Seems I have plenty more to worry about in its place.
Now that my birthday's passed, the working drafts of my script and score are done, and my multiple simultaneous housesitting gigs are through, I have no more reason to avoid -- Real Life.
For (especially) the last six months I have been dodging, weaving, putting off, hiding from and generally trying to ignore the rest of my daily life. But the pardons, the excuses, and the extensions are all coming to an end this month.
Sure, I could still tweak the rehearsal CD which I need to get to my cast, but there's no getting around the fact that some big things must change.
This month.
I must find a full-time "real job" regardless of how miserable it will make me. Yes, I'd be appreciative for the money, but I've had my lion's share of completely unrewarding jobs. My body's falling apart. I'm not 19, just starting out. I know people, damn it! People in high places!
Just not any that can hire me ...
And I need to decide what will be over my head starting in October. I've lived in this apartment complex most of my semi-independent life and the idea of moving is as attractive to me as a root canal. Well, less, actually. I've had a few root canals and I know what I'm getting there.
Yeah, "change is good", yadda-yadda-yadda, but the only place I can go is down. I'm not living in a penthouse, but my little second-story, one-bedroom apartment has a nice view of the foothills and I've never been robbed in 23 years here ... I really like this area of San Jose.
And then, of course, there's that "first, last, security deposit, application" thing.
I think of how many writers had little or nothing for so much of their lives, and how they supposedly wrote their best works in shacks, shanties, or under trees. The struggles they endured to find enough food and shelter as they wrote the next War and Peace or Evangeline. The hardships they endured just to get one work of theirs published or produced.
And I sit back and think to myself:
Well, fuck that!
The legends I like are the ones about how some writers and artists had patrons, which allowed them the luxury of writing at tiny tables at outdoor French cafes, or composing melodies in their heads as they drove with lovely companions in carriages through the European countryside. (Hell, I'd settle for riding a burro through Vasona Park.)
Now, I have had many, many incredibly wonderful people help me out during this huge Dip in My Life. And I intend to mention each and every one of them when I'm onstage at the Tonys ... or at least in my last will and testament. But I've gone through some absolutely horrendous mental and emotional crap, too, which frequently sucked every molecule of creativity out of me, and I want it over and done with. (By the way, just how does one use the expression "over and done with" and not use a preposition to end a sentence with?)
I want to be able to enjoy preparing, writing and directing The Poptimists. Not just "fit it into my schedule" because a crappy job is taking up most of my day and my energy. Is that really too much to ask?
I don't want the distractions of Real Life hanging over my head. So much of Real Life has ruined what otherwise should have been incredibly happy moments and events in my life. (I was fighting incredible depression while acting as the Narrator onstage during my second show of my music and lyrics.)
Been there. Done that. Don't wanna do it anymore. I'm just not wired that way!
I realized quite some time ago that the reason I accept jobs I don't want is to punish myself for not being successful at what I truly want to be doing because the jobs I take don't help in that regard and take too much energy away from the things I really want to be successful at.
Got that?
Maybe there's a way I can break my oddly neurotic circle and be free of what most Americans can't be free of. Maybe there's a way I can manage to cheat until the day I finally exit this worldly stage. Maybe I can --
Hold on.
Target's on the phone. This could be about the $9/hour Night Janitor job.
I wish I could be your patron. Take whatever job you can and feel blessed for the short term. It won't be forever, you know that. It will simply be a way to keep you floating when so many are drowning. But why do you have to move?
ReplyDeleteSo to suffering fro your art? I say fuck that, too!