Another day, another day working background on a television show.<\/p>\n
I like this kind of work.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, it can be a bit painful.\u00a0 When you call a voicemail number for your calltimes, the voice of the voicemail can set up your orientation to the project you’re working on.<\/p>\n
Enough shows’ voicemail voices provide a neutral stance about the production.\u00a0 This approach might be generally preferred.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because most days on set are pretty humdrum.\u00a0 You approach work just like regular work.\u00a0 Compare the always-neutral voice with the always-excited voice that could be on the voicemail.\u00a0 Such a voice might get\u00a0you excited about the day!!!\u00a0 You approach work with excitement!!!\u00a0 But if the day only ends up humdrum,\u00a0you might feel misled, then cynical about the production.<\/p>\n
Some shows’ voicemail voices, though, put out a negative attitude.\u00a0 One voicemail I listen to every once and awhile really puts me in a bad mood.\u00a0 The way it’s worded, it sounds condescending.\u00a0 It sounds as if it’s berating me.\u00a0 The pay is relatively low compared to other projects, and the lists of “musts” we must abide by are high, which is a rather backward arrangement in my opinion.\u00a0 I like working on the show, though I hate having to endure the dreaded condescending, berating\u00a0voicemail.<\/p>\n
It is also long.\u00a0 It takes up my time.\u00a0 It takes up my time sometimes when I don’t have that time.\u00a0 It takes up my time when I am sleepy and want, even need, to go to bed.\u00a0 If I miss a detail in the voicemail, guess what?\u00a0 I have to listen to the dreaded thing all over again.<\/p>\n
This is not a post bitching about voicemail voices.\u00a0 This is a post about morale.\u00a0 It is a post about morale and its effect on mood.\u00a0 And it’s a post about morale, its effect on mood, and its effect on what some people might call “mental illness.”<\/p>\n
When I am berated or condescended to, I don’t feel very good.\u00a0 My morale is lowered.\u00a0 I go from feeling like a professional, responsible working actor to feeling like a fuck-up.\u00a0 One condescension or beration\u00a0might feel bad enough, but when you are repeatedly condescended to or berated over the course of, say, a voicemail, or even just a few sentences, the net effect is that you feel pretty schmucky.<\/p>\n
This is to say, with my morale lowered, my mood tanks.\u00a0 I get frustrated.\u00a0 The frustration comes from not getting the respect I want.\u00a0 With that frustration comes anger.\u00a0 I then start to get emotional and maybe exaggerate a bit the kind of treatment I’m getting.\u00a0 I start to want to represent the condescension and\u00a0beration\u00a0as worse than\u00a0they probably are.\u00a0 This can make my mood tank more because I feel my morale lowered more.\u00a0 Soon enough I\u00a0may develop\u00a0a furrowed brow and an obnoxious attitude toward, say, production.\u00a0 And I might become more non-cooperative.\u00a0 I don’t want to give into every whim demanded by the voicemail.\u00a0 I want to fight back.\u00a0 Much of this, just because of the wording and approach to a freakin’ voicemail.<\/p>\n
It might be said that if my morale weren’t lowered, my mood wouldn’t tank like this.\u00a0 That is, if my morale were boosted in the voicemail, I would likely feel good rather than bad.\u00a0 I wouldn’t want to be non-cooperative.\u00a0 I’d probably be more inclined to be cooperative.\u00a0 Production would be something I’d be happier to accommodate.\u00a0 My delusions about production wouldn’t be negative; they’d probably be positive.\u00a0 I’d be emotional, but emotional in a friendly, positive way.<\/p>\n
What is interesting about the relationship of morale and behavior dubbed “mental illness”?\u00a0\u00a0Some\u00a0“mental illnesses” are conceptualized as “mood disorders.”\u00a0 I don’t know what’s “disordered” about feeling bad.\u00a0 If someone is condescending to you, or berating you, are you supposed to feel good or something?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 You’ll probably feel bad.\u00a0 Maybe not necessarily, but probably.\u00a0 That’s not a stimulus to continually experience if you want to feel good.<\/p>\n
But sometimes there is no clear somebody-else who is condescending or berating you when you exhibit\u00a0your supposed “mood disorder.”\u00a0 Some people might say it’s because there’s some kind of chemical imbalance.\u00a0 Those people might have a point some of the time, but in my opinion, they have a point less often than they think they do.\u00a0 When you’re feeling bad and there’s no clear somebody-else doing the berating, it seems to me that the berating is being done by you<\/em>.\u00a0 You are berating yourself.\u00a0 You are allowing yourself to berate yourself.\u00a0 Maybe you’ve been conditioned to do this by a berating parent.\u00a0 Maybe you think it’s the right way to behave toward yourself.\u00a0 Maybe you accidentally developed the habit on your own.\u00a0 Whatever the case, you are either thinking berating thoughts or saying berating things all about yourself.\u00a0 And, understandably, as a result, you’re feeling pretty bad.<\/p>\n So then you start to exaggerate and get emotional and delude yourself about your circumstances.\u00a0 So then your morale lowers more, your mood tanks more, your delusions grow.\u00a0 For some people, they reach a point and stop.\u00a0 For other people, they don’t reach a point and stop, or the point at which they’d stop is far, far from other people’s stopping points.<\/p>\n If you’re interesting in having cooperative people, treat them well.\u00a0 Maintain their morale to the degree that you can.\u00a0 You can’t control people’s thoughts: While you may attend to someone’s morale, that person may not attend well to her own morale.\u00a0 But choose lifting morale over plummeting morale has an effect on mood, cooperative, and even their diagnoses.<\/p>\n I suppose attending to morale could be considered “social responsibility.”\u00a0 I’m not sure of the value of lowering morale in the practice of social responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another day, another day working background on a television show. I like this kind of work.\u00a0 Sometimes, though, it can be a bit painful.\u00a0 When you call a voicemail number for your calltimes, the voice of the voicemail can set up your orientation to the project you’re working on. Enough shows’ voicemail voices provide a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86,73,88,89,87,85],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-delusion","tag-mental-illness","tag-mood","tag-mood-disorder","tag-morale","tag-social-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}