I’ve taken some time this month to clean out my Gmail, the main goal being to have a completely empty Inbox. I went through each email one by one, adding it to my Gmail Task List and/or archiving it away, until I got to the very last entry. It was labeled “journal” and dated 12/14/06. I knew it was there for me to print and tape into my actual journal (which I never write in unless things are bad/sad/confusing and I need some clarity), but I don’t think I’ve looked at it in all these thirty-one(!) months. The confusion I felt was in regards to acting—my passion, my dream since I was an Annie wannabee. Here’s what I wrote: “I feel my acting stuff just sorta slipping away. I still have the desire and the need to do it – if I didn’t I wouldn’t be upset about it – but I lost the optimism and the spark. I don’t feel jaded, per se – just worn out and tired of all this. I’m tired of chugging along, of the highs that don’t materialize and the lows that are just crushing. I feel like I’m not making headway, that I’ve never made headway. OK, maybe I am just a bit jaded. But then it comes back around to the other part of what I need and what I want, which is a relationship that’s not strained by me being away, which is something more than a load of temp jobs, which is paying off my debts (even if it’s a little at a time) and being financially stable, and having a social life in NYC. And while I’m itching to be on stage again, I don’t want to give up the other pieces of what I need. So I’m desperately trying to figure out a balance between my heart and my head. Do I do this job and have my social life and take a break from the business of show? Or do I do this job and take all my personal days for auditions, to keep plugging away at this? Or do I do this job and try to do my own show, even if nobody sees it except for me friends and family? Or do I just throw in the towel, keep on plugging away at my day job for a paycheck and the lifestyle I want to lead? Or do I go back to school to try to find something else that I can be passionate about? I’ve been trying to unjumble my head for over a year with all this, and while I want to make both things work – be able to go on auditions and do extra work while I also have my “day job” – the more I try the more tired I feel. So what’s the compromise? I feel like I’m a Practical Dreamer.” That spring, I enrolled in the Career Change Workshop at NYU. That summer, I enrolled at ICA to be a life coach. I found my way, but I can’t help wondering how I really got here. I think it consisted of: • being tired. Let’s face it, I was worn out, beat down, and “jaded”. I lost my spirit and I wanted it back.
In December of 2006, I was dating Luke for almost a year, and we were living together, and things were both hunky and dorey. But while I was in this amazing relationship, and at a “grown-up, non-sales, getting-my-full-paycheck-all-the-time job, my 9–6 or 7 or 8 job” that, at the time, I liked despite my “condescending micro-manager” of a boss (who would eventually get so condescending and so micro-managing that I I once dry heaved into the trash at the Union Sq subway station on my way to work, only to feel fine the second I was on the train heading home).
