A Happier Kind of Tired

  I am an author.  I am an actor. 

  I find myself having to repeat that several times a day.  They're not the typical answers that you give when someone asks you what you do for a living.  Especially not that second one. 

  But I filmed my first commercial on Sunday, with a cast of professionals, so that makes the second one official.  Men and women who've taken Theatre Studies and worked for years on stage and on film; who've wandered far distances away from home experiencing life from the perspective of art and spirit; whom I felt a kinship with on a professional level, for the first time in a long time.  And I have a credit to my name.  That's one commercial more than what the vast majority of the rest of the population has done or will do in their lives.  That doesn't make me better or superior, but it is something to be happy about. 

   This isn't all rainbows and sunshine, of course.  I've left my regular day job with the government, and so I'm on the hunt for something to pay the bills in the interim. I've been here before, but unlike the past few years, I'm no longer going to cite my stop-gap job when someone asks me what I do.  Make no mistake: I am an actor, and an author.

   "Author". "Actor".  Repeat as needed.

  A great bit of advice I can give younger guys and gals who are reading this is to never stay in a place that robs you of your spirit and confidence, because that starts to eat away at the other parts of your life that are not the business of the office or your boss.  That's what was happening to me.  With distance and time, I'll have a better perspective on the real nature of the misfit between myself at that job, but I think it had more to do with the people than I might have assumed. 

  On my last day of work, I received no cards, no lunches, no special acknowledgements or send-offs of any sort.  Instead, my now-former boss burst out of a meeting room with about an hour and a half left in my shift, put on her coat, grabbed her things, and rushed towards the exit.  She stopped briefly at my desk, saying "Sorry, Jody, I'm in a hurry."  Grabbed my hand in a quick handshake. "Best of luck to you!  Bye!", and then breezed out the door.  That was it.  I didn't want a parade - this isn't a question of satisfying my ego - but it is not a classy way to end a working relationship, especially not one that lasted a little over a year in an office of only five to six people. 

   Micromanager wasn't much better.  The convention in the modern workplace is that you can leave early from your last shift.  Technically, the employer can't do much except dock you for those minutes you didn't work.  It's not like they can fire you.  It's one of those unwritten rules that you let the guy go home early on his last day.  At least, that's how it is in good workplaces in the private sector, which is not where I was. When advising Micromanager that I had nothing else to do and was leaving early, she actually asked me, "Did you clear it with the boss?"  Definitely one of those WTF moments.  Coupled with a heads-up she gave me that she was "leaving a file on her desk for Monday", I wondered if it wasn't a case that she was deliberately obtuse, but rather that she might actually be off her gourd.  Hello?  Why would I care about the whereabouts of a file folder on Monday? I'm not going to be here on Monday. 

   That was the moment when it became clear to me that I wasn't batshit crazy or insane or otherwise stressed-out, that contrary to what my management had led me to believe, I wasn't doing a job I was unqualified for.  I was not incompetent or an imbecile.  The reality is that there is just never any way to satisfy the demands of people who have absolutely no interest in what you do, no self-awareness, and almost no sense of social decorum, except, of course, for people on the inside of their service branch, and who are, I'll repeat, just plain nuts.  Try to be the only sane person in an asylum run by the inmates, and see how long it takes for them to convince you that you're nuts.  You can clock it with an egg timer.

   No, those two moments completely dissolved any regret and anxiety I felt about abandoning a lucrative day job with nothing comparable to fall back on.  Not a smart move on paper, but the greater price was further damaging my sense of confidence and self-worth. No job is worth that.  Such wounds can be permanent. 

   So, what to do after you've made the leap of faith?  Keep flying.  It's all about the hustle from here on in.

   Finding a short-term stop gap job should be easy once I pare down my resume a tad.  Right now, I could serve coffee and lug boxes again and be happy, as long as I have some days free to audition and write.  For the first time in my life, I find myself overqualified for the jobs I want to work.  It's a challenge, but it's also a good feeling.


   I'm giving Convergence at least one more week in marination before I start editing.  Unlike The Quotable Breakup, I'm looking to publish my novel in the traditional sense - lit agent, publisher, book tour - so I'd rather wait until I can give more attention to the manuscript.

   And, of course, I'm still auditioning.  Got another one tomorrow, in fact.  At some point, I want to take a weekend retreat to study with acting coaches, but I'll need monies garnered from stop-gap wages before I can do that.  Until then, at each audition, I'm relying on my own instincts.

    I haven't been this tired, busy, or seen more of the great city of Toronto than in the past few weeks.  That's the thing about reinventing the self: it's a lot more work, but it doesn't feel like work.  When you're done for the day, it's a different, happier kind of tired. The kind you get when you come home from a wedding reception or a family picnic, or a long-expected party that's now finally come and gone.  One that makes you feel good waking up the next day, knowing you're going to do more.
 
   Creative career paths aren't for everyone, but neither is the corporate grind.  And I'm not going to rule out never going back to that grind: life may yet lead me back to it, albeit richer for the experience of walking the path of the artist for a time.  But I know and feel that what I'm doing now is right, even if the benefits aren't immediately evident, because I'm in the vibe, and when you're in the vibe, it doesn't matter what you do: wealth and joy will manifest when you need it. 

    I am an author.  I am an actor.  And I've never been happier.  Time for sleep!