What I do.

I was chatting with someone yesterday and he was lamenting the studying process for the LSAT and said something about it not really being what he wanted to do. I said "Then why are you doing it?" and he said "It's the fallback plan." His real love is music, and he said for a while he was seriously pursuing his music career, but he got tired of being perpetually broke. The financial instability became too much for him and so he's now applying for law school. And then he asked me what my fallback plan would be... you know, if the "acting thing" doesn't work out.

And I struggled to find an answer. I said.... "Uhhhhh..... well I don't know... work in a coffee shop and get lots of tattoos and also work front-of-house in a theatre; house managing or selling concessions or something... I guess..." And I searched my brain for a better answer but couldn't. Even my fallback plan involved working in a theatrical setting.

I'm gearing up for a few auditions in the next weeks. One tomorrow at SLAC, one at HTC on the 14th, and one at Good Co. Theatre sometime soon as well. And as I'm prepping and working and thinking about each potential job I'm reminded of how lucky I am to have found my passion. It's not easy, it's not stable, but it's all I ever want to do. I don't want to teach, I don't want to take some desk job and hate my life because it's monotonous and boring. I want to be on stage, or backstage, or near a stage. I want to be contributing to the world through something creative and alive and bright and meaningful. And that's what theatre does. And that's what I get to do when I'm part of theatre.

Today I saw a trailer for a production of CLOSER that is being put on by 5 of my favorite humans ever. It spend a lot of time talking about the process of creating theatre and how thrilling it can be. And then my beautiful friend Kelsie Slaugh wrote a blog post (HERE) that really really inspired me to work harder and keep pushing forward in this business. This life is a tough one, and it involves lots of sacrifice and rough decisions but it is EXACTLY what I want to be doing.

This was my favorite part of Kelsie's post:

"But there is a reason why we compromise, a purpose behind every sacrifice!

I cannot fathom any other choice. Theatre is my art, and without it I'm not me. It's this bizarre life-blood that beats throughout the veins and arteries of anyone that is fortunate enough to fall in love with it. It infests you; changing your cells and morphing you in a way that you can't recover from. It is humanity and earth, enveloping and changing all that it touches. It is me and you and everyone and everything in-between...

This passion is indescribable. 

So here we are, the crazy-theatre-humans, gladly making the sacrifices, because we can't do anything else. I can't do anything else. We're in love with this art form and always will be. And that's just how it is. 

...and I'm so grateful that's how it is."