Heavy Like a Loaded Gun

I've been sunk in my own stew for a while, and it isn't interesting. I was listening to lovely music and was inspired to write something, but there is so much else to do and so much stuffiness in my head, I can't quite concentrate.

I noticed on April Fool's Day that I'm carrying a lot of bitterness, and I'd like to put it down. It isn't helping. Everything seems to take such a fight that I've gotten tired. I'd like to think of myself as a fighter. The only things I seem to be able to convince someone I'm good at are boring to me, and the things I love are currently out of reach. And worse, I thought my actions were previously bringing said things closer, when apparently...not.

Confusing? Sorry.

Here's an example: exercising. I've been running about 4 miles pretty much daily, and I suppose increasing my overall health level, only to find a) I seem to have done something odd to my left hip. Damn. b) despite so much more exercise than in years past, I seem to be losing no weight at all, and c) whatever improvement I noticed in my body (a general leanness) has been completely ruined by five days in Cancun drinking pina coladas. Seriously, 9 months of daily running ruined in 5 days. Really? I can't take a break?

Losing the job was a blow, not because I liked it but because that is how I had made my life work, how I had bridged the times between shows, by filling it with money. Not big money, perhaps, but enough money to save here and there. Now, I have a job where I work hard for very little money - true, most do, but it's a difficult transition. Now I can't save, and that's disheartening.

In addition, the firm I used to work for has denied my unemployment. (I'm not claiming any now, now I'm working again, but there are a couple of random weeks.) So that's a fight I am disliking immensely. To think I worked for the firm for 6 years and that's how they decide to behave, when THEY are the ones who let me go...it just feels so petty and mean-spirited.

Lastly, for now, is that my new job involves working with seniors (the almost elderly, not high schoolers) and they are equally a delight and a torture. Delight because they are all positive and talented people, and a joy to discover. Torture because every time we get to the "I'm an actor" part, we go through one of several by-now-familiar song and dances:

1. The proof game - "Well, what have you been in?" If it isn't anything they've heard of or seen, they tell me all about the things they have seen that I wasn't in (and usually wanted to be).

2. Proof game Part 2 - "Oh, do you know....?" I have only won this one once - someone's pilates teacher is a wonderful actress here in town who I like a great deal and know vaguely socially. Usually, no, I don't actually get to hang out with Gary Sinise or Bob Falls.

3. "What are you working on now?" Um, I'm auditioning for everyone's season of August Wilson plays and two-handers and not getting very far. It's a recession, and it turns out I am way in the back of the line for work. Theatres are canceling shows and putting on small cast plays...I'm out there, really, I am. If you want to cast me in something, I'm available.

4. My personal least favorite after #3 is the advice. Lots of advice about what I should be doing. Or who I should be auditioning for. Yep, did that. Yep, sang for them last week. Yep, sent them my headshot and resume. Yep, they know I exist and yet they don't care. And the no win of this conversation is that if you TELL them you've done these things they are suggesting, then the unavoidable assumption is that you are no good. Because if you were a good actor, these golden nuggets of advice would have helped you.

And that's what's getting old. If I were any good, would it be this hard a fight? I don't know right now. I'm losing the belief.

Actually, there's a story that makes me ridiculously happy, and it's apropos here. My husband met an actor friend of his out the other day who was commiserating about how tough it is for work right now. (So, hey, maybe it isn't just me!) This guy is maybe in his late 40s, early 50s, and he has worked consistently throughout his career - lots of industrial bookings amongst the theatre. Apparently, he was chatting about his current lack of work with his mother, and she piped up, "Well, you should have done the Wicked!" To which he said something like, sure, mom, I'll get riiiight on that and get into the cast of Wicked. Which makes me laugh my head off - this guy works all the time, and he's still getting grief from his mother for not getting the ONE HUGE sit-down Broadway show to play Chicago in years. I guess no matter how much you succeed, there's always something you haven't done.

Also to end on a high note - spell check wants my "colada" to be "collards". If that isn't metaphoric, I'm not sure what is.

Lastly, I should add that I have a terrific husband. It does help.

Peace out - have a butter lamb on me.

Ha

Oh, life. You're so funny.

So, I got laid off from my day job. I have many conflicting emotions about this.

I will not be homeless and will not starve. But my ability to save any money whatsoever has instantly disappeared in a blinding flash. In fact, depending on what happens next, I may find myself using money I so carefully saved.

Now, if I just had to have money, I'll bet I could get a full time job. It might not be simple, it might not pay really well, and it would almost certainly be something I disliked doing, but I feel sure that I could get a job. A job. Some job, of any kind.

But that was never the point. The only reason I've kept this current day job is because they allow me flexibility to pursue the things I really love. To take a job just to have a job and find myself without the time or flexibility to do any of the things I enjoy seems like...well, hell.

Truth be told, I haven't really enjoyed this job for years. It's a placeholder, it's comfortable because I know its irritations and limit my work time to contain them. However, there's no getting away from the fact that I enjoy knowing I'll get paid, and plan accordingly.

So in today's economy, how do I find work that will mean something to me? Well, the perfect answer would be book another equity show. But those efforts have not yet been successful.

I'm excited at the idea that I'd be free of this place. Just not excited to have so little money coming in.

I feel so many people are losing their jobs that I have to be grateful that a) I do have some savings, b) I do have some options, and c) I do have a tiny teaching job that will at least give me something to concentrate on while I make this transition.

Tricky - how do I shift my mindset away from squirrelling money in savings accounts and towards finding work I love, no matter what the pay cut?

What's in the Box?

I got fewer Christmas presents this year, and you know what, I'm thrilled. I mean, I like presents, naturally, but present giving at Christmas sets up this whole tit-for-tat that can lead to a lot of present giving just for form's sake. I can completely do without that kind of present giving and getting. It's worst at the office, where co-workers feel compelled to give you something, but either don't know anything about your likes and dislikes or just plain don't have the time or money to invest in a "great" gift for you - which is fair. I appreciate the difficulty, but my solution has been to give no presents at all. I participate in the Secret Santa, and call it a day. If I worked for an individual, I'd probably find him or her something, although honestly I've skipped that in the past as well.

Now, lest I come off like a Scrooge, I love to give presents to my near and dear. I love to come up with a really ideal present, something I know that person loves and will be excited to open. If I really can't find anything special, I go for practical, and make sure at least it could be used.

I normally get a slew of gifts, always from people who mean well, that I then have to find some way to re-gift into the world (because it really is a small apartment). Here are some items I would happily NEVER RECEIVE AGAIN:

• Stuffed animals. As a grown-up with little house space and no children, I have an exceptionally limited use for stuffed animals. Especially ones wearing Santa hats.
• Anything seasonally decorative. This decorative watering can filled with artificial poinsettias and a fake stuffed bird sitting on my desk - where do I put it? I have no storage in my apartment. Also, it isn't really my style. This goes for the decorative snowman I got last year from the same person.
• Candy canes. Nothing wrong with them, just, enh.
• Pierced earrings. I do not have pierced ears, which makes it awkward to wear them, and then I feel guilty. Boo.

I'm sure there are more, but my point is that this year, I got relatively few pointless gifts.

Interestingly, there are quite a few things that once were pointless that would finally come in handy: for instance, Christmas ornaments. My husband and I had our first tree at home this year, and happily he has a bunch of ornaments, but I was underrepresented on the tree. Don't tell me we could go out and buy ornaments. Sacrilege. In my house the tree is always decorated with all the ornaments you made as a kid or people gave you as presents, and they all have names and dates on them, and every ornament has a story. We always decorate the tree together as a family, and my mother tells all the stories, usually completely wrong. Nowadays the garbled stories are much funnier, because the dates on the ornaments often prove her completely incorrect. My personal favorite is the tiny wooden angel ornament she gave my Dad to tell him I would be born seven months later. Awww. But we have two ornaments that look very similar and she always tells the story while holding the one that is clearly dated three years after my birth.

Sadly, decorating the tree is one of my favorite family traditions that has been squashed by the move of Christmas to my brother's house, since he has two small children. But the small children are a good recompense, so I can take it.

Nevertheless, Christmas trees should be decorated with memories and personality. So where once I eschewed ornaments as gifts, now I'm loving them, building my own Christmas.

In the end, I think the perfect Christmas gift is a token of a memory or a reminder that someone cares enough about you to think of you specifically. Memories and Personality. It could be silly and inexpensive, it could be lavish and something you've always dreamed of, but it either gives you a story or a really warm feeling of love. Everything else is just trash weighing you down.

For me, I love the way the economy affected Christmas. Lots of that trash went away. Also, I love all the socks people gave me.

What about the rest of you? What was your favorite gift this year, and what did you get that you could have gone without?

If you try sometime, you just might find

So for the impact to make sense, you'll have to read the post under this one, but I found an article about Malcolm Gladwell's new book that made me reassess my moroseness:

“What’s surprising is how much work it takes. Ten thousand hours is a long time. It’s both a daunting and an empowering lesson. It says that, if you haven’t made it, it may not be because you don’t have what it takes. It may just be that you have misunderstood how extraordinarily long it takes for everyone. When you see how long the Beatles put in before they arrived in the USA in 1964 . . . There’s not a shortage of talent in the world. There’s a shortage of people willing to go to Hamburg to play eight-hour sets.” -Malcolm Gladwell

Oh.

Well, in that case, instead of holding my pity party, I've got some more hours to put in. Excuse me, I just remembered I'm lucky enough to be putting some of those in on a really lovely show off of Michigan Ave.

Sometimes, you gotta take your eyes off the horizon to see how far you've actually come. Because the horizon is always, always receeding in the distance. No matter how much ground you may have covered.

Lots

The adventure - lovely. The show - amazing. My current mood - abjectly morose.

It was bracing to be in London again. However stupid it may sound, it does feel like home, and it is a place of great magic for me. It was very odd having my husband along, because I've never been in the city with someone before - it's always been a place I explored basically alone. Of course I had friends and companions at different moments, but I was essentially wandering with only my own curiousity as a guide. Suddenly I had this other person, and this other person had no agenda but definitely got irritated and bored by following my agenda on occasion. It was like dragging the poor man to a 10 day college reunion. It's interesting to meet the people your spouse spent time with, but eventually it wears on you because it isn't your world you're catching up on.

Regardless, we had some glorious moments and no real blow outs, so I think that's pretty successful traveling. I was just reminded of how jealous of my time my husband can be - he gets saturated, and can handle our being apart, but overall he'd like us to hang out most of the time, and he doesn't want to come second to anyone else. (Fair enough, obviously.)

The trip was both a reminder that we are separate people as well as how much I have been absorbed into the "us-ness" we have. I have mixed feelings about that. I think more and more of the "us" as home base, and it's a great relief to have a place in the world that's home base. But there are parts of me I have put in storage for the moment, and I hope someday to unwrap them again.

I got back and started rehearsing for an equity show. It was fantastic and frightening, wonderful and woeful. I LOVE working where people do this for their living - they act in shows, and they get health insurance, and pension plans, and a support system, and a series of rules that makes their lives easier. I love the people I've met in this show - everyone is there to do a good job and I can respect everyone's work. Also, they make me laugh myself silly.

I am also completely overwhelmed with trying to be good enough, and deathly afraid this will be my only chance at acting in a world like this. It's taken so long, soooooo long to book this one show on this level, and now I don't want to go back, I want to stay here, and I'm afraid I don't have the chops for it. I've done a handful of auditions since we started, and none of them have been impressive, and I haven't booked a single one of those jobs.

I can't help but think, if I were any good, wouldn't I have already gotten on this level and stayed there? I mean, I've met people who came to town and in a year and a half have booked six months of an equity show and a reading at the Goodman. After seven years, I'm working equity....as a non-equity, non-dancing dancer and an understudy.

So here's the problem. Even if I'm actually not that talented, I can't stop. I love it. I LOVE it. It makes sense. I love 8 shows a week and rehearsal halls and silly backstage talk and TELLING A STORY. So even if I suck, I have to keep trying. Because I love it. But how sad it will be to know I suck and still keep trying? I want my love of it to make me talented, but it doesn't.

I'll be ok working non-equity - I still love theatre for telling a story, and that's something completely independent of union status. I just want so much for this to be my work, and there's not enough money in non-eq, even commercial non-eq, to keep me afloat. One of the best parts of these months have been the very few days I have had to spend working in an office, and now, with no more paid work on the horizon, it's back to the office, and that's hard to take. It's my Flowers for Algernon moment, and I'm worried I'll never get back.

I guess I'll have to work harder. Sigh. When I see Northwestern grads bounce from show to show, I can't help feeling a little bitter. Maybe someday I'll get there.

Adventure Ahoy

It's coming...in about ten days we hop an Air India flight to the UK. I am trying to juggle what I need to get done here with wanting to be there already and planning what needs to happen. My honey was asking me what we'd do, and I had to slightly make up what we'd do, because the truth is I'm going to want to wander around and show him stuff. And see people I adore. It's tricky to scheduled that exactly.

In the meantime, I'm happy because beyond the trip is a show, a show with actual paychecks and a union theatre and a group of people who DO THIS FOR A LIVING, which is after all what I've been after for years now. I only have ten days of office work scheduled for the months of November and December. Ten days! Ha! And that's just for extra money to stash for travel or a rainy day or Christmas presents. It may seem small, but the idea of doing what you love and getting paid a living wage is fantastic. It's a miniscule living wage - I couldn't buy a house on it, for instance, but it feels like the beginning of the right sort of thing.

We went to visit friends a few weeks ago who are quite wealthy, and on the way visited friends who may not be wealthy, but are doing really well. Both sets of friends ended up making us appreciate how much we like the little life we do have, and that we don't want more unless we can earn it doing what we love. Because at least one of each pair of folks does what they love, and all the things they have or have done come directly from that.

I'm not making sense. I would not be interested in having an enormous vacation house in the country if I had to give up acting and be a money manager in order to get it. I know several people who make huge salaries but don't seem to get any enjoyment out of what they do, and that seems like a crime to me. I do most of what I'd like to do on a comparable pittance per year. (In fact, I did the math, and one friend's yearly salary would last me six years.) Money is nice, and sure, there are times it would be very handy to have more of it, and I would quite like to buy a domicile one of these days, but I feel like working in an office AT ALL is enough of a sell out - I don't want to thrown away the things I love to sweat and slave at some profession I hate, or that (worse yet) bored me.

The holy grail of acting is that it is possible (if unlikely) that someday I could make a chunk of money at it. So as long as I'm sweating and slaving, I perfer it's in the service of a profession I not only enjoy, but feel passionate about. The passion and pleasure get me through the inevitable rough times. (I don't care what you do, sometimes it's rough.)

I just realized how hungry I am. Part Two will follow after lunch, I think.

Adventure

Me: "You know the internet joint account we set up, the one we called 'Wedding Expenses'"?

Husband: "Sure, why?"

Me: "Well, we don't have any wedding expenses anymore, so I renamed it today."

Husband: (after a slightly skeptical look): "Whatdja call it?"

Me: "Funtime Spending. It seemed much more...festive."

Husband: (admiringly) "You're right. That's much better. Funtime Spending. I might have to go buy something right away..."

It's time for an adventure, and we're actually going to have one. I'm not sure how it will turn out, as we're poor and money is a big issue for the moment, but someone else bought our tickets as a wedding present so we're going. To England. In about a month.

I don't even know where to start. Hubby's been (and I've lived there), so we don't have to do "Famous Britain", but there are so many places I'd like to show him and so many people I hope he can meet. I also wish we could spend weeks and weeks just wandering. Actually, I really do wish we could cycle across Europe. Is that unrealistic? Can it be done? What with our complete lack of any language besides English and lack of dough?

It's tricky. I'd like to live a little riskier but I no longer seem to make choices that lead me that direction. It's the reverse of a realization I had in my twenties. Back then, I was sitting on a train platform waiting, looking at the rafters and thinking how much I hate change, when it occurred to me how much change I had brought upon myself. I had intentionally sought out each and every change. "Bloody hell," I thought, "I must like change, really." And it seemed I did.

Now I suddenly realize I have stayed in the same place for nearly 7 years, making fairly safe choices. I have an IRA, for goodness sake, I pay for my own health insurance. I feel a little wrong-footed. I still like change - it's one of the best parts of being an actor, that each project is different. But I've cut myself off from some of the adventure. Maybe that's wise, maybe I'm being clever and grown up. I mean, if someone ran into me tomorrow while I was riding my bike to work, my insurance would be there for the big medical bills.

And I suppose getting married is a big change. I know it is for me.

So how do I keep the IRA and the health insurance and get back to risk? How do I stay on track to save money for a house and still backpack across Europe? Have I just plain run out of time for any more foolishness?

Food for thought.

Not Bad At All

I'm busy being an ordinary person, and it's ok. I don't love it -I miss working on a show, and I'd always rather be doing an acting gig than working in an office, but for now, it's fine. My one and only favorite lawyer came into the office today and I remembered what it's like to work for people you can actually like and respect. While yes, that means I normally don't work for people I can like and respect, it makes a nice change for today.

Further, since Michigan I am not as irritated. The lawyers are just as irritating, but for the moment I can handle it. I punch in, do my 9 to 5, go home, and wait for the paycheck.

It's a lot easier to do this because I know it is finite. In October I go into rehearsals for a big musical downtown. If I wanted to, I could probably live entirely off my paycheck and spend about two and a half months away from this law firm. I may try working two days a week instead, as then I can try to really get ahead in terms of rent and money and IRA and such. But even the idea of limiting this to two days a week while I spend the rest of my time doing 8 shows a week sounds grand.

So in the meantime I'm taking what they're givin' 'cause I'm working for a living. I'm a little embarrassed to be so practical, but at least my job-I-hate allows me to do the things I love.

In the meantime, the sweetie and I will be going to London in a few months. It feels very strange - London is a place I'd like to go back to live in someday, but right now all I can see is how much I've built this world in Chicago. I jumped around a lot in my twenties, and settling down felt like selling out. Now, however, I can see the advantage to staying put and grinding out what I'm trying to get.

More and more, I see the things I've done that succeeded have always been within my power but I didn't know how to access them before - like playing a video game where you have to know how to unlock secret aids - the aids are always there, but it takes some trial and error to unlock them. So for now, I have to keep playing this game over and over until I master it.

Sadly, I am slow to master it. But I creep forward, bit by bit. This month, I think I can be content with the progress and enjoy the fact that I get a new experience out of it starting in October.

And then, underneath it all, there's a lot more ambition. I want a lot more than this. I'm trying to enjoy what I do have while I get there.

I will get there, won't I?