I'm really good at being mediocre at things.

As the title says, the only thing I seem to be any good at lately is being mediocre at everything.  Granted, my definition of mediocre is probably pretty subjective.  But, before you raise a hand to argue that I'm probably doing just fine, hear me out. 

I have been technically "unemployed" for going on nine months now.  I've figuratively gestated a full-term unemployment baby.  And... I'd like to think that nine months is a whole lot of time to get oneself together, to learn some new things, to change, albeit at a glacial pace.  What have I learned?

1) The first couple of months are really fun.
The first few months after cutting loose from a toxic work situation are FANTASTIC.  And terrifying.  But mostly fantastic.  You're sailing through your life, collecting your unemployment checks and feeling invincible, because you're no longer tied to a situation that was draining you.  You've got all the energy in the world, I daresay I was practically vomiting rainbows every morning while skipping off to the coffeeshop to write.  It was great.  You think that phase is never going to end, that that's what "creative self employment" is always going to look like.

2) The first couple of months are NOTHING like what "creative self employment" really look like. 
At least, not if you're me.  Was I employed creatively?  Yeah.  Was I master of my own domain?  Of course.  But the thing you tend to forget while you're munching your 90th egg sandwich and writing chapter 28 of that LOST fanfiction is that egg sandwiches and LOST fanfiction don't make you any money.  Egg sandwiches, in a fit of cruel irony, tend to COST money, actually.  And, let's be honest, your love for Ben Linus might carry you through a lot of things, but he's not coming to bail you out when your bank account is empty.  You need to do things that actually help your situation. 

3) (counterintuitively) Thinking about money all the time is a shitty way to do things. 
Sometimes you need to sit in a coffeeshop and eat an egg sandwich and write about how stupidly in love with Ben Linus you are.  Sometimes you need that.  After seeing what February did to me, hoo damn, do I appreciate the sweet, sweet sanity of egg-cheddar-sesame bagel and five hundred pages of surly glances and snide comments. 

4) I'm really good at being mediocre at things.
Guess what?  Full circle.  One of the biggest discoveries of... probably my life... is that you actually need to WORK on things to be good at them.  You need to put effort into the shit that you do.  You're all sitting there thinking "well, duh." but this is kind of a big deal to me.  You're talking to the kid who put ZERO effort into schoolwork for the first 12 years of schooling and still walked away with straight-A's.  The kid who had a nervous breakdown after having to TRY to be good at something (literally one thing) in undergrad, and then subsequently sailed through the rest of those four years working on NOTHING and predictably being utterly forgettable at everything. 

Fast forward to... this morning.  (Maybe not quite this morning, this concept has been boiling under the surface for a few days, really)  It's like an epiphany.  You want people to think you're pretty again?  Stop wearing shitty clothes and no make up.  (I mean, by all means, wear shitty clothes and no make up if you want to.  But it occurs to me that I can't remember the last time a random dude catcalled me on the way to the Jewel, and that shit used to happen every. single. day.)  You want to fit into your jeans again?  Quit eating the whole box of mac & cheese in one go.  Also, you're supposed to be training for a 5k.  You want to stop being so forgettable as a performer?  Maybe if you practiced, or watched your acts, or asked for feedback, or did any of the things you're supposed to do? 

I have a feeling it's going to be a ridiculously difficult habit to break.  Partially because it's so ingrained in my being.  Partially because living hand-to-mouth leaves very little room to think about the things that are happening even as far away as the day after tomorrow.  But, really, here's the last thing I'm in the process of learning:

5) Concentrating on living hand-to-mouth isn't really conducive to improving your life situation.
When you're spending all your time worrying about where your rent is going to come from... a week before rent is due... you really aren't spending a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to put enough money away so that this problem doesn't repeat itself next month.  Because that's a fucking fantasy.  If I can't even pay rent this month, what use is it for me to think about next month? 

But here's the thing.  You end up spending all your time taking jobs (ANY jobs) that will pay you a little money right now.  You sign up for that extra day on set.  You take another Stage Management gig.  You sign up for those asanine online websites where you can review songs for a whole 10 cents per song, or sell stock photography, or copywrite in your so-called free time.  You take the job that pays you $20 because you need that $20 RIGHT NOW, instead of using that time to run your acts a few times, or finish your props (FINISH YOUR FANS, MEGAN), or researching who you should be emailing to get more diverse bookings.  (how does that even work?  Really.  I have no idea.  I'm the worst freelancer ever.)


I'm not saying you shouldn't be taking those $20 gigs, because they do add up.  But there's a point where you suddenly realize you're exhausted, you can't remember where the hell the last two months went, and somehow you're still broke.  Maybe I could have just said "work smarter, not harder" and that would have sufficed. 

Maybe that's the biggest irony of all.  For all that I've always been a smart kid, I've never quite figured out how to work smart. 

*headdesk*

Well... So much for accountability, right?

Maybe I just need the right amount of fits and starts before I get puttering along for real.

I've been thinking a lot about Etsy. I started a shop. At this point, I'm not going to even bother linking, as there's really nothing in it. You can either sit in suspense, or stalk me and find it yourself, if you really want to know. ^_^ I'll give you a hint, it's called The Raven's Nest, due to my perpetual obsession with feathers and shiny objects.

I have a "garden" out back of the house. Just two big rubbermaid tubs growing potatoes and green beans. The one bean plant that survived half-drowning and being eaten by neighborhood rabbits has beans already. I'm kind of proud of it for succeeding, after I had basically given up on everything. I need a more focused plan for gardening... and I need a house and an environment that I'm really invested in.

After four months of unemployment, I finally cashed in on a job. I work in a high-end men's salon downtown. I go to work in a penthouse every day. It's... interesting. Not where I thought I'd end up, and not among people I ever thought I'd be around, but it's teaching me a little. A little about good customer service, and a little about business. Which is a good thing, since I know almost nothing about business.

I often think of myself in terms of Thomas Edison. Edison was a brilliant inventor, but when it came to marketing himself and his inventions, he was a total failure. Electricity would never have taken off, if he hadn't let Henry Ford take care of his marketing. Now that's something to think about.

I feel like I have all sorts of ideas swimming around in me, all sorts of creative endeavors waiting to burst through the surface. And I've been holding myself back. I'm afraid to make that leap. Afraid of being rejected. So paralyzed, I can't even look at the bags of feathers I own.

Part of it is an utter lack of inspiration. The materials I currently have to work with are cheap, and so the end product becomes cheap. I've been saving via PayPal for awhile, to come up with an investment in some nice quality feathers, but the real issue is me just jumping in head first, and to hell with everything else.




...In completely unrelated news, if anyone knows a fairly quick way to cut the shank off a button (or multiple buttons), I'd be super grateful. I tried hacking at one with an X-acto, but I was probably more likely to take off a finger than ever get the shank off the button. I use buttons quite frequently in my designs, and the ones with larger shanks really become difficult to place.

So... I just haven't been posting lately.
I've been inordinately busy. My newest show opened last Saturday, and so if I wasn't in the theatre, I was shopping for props, or printing paperwork at the kinkos, or eating garbage fast food, or sleeping.

I am still without the coveted day-job, which puts me in a precarious place anymore. I have about a month's worth of money left, and if I don't get a job in the next three weeks or so, then I think I'll have to pack up and leave here for good.

I've had a good feeling about some of the interviews I've been on lately, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, I've had probably fifty first interviews, only one second interview (though I have another scheduled for this week) and obviously nothing further than that. I'm trying not to think about it too much, because I don't think I could deal with it if I did think about it.

There's nothing for me back in Michigan. Nothing. Here I have a social life, I have theatre, I have burlesque. I have people who want to take my picture. I have a feeling of significance. I have a garden that is just waiting for me to be able to take it outside and really let it grow.

And the best part of all of this is that since I've been doing all this theatre, I'm so rejuvinated. The days that I have free, I just want to do EVERYTHING. I want to knit, I want to read, I want to go out, I want to see things and do things. I'm not exhausted all the time anymore. I have a will to do, and I'm so frustrated that I can't go out and attack some job with this ferocity that I have inside me.

Just think. If they loved me at my last job, when I was an exhausted zombie all the time, whoever gets me next is going to be ecstatic. I just CAN'T WAIT to tackle something, to get something accomplished. To do something worthwhile. I just wish that someone, anyone could see that.




...On a separate note, I have some potatoes sprouting merrily in pots, waiting until I can get a big rubbermaid to transplant them into for the summer. One onion (it was the last one in a bag I bought, guilty.) some peas and some green beans are all started too. I'm experimenting. Testing my resolve. I want to see if I really have what it takes to actually tend to a garden by myself. I mean... I typically just ignore my plants and whatever happens, happens. But I'd like to take a more active role in raising them, as well as getting something that I think is tasty out of it. And nothing is quite as tasty as homegrown veggies.

Rough patch

I think, mostly, that this is just that time I come to every so often, where I can't help but look at my life and despair. Don't get me wrong, I've come a long way in a very short time. Since January, I've realized a lot of things I never would have dreamed possible for me, are in fact feasible. Once I got out of bed, dusted myself off, and looked around at what I could do with all this time I've been blessed with (due in no small part to my utter UNEMPLOYMENT...) I got straight to work making my life as awesome as possible. I went on two professional photoshoots, a dream of mine since High School, watching ANTM and being terribly jealous that I would never be model height.

I'm smack in the middle of rehearsals for my first-ever Equity production. I'm nabbing 12 weeks worth of work toward joining the union that I so desperately want to be a part of one day. And I'm making loads of friends/contacts/what-have-you in the process.

I've done a couple of burlesque shows... Which is something I would be doing anyways, but I really packed them in over the last two months, any time I had a free weekend. I really love being a part of the community.

And, last but not least, I went and reconnected with some folks who I had assumed wouldn't really want to reconnect with me... and to better results than I might have imagined!


And though reaffirming all this to myself here makes me feel a modicum of peace, the terror of my life still nags at the back of my brain. I have NO MONEY. and I have NO JOB. I've gone on three interviews over the course of the last ten days, and NO ONE HAS CALLED ME BACK.

I cannot express how useless, incompetent, and unwanted that makes me feel. I know, logically, that the economy is just in a terrible place, and that I'm lucky to even be getting interviews in the field I've been applying in, considering my experience is nil. But I feel like the Universe at large is just ignoring my plaintive cry. I'm HUNGRY. I buy groceries once a month, I've been cutting back on *what* I eat. I haven't had anything beyond basic staples for months.
I have *needs*. My printer died this month, which means I now have to go to Kinkos and shell out twenty bucks every few days, to print all the paperwork that I *have* to have for my show. My computer's getting older. I need to put gas in my car to even *get* to rehearsal.

And all of this just sounds like whining to me. I feel like I should buck up, tighten my belt, and soldier on, but the fact of the matter is, I get three hundred dollars a month from the state of Illinois, and my rent is twice that.

And I love this city. I don't want to pack up at the end of my show and move home. I don't want to say goodbye to Chicago at the dawn of June, when life is just filtering back into the world, when I can start going to the park again and sitting in the grass and reading. I don't want to go back home and live in the room in the back of my parents' house, and work in retail until I can scrape together enough cash to go somewhere else. This city is full of possibilities for me, and I'm not ready to have to leave them.


I just need the damn universe to throw me a bone.

Monies!

Monies. Something I don't have right now. But. Things are looking up.

I never want to go into too much detail regarding who I might be talking with, or anything like that. They say everyone can read everything on the internet. And even though the chances of anyone pertinent stumbling upon my humble little blog are relatively slim...

Suffice to say that opportunity has been cropping back up here in Chicago. Which is good. I think I'd like to stay in Chicago a little while longer yet. I seem to have quite a bit of unfinished business here, and I'd like to wrap things up nicely before I bid the midwest farewell.

On the other hand, with increased opportunities comes a decrease in sleeping when I'd like to. I've been spoiled with these last few months, sleeping whenever I will. My natural sleep schedule seems to dictate I go to bed at two and get up somewhere around noon. Unfortunately, this is unsuitable to my current, and very much necessary, 9 to 5 lifestyle. One day I'll be able to sleep in blissfully late. But that day is not today. LeSigh.