The Daily Grind

I’ve been going through this phase, where I desperately want to quit my job and be a cartoon.

Don’t worry, I’m not referring to a long-term acid trip where I start to only see in two dimension. I’m referring to being the voice of an animated character for a living, but it’s really a little column A, a little column B.

The cartoon thing may or may not be a phase, the quitting the job thing has been pretty concrete since the day I started and reinforced by  the multiple panic attacks I’ve had in the communal restroom since.

I’m over-worked, under-paid, and a homeless person punched me in the arm on the walk to work today.

The only thing currently keeping me from walking out are the following insecurities:

1. I have seen the way unemployed people live their life and it is admirable and terrifying. I’m pretty confident top-ramen isn’t gluten free, so I have to have another job lined up. Keeping a job I hate VS a diet of russet potatoes is pretty much what it boils down to. (See what I did there?!)
2. I go back and forth between wanting a lot of money and security, and wanting to quit my job and work at the coffee shop across the street from my house so I can have the emotional capacity to write, play, create etc.

I just want to spent my days cooped up with a bunch of hilarious people, recording the weirdest possible sounds my voice can make.

So  how do I do both? How do I pursue my dream of comedy, and still be able to pay my rent? Can I make a decent salary with PTO, 401K and dental while also knowing that i’m advancing in the world of improv, comedy writing and cartoonery, or do I have to risk everything and join the masses of blonde waitresses in Los Angeles who are waiting for their big break?

I don’t want to be just a marketing person at a company. Yesterday at improv class I got to be a down-on-her-luck  lunch lady named Ezmarelda, and then 10 minutes later I got to be a suit-hating Dead Head by the name of Chonky Fellow.

I’m legitimately too weird for this corporate, desk job shit.

I just want to find my place in the universe. Some people were born to be a writer, or a dancer, or an open-heart surgeon, but I finally found out at 26 that everything I enjoy (writing, people, psychology, faking accents, having the spotlight on ME) boils down to some sort of comedy career.

I don’t know quite how I’m going to swing it yet, or when it’s going to happen for me, or even what the hell I’m doing right now, but I find comfort in the fact that I finally know what I should be doing with my life, even if I don’t know the how quite yet.

I’ll leave you, dear readers, with a quote that I think may be comforting no matter what your aspirations are:

“I hope you will not give up. As in all of the arts, fortune follows the persistent much more than the merely talented.” – The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy

Also, I don’t feel great knowing that the only funny thing in a blog dedicated to how I want to be a comedian was the potato joke. I’m sorry about that guys.

XOXO,

The Weekday Hangover