"gotta find my destiny before it gets too late"

...and it didn't happen. last week i was at a read through of a draft of a new play my theater company is commissioning and the artistic director just happens to mention that a theater company we are familiar with lost the lease on their space and the complex is for rent. of course, i go nuts. every small nyc theater company prays for a place to call their home. that would have been the easiest way for us to start living our dream. of course it'd be hard, but suddenly it seemed like there was a light at the end of my tunnel.
the complex actually had two theaters (a 99 seat and a 40 seat) and three rehearsal spaces. i knew it'd be expensive, that we couldn't use the whole thing for ourselves, but we could set up as a management company, renting out the spaces when we weren't using them ourselves. a small business loan of maybe 6 months rent could get us off the ground. but what was the rent? the real estate broker wasn't returning bob's calls. i finally found the website and the listing for the property...it was almost $23,000 a month for the space. i desperately tried to make the math work for us...if we rented out the big space at $3500/week and the small space at $2000/week and rented the rehearsal spaces at $10/hr and had 100 hours a month of rental space we would just break even...and that didn't count utilities and everything else that went with the space. and that also meant that we'd have to have the spaces rented continuously. as much as i wanted it to, there was no way it would work. we're having issues of reaching our fundraising goal of making $7500 in donations this year for our next productions. how could we manage $23,000? i did mention that we should get two other companies to enter into the undertaking with us to split the cost (and risks), but that meant we'd need more time and organization than we had at the moment.
so again, my dreams and optimism have been dashed. but for a brief moment it seemed as if all that i had been striving for would be possible. i always read about these success stories where the artist overcomes incredible odds...or just has it fall in their lap. i want to be one of those stories. i've been working for it a long time. i need to be one of those stories.
i don't know how much more of the soul sucking day job i can take. i'm not cut out to work a 9-5:30 office job on madison avenue. but when do i give in and say it just won't happen? when do i give up and realize i need to build myself a career in something else besides theater? there has to be a time when all these ex-actors, filmmakers, etc. made the choice to conform. when was that? was it a conscious decision? did they really love what they did before? if so, how do they live with themselves now?
i know that i am most at piece with myself when i am working in a theater. it doesn't have to be acting. i designed costumes for a show in january and just going to the theater and fitting the actors had a calming effect on me. when i go long periods without acting i get very, very depressed. i can't help it. i need that creative outlet. i don't need or even want fame and fortune. i just want to be able to make a living at it...to support myself. that's all.