I've worked with lots of actors who sit at home for years waiting

In the rehearsal hall of human longing, Martin Kemp speaks a wry and tender truth: “I’ve worked with lots of actors who sit at home for years waiting to get a job, then as soon as they do, they want to go home.” Hear the paradox ring like a bell across the stages of the world. The heart petitions the heavens for a door to open; when the hinge finally turns, the draft of new air startles us, and our first impulse is to reach for the old blanket. This is not hypocrisy—it is the ancient friction between desire and reality, between the dream’s perfume and the labor of wearing it.

In the style of the elders, let us weigh each word. To sit at home is not merely idleness; it is apprenticeship to hope—a long winter of auditions, side jobs, and self-belief. To wait for years is to carry the ember of purpose in cupped hands while winds of doubt blow hard. To land the job is the longed-for summer: lights, marks, call sheets, the humming hive of a set. Yet within the first week, fatigue arrives dressed as nostalgia, and the spirit whispers, “Let us go home.” The lesson is not that we wanted the wrong thing, but that every harvest requires threshing, and even good bread asks for heat.

There is a law beneath this: the mind is a lantern lit by meaning, but the body is a beast yoked to rhythm. The dream feeds the mind; the schedule weighs upon the shoulders. Early call times, late wraps, rewrites at midnight—these demand a sturdier devotion than fantasy supplies. The elders would say: glory is a brief ceremony; craft is a daily vow. To stay is harder than to start, because beginnings are intoxication while continuance is carpentry.

A story will make this plain. There was a young performer—call him Theo—who spent three years waiting tables, taping auditions, and praying for a door. At last he booked a series, and the set moved him to a distant city. The first week he floated; the second he frayed—missed friends, missed rituals, missed the quiet chair by his window. By the third week he muttered Kemp’s lament: “I want to go home.” His mentor phoned him and said, “You are at home, if you choose it. Make a ritual, befriend the crew, let the work become your hearth.” Theo began to greet the gaffer by name, brought coffee for the script supervisor, learned the steadicam’s dance. The set warmed; the ache thinned. He had not chosen the wrong life; he had merely forgotten to furnish it.

History presses a larger mirror before us. Odysseus wins the war of Troy, crowned with songs and smoke, yet the epic that belongs to the ages is not the victory but the voyage—his long ache to go home. Triumph without rootedness turns to ash. Likewise, artisans across centuries—masons on cathedrals, sailors on tall ships, painters summoned to foreign courts—won the coveted commission and then wrote letters soaked with homesickness. Their greatness lay not in avoiding this ache but in transmuting it: carving the ache into stone, writing it into journals that became maps for others, building temporary households of camaraderie wherever the work took them.

From Kemp’s saying we draw the elder’s counsel: let desire include its shadow. When you pray for the role, also pray for the ribs to hold it. When you ask for the open door, ask too for the skill of dwelling in a strange room until it becomes yours. Expect the revolt of the nervous system; meet it not with shame, but with structure. The heart that admits this paradox becomes steady; the one that denies it ricochets between ecstasy and escape.

Practical rites for the pilgrim who finally arrives: (1) Before the first day, design a portable “home”—a small kit (photo, candle, journal) that travels to every dressing room or set. (2) Name three daily anchors—sleep window, movement, and one nourishing call—to tame the storm of hours. (3) Adopt a service habit on set: learn someone’s craft, lighten someone’s load; belonging is born of contribution. (4) Schedule honest solitude; ten minutes of stillness can keep you from sprinting toward the nearest exit. (5) Rehearse gratitude aloud each night—three specifics from the work—so your mind remembers why it begged to be here. Do these, and you will find that the impulse to go home softens, because you have learned the art of carrying home within you. Then the dream you chased will stop running from you, and begin, at last, to sit down beside you and stay.