Forward but not upward

I have a headache. Because I've been eating tons of chocolate. Otherwise...
Overall, I'm grumpy. I would like to be working as an actor, or if not, something to do with acting. I am still working, currently 4 days a week, in an office. I am working a lot in an attempt to hack away at a long outstanding debt and to throw money into an IRA, but there is nothing challenging to do here. Yet I can't leave, because who else would let me write my own schedule?

Part II: This week, being here pays off, because I booked my first ever industrial two day shoot and I was able to say, hey, I'm not coming in for 2 days next week. I won't make a ton of money, but it should be worth doing, and it will be a New Experience. I need one desperately.

I guess progress is being made, but it feels sooooo sloooooow. I don't need "drama" in the classic sense, but I do need challenge, and that has been in precious short supply. Watching "Joe versus the Volcano" the other night, I noticed that line about how most of the people in the world are asleep. I've been feeling like that. I mean, this has been my workplace for THREE YEARS. But again, it allows me the money and freedom to GO on auditions and yet still get paid. Right now I have the freedom to work 4 days a week because I have a show on Friday. It's incredibly flexible, and I won't get that anywhere else.

Except for the fact that I dislike it intensely, it's a great job.

Romantically, everything is healthy and happy and fine. My (what do I call him? Sweetheart? Love? Smootchie face?) paramour and I talk about getting married and I just don't know. He's super fun to date, he'd be a great person to go through life with, but I can't see into the future. How long will my life be like this? Will it change into something more artistic? We're both poor - how could we ever have children? Heck - we're both poor, how could we ever have INSURANCE?

The more I analyze the kinds of worries and problems I'm having (and it's me, so clearly I do this often), the more I notice a pattern - the "rest of life" looms, and I don't feel equipped to move into it. I haven't made money, I haven't established myself in my chosen profession, I haven't married into a place in life. How do I get older without achieving anything visible? Or rather, how can I be content to age without seeming to move forward?