Earlier this week, I got together with an old friend whom I'm sure I haven't seen in at least three years. She and I did theater together when we were both in high school (a pursuit that I chose over my competitive figure skating career, when my coach sat me down and made me pick), and she recently graduated from Roosevelt University with a degree in Musical Theater. She's since been in two different productions in the Chicagoland area, has 8 points toward her Equity membership (which is a huge deal, y'all), and she just seems generally extremely happy.
She and I got together and went to see the Marriott Lincolnshire's production of Spring Awakening, in which two of our mutual acquaintances (neither of whom I've seen in six years, at least) and two of her friends were performing. The production was good, and as we made our way to the stage door, I quipped to her that it would be interesting to see if either one of the people I knew in the show recognized me.
"Of course they will!"
"I'm telling you, it happens all the time. They won't be able to place me right away."
"If you say so..."
Not believing me, she and I waited for the first of our friends to emerge. He came out, instantly recognized and hugged her, asked her how she was, then turned to me and said "Hi, I'm B--". I cut him off and said "Actually, we've met--", upon which I was cut off by my friend, who said "Surely you remember--", and she was then cut off by him, quickly exclaiming "OH MY GOD you look so different! I didn't recognize you! How are you?!?!"
We got to talking, he asked me what I was up to (asking whether I went to "ee" Berkelee or "ey" Berkeley, which is a valid question in the Midwestern musical theater scene), and we chatted nicely, and my friend and I eventually left. As we were walking to my car, she stated that she couldn't believe that our friend didn't recognize me. I joked, as I've often done in this situation, that "I moved to California and everyone forgot about me!"
Driving home, after dropping her off, I started crying. I couldn't help but feel like something was missing, like my friends had somehow accomplished something that I had not. And they all have- all three of them are successful within the musical theater world, doing productions, some haven't quit their day jobs, seem busy, get to perform every day with incredible people, and are probably flat broke. I, on the other hand, don't get to feed my creative beast in quite the same way, but I love what I do and upon graduating and starting my full time job, will be making probably four times what they are. I have no reason to complain: I opened an IRA this week, I'm going to be making enough to live comfortably in the most expensive city, rent-wise, in the world, I'm working my financial plan out to own real estate before I'm 30 (I have a financial plan), and I will probably never need to rely on financial support from my parents again, once college tuition is paid off.
And yet.
You may notice that I describe my situation in monetary terms and theirs in emotional terms. Which is absolutely true. I left that show, and those people, with a sense that I had sold out. I had elected not to follow my absurd dream and instead, found something I didn't mind doing that made substantially more money, had greater job security, but ultimately, left me less fulfilled. I'm not claiming I would have been as successful as they are now, I probably wouldn't be. I'm claiming that when I made the decision to go to college for something other than musical theater, I robbed myself of the possibility of being extremely, extremely happy doing something I had a slim shot at ever being the best at.
My relationship with my parents, especially my mom, has been strained about this very fact over the years, which I'm just realizing now. In fact, earlier this week, before I saw the show, I offhandedly said to her "I wonder if I would be happier if I had gone to theater school." She dismissed the comment, claiming that I probably wouldn't be. Tonight during dinner, I brought up something related to money and she said to me "you're making a decent salary. You're making a good starting salary, but you won't have money to [buy a vacation timeshare to a place we go to a lot, a timeshare which she herself bought about 30 years ago]." In what was far from my finest moment, I acidly shot back at her "oh yeah? What did you make your last year of teaching?" knowing full-well the number was just about on-par with my starting salary.
I shouldn't have been offended when she said that. My relationship with my mother and money is too complex to go into right now, but the reason I'm bringing this specific instance up is because all day today, I stupidly tried to tell myself that I had given up my passion for theater for money. And when she threatened my money situation, it felt like an attack also on my decision. Which makes no sense, but emotions are strange sometimes.
I sat with the notion for a while, then looked at vocal coaches in the area. I tried to reason that I could do it all- I could do some workshops, lose some weight, get professional headshots again, and audition for local theater while maintaining my full time job. I could do it all, there was no reason why I couldn't. I could be good at my job AND good in the theater world. My day job would just be a little more 9-5-ey than the cliche restaurant gig that theater actors have.
I started to look up members of the original Broadway cast of Spring Awakening, which had faces such as Lea Michele and Skylar Astin (both of screen fame now), Jonathan Groff (currently working on Hamilton), and a host of other insanely talented young people. I'm older than a lot of them were when they got their Broadway debut, and it started to hit me that I can't have it all, I will never be able to do both, and I never will know what it would have been like if I'd made a different choice when I was eighteen.
And then I started to look up entrepreneurs and engineers. I started (and ended) with my future boss, Mr. Jack Dorsey, who studied briefly as a fashion designer, before going on to successfully found (and currently CEO at) both Square and Twitter. I poked around a bit, and realized that I would also probably never be as good at my job as Jack is at his.
One of my friends, a software engineer in his 30's, once told me that he has no interest in being in charge of anything, as a CEO or even a manager, because "I don't want to work that hard." And I think that I share the sentiment, and I've always known I didn't want to be like my peers that dropped out of college to co-found and run their own startups that, mostly, were just kids who wanted to strike it lucky and make it rich, many of whom had God-awful ideas for their companies. I've said before that I'm not willing to co-found or be in charge of anything unless I really believe in the idea. I had a front-row seat as a former friend of mine ran through four different fizzling startup ideas, constantly getting less pointed and more irritable, but not abandoning the idea of his own startup because he never wants to work for someone else in his lifetime. I vowed I would never put myself through a similar situation unless it was something I truly believed in and wanted to pursue. I never had a problem with working for other people. I'm fine being slightly in the background.
Which, oddly, is how I always was in theater as well. Never having the starring role, I played increasingly important background characters as my career progressed. And I was fine with it. I was content not carrying the burden of the entire show, and being allowed room to breathe, explore, and enjoy myself. I've never had a problem with the idea that I'll probably be in the 75th percentile of whatever I do, my entire life.
Until this evening. I somehow convinced myself that if I had just gone for it, if I had allowed myself to be vulnerable and passionate and committed to something, wholeheartedly and headfirst, that I would be in a different situation now. Or that if I was willing to work a little harder at what I do now, that I would somehow be better, be getting paid more, or be working at a flashier company.
Then I realized I was becoming every cliche all at once. Somehow, my mentality had descended into "I need to make more than all of my peers, just to feel validated", "I could do that if I just put my mind to it", "I'm happier here because I have job security", and a thousand others, embedded into both the musical theater world and the technology sphere. And I hated every bit of it. I don't want to tie my self-worth to my salary, and I don't want to feel like I could be doing what my theatrical friends are doing (because I was never that good and honestly, I probably would be terrible at it in the real world). I want to take my friend at face value when she told me that she was extremely passionate about her theater career and she was excited, but that she also wondered what would have happened had she chose something "safer", and she wondered what a world would be like when she didn't have to worry if her haircut was marketable, or her face was pretty enough. Because at the end of the day, I'm where I am, and I'm happy about that. I'm going to work hard, try to find a balance to feed my creative soul, and also further myself in my career, the career that I chose, that I love, and that I'm so excited to start this Fall.
Evan Williams, one of Twitter's co-founders, allegedly told Jack Dorsey "You can either be a dressmaker or the CEO or Twitter but not both."
Well, you can also be neither.
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