2025: The Sunday Compass

Hello and Welcome to the 2025 Sunday Compass

The month is February is here! And you know what that means…

Good morning everyone,

WOW what a week it has been. Thank you so much for getting back to us on our form last week. It was incredibly helpful.

We'll be shifting gears a bit this month. More on that in a moment.

This week we have been extremely busy. Yago has had shows and meetings (we got home from a Marlena concert at about 3am yesterday, so today is going to be largely fueled by caffeine), he's got meetings left right and centre with artists wanting to work with him, and I have just booked an incredible job.

I'll be working on a HUGE tv series from now through until almost next summer. It's the first time I've been brought in this early on. I'll be coaching accents and acting, (all in Spanish), doing cultural work with the actors and directors, some script work, planning the shoot days, working very closely with both production and the creative teams... and they're going to try to find me a role as well. I'll get to come and go (we don't start shooting until November, so retreats are safe! Don't worry!) and I won't have to just be gone for 6 months, which is ideal. It will bring me to the North of Spain, Budapest, Morocco... I'm incredibly excited. It's my first project under a female producer and all female directors. And it's also the first time I've been told "We'll negotiate a rate for you with your management, and please understand that this is an extremely large-scale production, and I need you specifically. You're going to be crucial to the success of this shoot. So we're going to negotiate accordingly."

I'm sorry, WHAT?! I'm not going to lie, the imposter syndrome kicked in for a moment there. I had to take a breath because my brain immediately converted that into pressure, and I had to change the story to a different one of "My experience is valuable." I don't know if the feeling will ever fully go away of being somewhat baffled that they want me for things like this.

The best part is that this summer I celebrate my 10-year anniversary of living in Spain, and the first part of this series (can't say what it is yet) is the very first Spanish show I watched when I arrived. I loved it. It's a period piece set in the late 40s, female-lead, and I thought to myself, "I'd love to work on something like that one day". I could never have imagined that ten years later I'd be part of the core team putting together the long-awaited second installation of the story.

The point being- keep going, dears. You really never know. All of the random work, jobs, things that don't seem like they'll lead anywhere... at some point the stars will align.

Which brings us to your answers from last week.

One common thing that came up was that everyone is feeling a little like a spark that keeps sparking but they fizzles out quickly right now. It seems (and we're reading between the lines here for some) that a lot of us have taken on a whole lot, life is really life-ing at the moment, and there're some guilty feelings swimming around about not keeping up, not being able to do it all, having to say no, falling behind, priorities in conflict with each other... a ton of internal motivation but a lack of energy or time to follow through.

So here is your permission for this week at least to DO AS LITTLE AS YOU CAN MANAGE. Stop. Rest. Breathe. Walk. Get off the screens. What would recharge you? If you need somewhere to start, this is an incredible full-body scan meditation that we've been loving lately.

We've been incredibly busy. Yago is doing a thousand things, and I'm full on with coaching both my own stuff (two places left on my American group course starting Tuesday in case you're interested), and I'm coaching for a film right now too, plus I have to start prep for the new show. We've got a lot of house guests and friends visiting.. life has felt a little bit like running to the finish line, but it keeps moving. We read a funny thing that said "Adult life is basically just deciding what to eat, and telling everyone again and again that this week is hectic but next week is looking calmer." That's us haha.

So let's chill for a week, and we've got some fun things planned for next week.

Sending lots of love and sunshine to you all. We're cheering for you louder than ever.

Holly and Yago xx