Jobs

           As an artist, I have resigned to the fact that odd jobs go along with this life. Unfortunately, that is the reality. I have always believed that theatre will prepare you for any job. I do not believe that anymore. I have a wide variety of non-theatrical jobs on my resume; Waitress (of course), Retail, Accounting, Care provider, Reception, Manicurist, Child care, Call Center, Residential Care, Starbucks, etc. This list is endless. I can now add Warehouse worker to that list and tell you that my positive attitude and my theatrical training made no difference. I have never hated a job more in my life. Not to mention I was surrounded by hundreds of zombie-like people who hated it just as much as I did. I cannot survive or thrive in an atmosphere of dread and with absolutely no human interaction. I survived my shifts with no music, no cell phones and only my thoughts. Of course, having just finished one of the most fulfilling artistic achievements of my life, in my head, I was reliving it. Not only that but the past performances and characters that I have come to know through the arts. My mind went to a monologue from The Glass Menagerie. In the play Tom is a poet who works in a shoe factory.

"Listen! You think I'm crazy about the warehouse?  You think I'm in love with Continental Shoemakers? You think that I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that - celotex interior! with-fluorescent-tubes! Look! I'd rather somebody packed up a crowbar and battered out my brains-than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn 'Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine!' I say to myself, 'How lucky dead people are!' But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self-self's all I ever think of! Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I'd be where he is-GONE! [He points to his father's picture.] As far as the system of transportation reaches!"

Celotex interior. Fluorescent tubes. That's what I kept thinking. So instead of taking a crowbar and bashing out my brains, I have decided to quit. An artist cannot survive in this atmosphere. I will get out before Tom did.