Daily Loaf

As a freelance artist, continuing every day is hard.  Really frickin’ hard sometimes.  I have to wake up ready to be my own personal secretary, accountant, publicist, dreamer and doer.  The plus side is that I am my own proverbial boss.  I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good and fair boss.  I’m now also my own subordinate.  I always thought of myself as a good and hard worker, too.  So this should be cake, right?

Here’s how I make it as a freelance artist.

Most of the time I am surprised at how much I can actually get done all by my lonesome — with the help of my Macbook and the interwebs, of course.  But my real work is in action.  I do a lot of networking, publicizing, accounting and planning in order to perform, direct, design and teach.  None of the latter can solely be done in the quiet of your home.  Designing sound is done mostly in the dark hours of insomnia — at least that’s when I design best.  When I used to smoke I would be at the computer with a loaded ashtray until the sun came up trying to get that perfect sounds-like-you’re-in-a-tunnel-and-the-rest-of-the-world-is-going-by-you-backwards effect.  But you still have to attend rehearsals and meet with directors and deliver the product and set levels.

My art is a contact sport.

Passion. I’ve got that in boatloads.  I’m a dreamer and a builder of those dreams.  I make things happen.  But at what cost?  Sometimes it is not always the best idea to have done it in the first place.  So I now take a nugget from the Patel Conservatory’s core values — passion with patience.  Do not deny the passion, but have the patience to weigh through the details before you jump head-first into it.  And when you do jump into it, have the patience to see it through before you get distracted with the next big thing.

Strength. I think that I regularly show the world that I have that in boatloads.  About six years ago I went through some rocky times and I weathered them pretty well, but it felt like my life had become an action adventure.  I remember a friend asking that same old/same old question, “So, how are you?”  and my response being a candid one that went something like, “I’m getting pretty tired of impressing people with how strong I am.” I can keep it together in the roughest of times, but the minutiae of everyday is my Achilles heel.  It’s why I go on and off the smoking wagon, why my weight fluctuates the way it does, why I’d rather freelance and worry about where the rent is coming from than enjoy the security and cushion of a full-time/benefits-included job.

When I went freelance last time, I had just left American Stage’s administrative staff.  I remember lighting candles with the intention of conjuring up “Strength in Discipline.” I knew I needed discipline to see me through the necessary but mundane parts of lining up and maintaining work.  As long as I lit the candles as a reminder to do so, it was never a challenge for me.  But the minute I got too busy with the big stuff it all became a slippery slope.  I did OK for myself until my mother came to live with me in my 1-bedroom apartment for a year and a half while she was waiting for her disability benefits to be approved.  That’s enough to break anyone.  And the position of admin assistant for the soon-to-be-opened Patel Conservatory was glowing right in front of me with a big purple bow and wrapped in health insurance and retirement benefits that rival any non-profit I have ever worked for.

So I gave up my Actors Equity and took  the bite.  I bit down hard and loved it for three and a half years.  Until I realized that it had been two years since I had been on the stage and my directing was being limited by my intense schedule at work and I couldn’t tell you the last time I designed and I had to give up teaching because the working got in the way.

Courage. So I leapt into the unknown.  Into the irregular paychecks and loss of benefits, over a year ago now.  You know, when the economy was in a tailspin and we didn’t know who was going to be our next president and most people were LOOKING for a job.  Yeah, that’s when I decided to leave my cushion and jump out of the nest again.  But this time I had something I didn’t have the first time around.  Well, I actually had courage the first time I went freelance, but it was ungrounded, young person’s courage.  This time I had courage that I had grown through wisdom and experience.  When I talk to someone about directing a show, I KNOW that I can do it.  I KNOW that I can fully produce a grand event from the ground up.  I KNOW that I can juggle teaching and performing and directing and designing.  I know because I have.  And each time I do any project I am still a student.  Because I also KNOW that there is so much more to know.  It is a humble but confident courage that comes from wisdom.

So how do I do it?  Lots of e-mails.  Lots of Google calendar coordination, lots of reading, lots of networking at arts events (oh, poor me.  I have to go see more art).  And a huge dose of harumph! to jumpstart each day.  I try to write some mooring pages (shamelessly stolen from “The Artist’s Way”) to put things in order and to ready me for what I gots ta do for the day.  But most days I just wake and check e-mail and wing it for the first few hours.

I also don’t have a burning desire for financial security.  It’s not something I ever had growing up.  We had enough but we never had any to spare or for savings.  I have to budget my big paychecks to stetch through my weaker ones.  And I have to weigh out the work that I accept.  I use a series of filters that screen for soul-fulfilling, bill-paying, community-building, art-making and fun-having properties.  It’s a delicate science.  You might even say it’s an art form.  I have more freelance stories and advice that I hope will start to surface in this space for anyone about to take the plunge or knee-deep in it now.

Click on my image below to see what I’m up to this month.

Lucy in Dracula

Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Health & Wellness | Leave a comment