What are you working on?

Getting ready yesterday to meet an actor friend I hadn't seen in a while, I found myself running through the list of things I've accomplished or am trying to accomplish, so that I could answer that inevitable question: what are you working on? Like I was going to a job interview or something.

Do any other professions do this? When two accountants run into each other on the street, do they ask what the other has done recently at work? Probably not, because the answer is probably the same every time.

I think actors do this almost as a self-defense mechanism. First, you must understand that you ask the question simply so that you can answer it yourself when the other person is done. In a profession where work falls into your lap by byzantine Rube Goldberg methods, every little thing you do is a huge accomplishment. So we're happy to share these things with other actors.

There's also a predatorial starving-cheetah-on-the-savannah aspect to it. "You got what show? Who casts that? How did you find it? What are they looking for?" It stands to reason that if one of your peers landed something, you probably could too. In an industry with such heavily fortified walls around the good stuff, we're always looking for weak spots.

Wow, that all sounds pretty negative.

There are positives to this as well. In the very least, having to come up with an answer to "what are you working on" keeps you busy, on your toes. I don't want the only answer to that question to be "well I'm about 20 hours into Mass Effect 2, getting ready to go through the Omega 4 relay." While true, and awesome, it neither pays the bills nor satisfies me creatively.

And I guess, maybe, somewhere deep down, we enjoy it when our friends do well. We need a good support system behind us to get anywhere in this business. We're all pulling for each other, right?

Well, as long as we're not the same type.