Let's begin blogging...
Hi, my name is Carina Lastimosa.
By some miracle, and by miracle, I mean your sheer boredom looking for new content on the interwebs, you’ve found my hasty attempt at starting a blog. I say hasty because (A) I’m not a writer (B) I’m poor at time management (C) I’m not fully sure how I want to use this thing.
A. I’m not a writer
I’m an actor. Or at least, I am, sometimes. Proof that I’m an actor, this acting reel I made on my own cause no one will higher me for a proper on-camera gig. But even the most prolific actors aren’t always actors. They’re unemployed actors or a person known as an actor but currently have endorsement deals to pay their bills.The first time I truly felt like an actor was just this year, filing taxes of all things. I confirmed that my job/pay hasn’t changed from last year and then proceeded to add in my additional earnings. Already, I was on a high entering my additional earnings because it’s the most I’ve ever made through my agent. The tax system asked if I started a new job due to these increased earnings and I answered, ‘yes’, which prompted me to answer what my new vocation was. I got to enter in ‘Entertainer.’ Whatever “making it” means, this it what it meant to me. I’ve always wondered what us regular actors do to actually pay their bills so I’ll share with you here what my answer is. I have a WFH job for a software company. If you’re an actor, I’d love to know what you do, cause how do we do this, really?! For the most part, it has offered some decent flexibility to the demands on being on call for an acting gig that comes at very short notice. Any stress I’ve felt when my jobby-job and acting are in conflict, is on me. The jobby-job pays my bills so I want to make sure that I do my work at a 100%, but that means it can take up a lot of time and focus that I then do not know how to make time for when it comes to being an actor.
B. I’m poor at time management
That saying, “your eyes are bigger than your stomach”, can apply to my overeagerness to do everything. I want to do it all. I want to be that girl. Aside from being an actor, I’m also a baker, I’m trying to learn guitar, I’m trying to learn Tagalog, I’m trying to learn how to juggle, I’m trying to learn how to whistle and I’m starting to blog even though I find writing a challenge. I also like to lead a balanced life. I’m not type of person who believes their job is their entire life, no matter how much I love acting. I’m the eldest sister (you can call me Ate), wife and pug owner. I value my alone time, make time for vacation and go to therapy. And I want to do and be all of these things at the time same to prove that I’m living life to the fullest and attempt to be an exceptional human being. But you can’t do it all, and I realize that every day as I attempt to check off all my wants and desires, disappointed that I haven’t been able to maximize the same 24 hours that every other human has. Even for my jobby-job it can take me half an hour to write a simple 3 sentence response, a text message to a friend takes an hour for me to figure out what to say, a new social media platform asking for a bio will take me the whole freaking day! Writing has never come naturally to me. I don’t know all the rules to writing and the English language. Not that I have to tell you if you’re reading this thing. My lack of knowledge on language has recently been amplified as I try to learn Tagalog. Sure, I can memorize words, but once you start to explain sentence structure to me… IT. IS. OVER. Just thinking about what a predicate is as I type this sentence, sends me into a cold sweat. But writing isn’t completely foreign to me. As an actor, an actor of color, I love working on new plays. Even better, when the playwright is in the room to hear their words aloud, talk about intention and do rewrites. I’ve had the privilege of workshopping various staged readings and acting in several world premiere productions. New plays is where it is at for an actor of color simply because it offers more opportunity than what the classic canon can offer due to strict casting needs or what casting thinks is the default casting type, the white actor. Working in the theatre as an actor for more than a decade lead me to write my own short play. It was COVID-19 lockdown and I was still experiencing frustrations with the theatre community so I wrote about it. The result, The White Room, was a virtual play that showed what auditioning looked like in the time of lockdown in post-George Floyd era. Written in a fever rage, at times indulgent, is a piece of writing I’m still incredibly proud of and I hope to create a full length in-person version of it some day.
C. I’m not fully sure how I want to use this thing
So, here we are. We’ve established that I am an actor that has a real hard time writing yet I’ve starting this blog to do what, exactly? This is what I’ll explore. I’m not sure if I can bang out content every day, once a week, once a month, or ever. I just know that I’ve been looking to express my thoughts on pop culture and figure out if I have a place in the entertainment industry. I’ve always felt that I’ve had something to give as a Filipino-American female artist and if it may not be through acting, maybe it’s through another creative avenue.They say write what you know, and I’m hoping that will make this easier for me to write. All I know is pop culture. Growing up in the 90’s as a 2nd generation Filipino, I wasn’t one of those kids that got the straight A’s, learning piano and taking AP classes. Instead, I was one of those kids that had the TV on all the time because we could. My parents came to America because they wanted their children to have the American life, whatever that means. For me, it meant watching it on screen. Watching award shows thinking that I wasn’t beautiful enough to be on screen. Experiencing the rare thrill of my parents asking, “Filipino?” when seeing Paolo Montalban as Prince Charming in the Whitney Houston produced TV movie, Cinderella. Watching Friends in syndication and not question how white the show was.The goal of this blog, for now, is to have an outlet for my thoughts on pop culture with a focus on highlighting Asian/Asian-American stories. I’m in constant search for who I am and where I fit in and by starting this blog, it will hopefully not only help me, but others who are looking for their place. I’m not the best writer, or at least, that’s what my inner saboteur is telling me, but I’m passionate about elevating the Asian-American perspective. Our voices matter and I want to have a dialogue about it.
