One for Them, One for You

I enjoyed the recent bonus episode of “Here’s the Thing,” where Alec Baldwin took his turn at being interviewed. I like Alec Baldwin (I even like the fact that he’s popularly perceived as a grump). The interview was interesting for several reasons, but I’ll only focus on one here. Early in the interview, Mr. Baldwin talks about the value of David O’Brien as an early career mentor. Among the pieces of advice he recalls O’Brien giving him is the notion that to help having a successful stage/TV/film career, an actor should balance the types of projects he/she takes on. Specifically the rule goes something like this: You do one for them, and then you do one for you. Coming from where it does, Baldwin & O’Brien are specifically referencing the need to balance commercially-oriented projects (one for them) with more artistically fulfilling endeavors (one for you). But I think there’s something there that can generalize a bit more broadly.

Essentially, every one of my work responsibilities are focused on doing “one for them”. I have a series of obligations and responsibilities that exist totally independently of my personal preferences or anything else having to do with me as an individual. That being the case, I’ve found that it’s important to find things that I can do that are “one for me”; personally resonant projects that I do simply because I want to do them, and I find value in doing them. I’ve previously written about one of them. Another one for was just published yesterday.

Of course, there are major differences between what the one for them/one for you process looks like for educators as compared to artists. An obvious one is that the “them” in my situation are the students, staff, and stakeholders of my district, and the product that I’m generating for them is a high-quality education. That’s about as far away from some commercially-successful-but-artistically-hollow production as you could probably think of, so there’s a lot more personal resonance to many of the work tasks that I need to accomplish. Another difference is that many of the projects that I do for me tend to wind up helping the larger educator project as well, it’s just not the foundational reason why I do them.

Or maybe neither of these differences are really differences. I’d bet that most performers find artistic value in their participation in even the most nakedly commercial projects. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is finding the balance between doing the things you have to do, and doing the ones you want to do. If you’re lucky in your working life, these two things wind up being the same more often than not.

What do you do for them? What do you do for you? How do you keep that balance? Drop a line and let me know. Thanks for reading!