Today marks my 19 year anniversary as a professional performing artist.
I’ve been working as a resident ensemble member for a theater company since 2001, joining just two months after graduating college and only one day before an interview at Banana Republic. The open call audition was to be my only attempt at making a career out of my college hobby. The pressure couldn’t be any lower – I figured that if I didn’t make it, I would just join The Republic, sell the shit out of some khakis for a few years, and settle into some low-mid executive level gig.
And that would have been the end of me. I would have decided that creativity was to be used by some – not me. And after I was done with spending 8 hours a day doing something I hated in uncomfortable clothes, I could go home and watch them do it on TV or see a play on the weekend. I would have died like that, suffocated by the bordem.
It would have been a smart move, though. I mean, those District Managers are probably paid pretty well.
Instead, I chose a very complicated path that is full of self-loathing, doubt, famine, addiction, and discovery. It’s where i am alive, and happy.
