As a struggling actress, I knew that in order to feed/clothe myself and keep a roof over my head, I had to take as many day jobs as I had limbs. These day jobs equaled money, and comfort, and a Girls Night Out or two. Even though I was auditioning every spare second I had, and taking almost every acting job that was offered to me, those gigs never (I repeat: NEVER) paid the rent. When I think back on the five years post-college that I focusing on acting, there are only two jobs that I can recollect that actually paid my bills. One was eight months on a cruise ship, where the $500 or so I was getting paid a week seemed like $1,000,000, while the other was three months in Key West (although I did work as a waitress for a whole day—I left because I had to deliver food to the nudist bar in town and they didn’t even tip!). I didn’t have to supplement those jobs with any other jobs. I could live on them and them alone.
For the other gigs—the ones that didn’t pay the rent—I got paid in reviews. Or MetroCards. Or checks that came out to $100/wk (if I was lucky). Or in kind words. Or in the hope of a new connection. Or in fun and friends. I also got paid in blood, sweat, tears and embarrassment more than once (or twice or ten times). Probably the most financially rewarding gigs were the ones I did as an AFTRA extra, but those were unreliable. So, what did I rely on while I was pounding the pavement? Cashiering at Barnes and Noble, dressing up in big-headed costumes for events (I even appeared on Good Morning America as a life-size 1-800-FLOWERS gift box), being a hostess, an office manager, a casting assistant, a data entry person, a movie premiere usher/willcaller/greeter, another hostess, a waitress, a temp secretary, a temporary tattoo artist, an apartment show-er, a Carmen Miranda appearance person, a real estate agent...I think that’s it. If there are others, I must have blocked them out.
When I decided to stop pursuing acting, I took stable jobs I thought I would be good at and would like (I’ve had four thus far), but I would always be proved wrong. The position might be right, but the management might be wrong. In another role, it would be the reverse.
Which brings me to today. Or last week, rather, talking to my coach about the challenge I’m having trusting that I can make a living (a comfortable, unstressful, heck, I’ll say it—a lucrative living!) as a life coach. I can’t trust that it’s going to come together, even though I can practically see my progress up to this point as well as the opportunities that are in front of me. I hear the same things echoed in the voices of some of my clients, most of them sitting in “comfortable” careers that they can’t imagine they can break away from without starving to death as the artist or spiritual coach or transportation engineer they want to become.
After more questioning and clarifying, my coach said, “So, it sounds to me that you’ve never really been compensated for doing what you love. Do you see money as a payment for torture?” And while I knew it was a dramatic statement, I quickly, wholeheartedly, honestly, painfully answered, “YES!”
I’ve been out of college for ten years now. In all that time, I got comfortably compensated (no side jobs, no worry about paying bills, etc) for doing what I loved doing for a total of eleven months. That’s 10.9 percent of the entire time I’ve been on my own. It’s my truth now: I only get compensated for - if not torture (and some of it was), then, at a minimum, discontent and indifference. That’s been 89.1 percent of my experience in a grown-up world.
