"We're not gonna take it..."

So, I’m having a bit of a cout d’etat with my Higher Power.

Yesterday, after having spent the day unenthusiastically clicking on administrative job listings, too disenchanted and lethargic to actually apply to any, I took out the Jerrold Mundis book How to Get out of Debt, Stay out of Debt, and Live Prosperously. I’ve been reading it through at various intervals over the last few months, having been hanging out with a group of folks who practice the kind of actions and principles he suggests for about a year now.

I sat with my dinner, started to read, and here was his suggestion. At the top of a piece of paper write, If I could have, do, or be anything, it would be… and then he listed several categories of our lives, like Work/Career, Relationships, etc. As soon as I read the prompt, I started to well up. A bit surprisingly to me, having done a lot of similar work through the Artist's Way before.

As I wrote "Work/Career" at the top of a page, I came to the end of my first sentence: “I work with a group of creative people to …” I had no idea what came next. I don’t know what, in my grandest or meekest dreams, the end of that sentence is. And I started to cry. I sobbed at having no clue what I wanted to do with my life, or even presently, which I believe has made it that much harder for the “Universe” to provide it for me. “What happens in Vagueness, stays in Vagueness.”

So, I took out another sheet of paper to try an exercise that my friend said she did before moving out to SF a year or so ago. She wrote down all the areas that interested her, careers, in bubble circles on a page. Then she held her hand over each, and imagined to feel what it would really feel like to her to do that work. So, I did that. I wrote down “Admin” in one bubble, because I was curious, and because it’s my fallback. And I held my hand on that part of the page, and started to cry again. None of the things on the page actually spoke to me, except one.

And it just feels so “stupid” to even admit it. I shared it last night with a group of folks who work on the specific debting issue of “underearning,” and it was hard for me to admit it there, in a safe group – but out loud. And because as soon as I even try to think about it, all these attendant flashes -- “That’s so unrealistic” “That’s not sustainable” “No one makes that a full-time job” "You need training" "You need money for classes" "It takes years" -- came up even as I sat in my kitchen, soggy eyed, and circled it over and over. Actress.

See, you pulled back, didn’t you? “Actress, really?” No one makes a full-time job out of that. Or, as I’ve heard so often about my Poetry degree, “Glad you studied something lucrative!” FUCK ALL YOU STUPID VOICES.

You all suck. Not, “you,” reader you. Just “you,” stupid voices and nay-sayers and assholes, who live in and outside my head.

I don’t even want to talk too much about it. It feels so vulnerable. And open to attack.

And yet, unless I actually share this interest with people, I won’t be able to get ideas on how to make a viable path and eventual living at it.

Most people actually do know that I’m interested in performance. It’s been something that I’ve talked about and been engaged in for years. But I guess I never really let people know that it’s really something that I want to do. As in really. There are just so many messages to contradict it that it’s so hard to even let myself hold the idea in my own kitchen!.

Any and all of that said, I need to be earning money now, in a stable job that will enable me that stability and the room to goddamned breathe in order to pursue anything in that vein. I’m not an idiot. I know it’s going to take a lot of work, and in order to get to a place where I can do and engage and even pay for that work, I’ve got to get a fucking job.

So, the cout d’etat. My morning pages this morning looked like the transcript of Southie dock-workers. Or the script from an episode of Deadwood. “Motherfucking” and “G-ddamned” being the most common.

I’m tired, people. I feel like I’ve been struggling against this underearning stuff for … ever. The fall-back on mindless, absolutely mindless work, because I don’t have the balls to really try for something better, something that might actually use the braincells G-d put in my head to do more than alphabetize a stack of invoices.

So, I told my HP this morning, that either something changes, or I’m out. You!, Miracle Maker – make some fucking miracles then.

The irony of long-term job search is that the longer you are at it, for me, the less enthused or motivated I become. Which, is completely counter-productive. At the times when I need to remain as vigilant and productive, I become lethargic and desperate.

Honestly, if I hear one more person suggest something, I’m going to stab them in the eye with a fork. Don’t you THINK I’ve been doing that??? I want to scream at these poor, innocent, just-want-to-help friends and acquaintances.

I am where I am right now. I am angry, frustrated, desperate, and sad. I’m working on stuff around relationships that is making me even more techy and vulnerable. And I’m stretched as far as I can go. I told my HP this morning that if he/she/it/they wants me to continue on this, then you’ve gotta fucking throw me a bone here. You have to make me able to support myself if you want me to do the work that I actually believe I’m here to do – to get me there, you have to help me here.

I am tapped out and exhausted. I have no room for patience at the moment. September is arriving, and I have just enough to cover rent. That’s it. I am undergirded by a thrashing river of anxiety over money and how to feed myself and my cat. I am tired. And if my Higher Power does indeed want the best for me, and wants me to be “happy, joyous, and free,” then It better do something quick, because I’m fucking over it.