just saying no.

last week i got a new job. a THIRD job.

am i insane?

yes.

right now i work for my dad doing office admin. stuff. it's fairly mindless but i get to do some design work which is awesome and i get to use my down time to work on my other job...
my theatre company! that's a LOT of work that i do not get paid for. but i love it so it's worth it.

so this third job. the artistic director of theatre prospero emailed me last week and asked to help organize their current tour. theatre prospero is a tya (theatre for young audience) company who does touring productions of shakespeare that includes the students in their productions. I AM ALL FOR THIS! i think that arts education is an essential part of schooling. shit, i am an artist and i would have liked more...
so, my job would have been to call teachers at certain hours of the day and inquire as to their interest level in booking a spot on the tour. i agreed, without much thought, to do this. it seemed easy enough and i could do it in the slower times at work.

so, i thought about all weekend and i woke up this morning having made a decision...i can't do it. i can't add a third thing to my life. i don't need the money that badly. i'm broke but i'm surviving and i need to get more sleep.

so i quit this morning. the morning that i was suppose to start, i quit. this makes me sound like a shitty person. i'm aware of that. but i am not a shitty person. first of all, i didn't apply for this job. mark just emailed me out of the blue and asked me if i could help. second, and more importantly, to assume that i am a shitty uncommitted person is to know NOTHING about me. i give 125% to everything i do. to my friends, my family, theatre...jesus! all of it. anyone who knows me knows this. and that i why i couldn't do the job. i can't give 110% to anything more than i already do. i need to step back and be selfish for a second. if i'm not i will go crazy! it's almost guarenteed.

this situation would be different if i had been offered a creative position. if mark had asked me to direct a show or something. those are the kinds of things i want to get into. i have an admin. job right now and unless i am going to go into theatre admin full time and leave this job (which isn't likely right now...) then i don't want to do it.

and it got me to thinking about why i felt so compelled to take something else on. i look at me and all of my friends. the majority of work shitty jobs we hate that make us sick and tired but we do it to support our artistic habits. which is fine, at the point most of us are at it's a necessary evil. but then we let all this shit that we hate stress us out and we're all basketcases...and then we take on something else that we don't really like on top of it all.

i did a sort of impromptu survey of my friends. or, not a survey so much as my observations. most of my friends fall between the ages of 22-26. (i'm 24) and i'd say a full 2/3 of us suffer from stomach troubles and/or insomnia and self-medicate with some combination of drugs/alcohol/caffiene/risky-sex/etc...i know i've used all of the above to deal with my stress. i am 24 years old. i love what i do but no one pays me for it and as a result of the stress this causes i have acid reflux, i rarely sleep more than 4 hours a night and if i want to sleep well i have to get stoned in order to do so.

i am NOT complaining by any means. i am generally thrilled with life. i have friends i love. i do what i love. i get along with my family. i am independent...i have no real complaints about my life. but i'd like to keep it that way so i opted not to take another job.

i think we just need to be careful and remember what matt reminded me of this afternoon: 'work to live not live to work' and keep our passions because in the end i guess i couldn't imagine my life any other way. well...hopefully within 5 years this whole notion of the necessity of a day job won't exist but i'm not worried about that. it's a given that i'm on course to nixing the day job and working full time in theatre (and actually getting paid for it!!)