least record one cover song. My webcam started acting finicky, and about a minute in it would just freeze up. I tried everything – restarting my computer, uninstalling and reinstalling the software. I read online that Logitech webcams can act up when running on Macs, so I thought maybe I would install the Logitech software on the PC side of my computer. Of course, when I did that, then I got an error message saying there wasn’t enough space on the PC side to install the software.

So then I started erasing a bunch of items from the PC side of my computer… and that didn’t work. I had to give up on Wednesday, because it was getting to be late at night and I didn’t want to disturb my neighbors.

I thought on Friday I might be able to record everything, but then realized that wouldn’t work… because on Friday afternoons we have some landscapers who come every week to (loudly) clip hedges, blow grass off the sidewalk, etc. Friday can be a tricky day – it’s normally a day off for me, but I can’t do any taping at home because of the lawn care people.

So I decided on recording Thursday night. But when I put in my contacts, I realized (belatedly) that I had used the wrong solution on my contacts – instead of saline, I had used a hydrogen peroxide solution. You know, the kind that needs the special case to work on your contacts? The bottle that says, “Do not put directly in eye”? Yeah, that one. My eye began to sting and turn red. So Thursday night was out because I looked like I was drunk or had pink eye or something.

And so continues my not so glamorous life… I think I should have stayed in bed all week!

Here’s a sampling of how fabulous my life as an actress really is.

I was on set last night for about 15 hours yesterday. That’s par for the course, but it was a cold day and night and we were chilling (literally) in a wind tunnel. I’m feeling it today – rather achy and slow, and my brain is a little muddled.

When I got home, about 11 pm, I was scared out of my bathroom by a giant red cockroach hanging out on the ceiling. Not the kind of thing you want to see in your shower after a long day. I thought, I’m going to go get help, if my neighbors are up. So I ran outside…

And then realized I had locked myself out of my apartment.

Luckily, my landlord lives next door and was still awake. But we had to wake up another neighbor, who holds the keys to all the apartments.

I made it though the night without incident, but this morning when I went to open the blinds in my bathroom, the whole thing fell off the window.

Some days, you just feel like you shouldn’t even get out of bed.

Although I find it funny that people don’t know how to drive in the rain here in Los Angeles, considering that at least 80 percent of the town is made up of transplants who come from the Midwest or East Coast or South. Where things like rain happens fairly regularly.

Today’s rainstorm was a doozy, by LA standards. It rained nearly all day, fairly heavy at one point.

I’ve been go-go-going all week, and was ready to make Sunday another day of it. My laundry has been majorly piling up and that chore was just going to be the start of another long day of trying to play to-do list catch up. But the rain forced me to STOP, because who wants to take their laundry to the laundromat on a rainy day?

I got the hint. We all need to take a day off once in a while, and relax. That’s why the Sabbath was invented, after all.

As I keep paring down the clutter in my life, I’m constantly reminded how important it is to clear out the overscheduling and pick just a few things to do. We’re human BEINGS, not human DOINGS. It’s good to be forced to remember that once in a while.