i frequently post stuff about random crap and my artistic life...what shows i'm doing, our reviews, etc., but because of a recent shift, i believe it's time to write about what's going on in my life in general...because there is a lot. maybe this blog post will allow me to actually sort it all out and make sense of it in my own head.
(i'll backtrack a little for those of you who i've recently gotten back in touch with). when i graduated from nyu, the job market in nyc sucked a big one. it was right after 9/11 and everyone was still in shock. companies were moving out of the city, people were being laid off right and left, and people were being forced to fall back on job skills such as bar tending, which they may have given up years before. a friend of mine looking for a bartending job told me that on one of the interviews she went on, the interviewer remarked that he had gotten thousands of resumes for the one job.
so my jump into the "real world" was less than ideal. i was graduating from a very expensive university. the renovation on my apartment (which was supposed to be done in april) would not be done until august. and i had no job, as my position with the university ended once i graduated and packed off the little freshmen for the summer. i was sending out resumes wildly. i had no idea what i wanted to do. i was getting fairly steady acting work, but i still needed a day job to pay the bills. i tried getting a more permanent job with nyu, but that didn't pan out and i finally got a call from a real estate company for a reception position that i didn't even remember applying for. i went in for an interview mainly because i hadn't gotten any other calls. the interviews went well and i think i was offered the position the next day.
granted, this was my DAY job, and not what i was wanting to do with my life, so i vowed that i'd keep looking until i found something better. and i did continue going on interviews, but gradually the company became my home. shortly after getting the job, their parent company downsized and they eliminated my position. serendipitously, a receptionist position opened up in their soho office at the same time and after a moment of panic, i was transferred to the other office. i stayed there for two years. i loved the office but hated the job. i met some of my closest friends through that office. i got to see/meet a few celebs. i was even able to score a few acting/design roles. and while the job allowed me to concentrate on my acting and design, i, well, i needed more money. and i knew i had more potential.
when an office manager position in the carnegie hill office opened up, about two years later, i applied. i naively thought that all the different offices were run the same way and would have similar types of characters. i was wrong. my new position was not like the soho office manager position that i had occasionally stepped in to. and the brokers in the office were not the same type (or age group) of people. but that is the difference between the upper east side and soho.
so the job had more stress, more aggravation, and more conflict. i did meet some more dear friends, but i was missing soho. i stuck through it for two years, but as time went on, i became more and more frustrated. i had jumped a few steps up the ladder to this position and there was no where for me to progress to unless i became a broker (which i had little desire and no nest egg for). i would dread going to the office in the morning. i felt stagnant.
during these two years, i made a great creative leap and founded a theater company with two friends and began producing as well as acting and designing shows. but slowly the issues from the day job began to seep into my life outside. the job exhausted me, and my day didn't end when i left there at 5:30. i was most likely leaving to go to a theater meeting or a rehearsal. i knew i was spinning my wheels and had to do something about it.
a little over a month ago, i left the real estate company. it was a tough decision. it had become my home. it was all i knew after college. despite the frustrations, at least it was something that was a constant in my life. i took a job at a small finance company. the founder/president was 29 years old and very ambitious. (that was an exciting change from working in an office where the average age was over 50 and most people had children older than me). there was a lot of opportunity for growth as the office grew, the hours (in theory) were shorter, the money was better, and there was a lot to learn (i had no idea about investment banking or finance).
but almost immediately, the chemistry between my boss and i changed. the previous assistant left over a month before i started and there were a series of temps between her and i. they also just moved, so i was learning a new job, a new industry, a new boss, and trying to make sense out of the piles of papers just shoved into drawers.
i thought i was getting better. i actually knew what the sec was and what nda meant. but then i noticed that my boss started getting emails from the placement agency that placed me with him. (no i was not snooping, he had me send emails from his account all the time.) i began to worry, but he was away in europe and this was something to be done face to face. but the emails became more frequent and no longer contained resumes, but talked about interviews and second meetings.
so last friday i approached him. i asked him i needed to start looking for another job. i think i took him off guard. he started out the conversation saying he was unsure, but that he felt like with me it was like trying to get a square peg into a round hole. i stood up for myself and i think that pretty much made up his mind. so he paid me what he owed me and i left.
i tried not to think of it too much over the weekend, since i'm in the middle of the run of the crackwalker and i think i did a pretty good job.
but now, for the first time, i feel like i have no direction. you always have a goal to work for: graduation, the bonus, opening night, the vacation. i don't have the money to go back to school. the show i put blood, sweat, tears, and bruises into is up. and i have no day job.
i am trying to use this time to not only live cheaply, but catch up on all the life stuff i pushed aside because i simply had no time. i'm running errands, cooking, doing laundry. i know it'll eventually get old because i was never fond of housework...actually i despise it. but my latest goal is to reduce the clutter of my life while trying to figure out what i need to do about money.
ideally, i'd get a job in theater administration. but those are so hard to come by and when you do, the pay is crap. i do know that i don't want to repeat what happened with my most recent position or even with my office manager position. i know i don't like finance, and i don't really want to go into real estate again. in a nutshell: i don't know what i want right now. i'm trying to use this time to recharge, get my life in order. oddly enough, i'm not panicking (yet). i am looking for jobs, but i am not striking out blindly like i have in the past. whatever i decide to do, i want it to make me happy. ok, maybe not happy because i don't want to get too comfortable in it and not keep doing theater. but i do want to be content.
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