When The Ground Shakes Beneath You
You know that feeling, that scary feeling (not you who LIKE roller coasters, please, you don't have to read this entry), no, you know that feeling......you're 50 plus. Or not. Maybe you're dangerously close to 60. Maybe your mother has Alzheimers and you're terrified. And you step on the corner of the rug in the den and it slips out from underneath you and you catch yourself, you DO. You catch yourself but you think Jesus God Almighty, what if I landed right here on the concrete floor of the den, screaming in pain and eventually passing out and nobody finds me for days and..... you know that stuff? WIth the dogs eating your fingers off and the buzzards plucking out your eyeballs and all that Stephen King shit? DO NOT LIE TO ME. I KNOW YOU'VE FANTASIZED THIS TOO.
Lately that's what it feels like at my 'day' job. The backup job. The one that I'm not supposed to care that much about because I love my real job better. Only I can't (nor can about 99.8% of the rest of us who call ourselves professional artists) make a living at my real work, my passion, my soul work. So I have this backup job.
But it turns out I DO care about it. It's a base, it's a touching post, it's something I can semi-count on in this world. I thought.
A job I don't exactly LUUUUUV, but which challenges me in ways that acting does not. It forces me to think in a linear fashion, which, for anyone who actually KNOWs me, is right up there with speaking ancient Greek...fluently. It forces me have to function in the corporate world where people speak in HR, a language that involves not really saying what you ACtually think, but what is politically correct according to the gods of a litigious society.
Lately I've gotten all this incredible press. The critics love me, the directors love me, theatres pre-cast me (sometimes). To an actress these things mean you are valuable. I'm not being cocky about this, believe me. You are genuinely only as good as the last review. But it seems lately that the older and fatter I get, the more praise and work I get. I don't understand how that works in a world that values thin and young, but indeed, somehow it seems to be working for me.
Except at my day job. Where the rug is slipping. The ground is shifting. The stress is excessive. I used to feel confident at what I do there, but now I don't anymore. The day job doesn't care about soul work; the day job doesn't care about good press. The day job cares about ROI and it (the day job) doesn't even track (helllllo, ROI) what we (the team) do.
Okay, I'm just bitching now.
Lately that's what it feels like at my 'day' job. The backup job. The one that I'm not supposed to care that much about because I love my real job better. Only I can't (nor can about 99.8% of the rest of us who call ourselves professional artists) make a living at my real work, my passion, my soul work. So I have this backup job.
But it turns out I DO care about it. It's a base, it's a touching post, it's something I can semi-count on in this world. I thought.
A job I don't exactly LUUUUUV, but which challenges me in ways that acting does not. It forces me to think in a linear fashion, which, for anyone who actually KNOWs me, is right up there with speaking ancient Greek...fluently. It forces me have to function in the corporate world where people speak in HR, a language that involves not really saying what you ACtually think, but what is politically correct according to the gods of a litigious society.
Lately I've gotten all this incredible press. The critics love me, the directors love me, theatres pre-cast me (sometimes). To an actress these things mean you are valuable. I'm not being cocky about this, believe me. You are genuinely only as good as the last review. But it seems lately that the older and fatter I get, the more praise and work I get. I don't understand how that works in a world that values thin and young, but indeed, somehow it seems to be working for me.
Except at my day job. Where the rug is slipping. The ground is shifting. The stress is excessive. I used to feel confident at what I do there, but now I don't anymore. The day job doesn't care about soul work; the day job doesn't care about good press. The day job cares about ROI and it (the day job) doesn't even track (helllllo, ROI) what we (the team) do.
Okay, I'm just bitching now.
posted by pamdbigd | 7:57 AM
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