Tag: Writing

  • I Just Got Paid

    Today, I got paid for writing. It was only five dollars, but this is the first time that I received any money for something I wrote. I have no idea if the piece will ever see the light of day. Maybe, maybe not. This also was the first time that someone was like, “I will pay you at least something for your writing,” and not “the exposure will help your career.”

    Living and working in the arts is awful, but I can’t leave it, and I really don’t want to do anything else. So… I’m stuck.

    So much of my career in the arts, and I will group all of it together; theatre, writing, painting, arts management even, has been predicated by someone asking me to work for free. Until I moved to New York, most of the payment I received had come in the form of beer. It took me about two years in New York before I earned my first check from performing.

    I know that I am not the first person to write about this, but the arts and capitalism really don’t mix. Payment is slanted to the very few that are on the top, while the majority fight for… well… five dollars. I am also not going to claim that I know a solution to this problem, other than capitalism doesn’t solve all problems. People will continue to ask others to work for free in exchange for hope.

    The truly tragic thing about earning five dollars today is that I can’t find a beer in Manhattan for that price.

  • Mid Life Contemplation

    This is not a crisis, but I clearly am at mid-life, and I have been finding myself wondering very often if I am truly doing what I want to do with my life. I have been speaking to my wife about it as well, and she feels in the same boat. Our life is not bad, like all people, it could be better. We are not in some sort of melt down, and I do not feel the urge to buy a sports car. Are there still challenges that we want to accomplish?

    I had drinks with a friend the other day, and we both talked about starting new career paths, and the fear we both had of doing that. That fear of starting over from the bottom, and that we are too old to do that. That is not true, and the fear is not real. If it’s important you find a way, right? You make the sacrifices to make it happen, right?

    I do feel a bit handicapped by being in NYC. In one respect, I feel that all the options are before me, but in the other respect, living in the City is a tight rope walk, and if that income suffers, it throws everything off. (Having written that, I now realize that you could say that about any place.) I moved the NYC to take part in the creative fields, and I can say that over the past 11 years, I have done that. Maybe it’s the work/life balance is out of whack… Too much work and not enough life with the wife and kid.