Dreams
People have told me all my life to dream big. They want me to set goals and aim high. “Aim for the moon. even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars” Up till now I haven’t particularly had dreams. Oh, I had the dream that every 5 year old has, of becoming a star, Brittney Spears in my case, but after age 7 I gave that up. All the other kids in elementary school had goals. Children’s goals that only seem to require creativity, like interior design. Amidst all this, I chose one too, a veterinarian. What else can be expected to a girl who chose to be a vegetarian at age 4? Ah, the field of animal medicine, surely my calling from a 10 year old’s standpoint. On to high school, where my life officially had no desired endpoint. But a good education, I was told, would prepare me for anything. Thus began my life at a college prep school. Ooh, joy, I’ll be able to write calculus algorithms on my cardboard box before I pull the newspapers over my starving children. Obviously I need to make money somehow. Now, all this analysis of my life direction was brought on by another blog on this site. You made me cry, thanks.
Official reason I won’t become an actor: Acting is fun and all but I’m not that good at it and the passion isn’t there. I’ve been educated on the vast number of trained actors facing the low number of jobs, and for a dispassionate actor, the prospects aren’t good for work. Even if I get a job, the thing only lasts for a week or if I’m lucky, a few months. Job security is non-existent. I’m accustomed to a very high standard of living and going into this field would royally fuck that up.
So this blog got me thinking, a few years ago I was in an opera called La Boheme as one of the “children”. It was a small role, a bit of chorus singing and looking cute, (I look really young for my age) but this short summer commitment was where I would encounter the first opera singers I’d talked too face to face. What I gathered from my brief encounter is that the money isn’t that great and there’s a lot of travel involved. She’s constantly learning new pieces and being made-up. There’s an agent involved. Her husband travels with her and she LOVES her work. Singing, ALL THE TIME. Holy shit, that would be amazing. Now I don’t know very much about the business of professional opera sining, but I assume it’s similar to acting. But singing is actually something I love to do. Unfortunately, if I wasn’t good enough to get into the higher choir at my school, the prospects aren’t good for being the best. I won’t stop singing, I could never do that. Singing is like the one beast I can’t tame. So hard, so fun, just amazing to marvel at.
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