Still Breathing.

If I’ve been a little quiet the last couple of weeks it’s because a) the atrocity of the election, and b) I was laid off two weeks ago. The first part of that sentence makes me way more sad than the second part. 

My layoff was not really a surprise. There was a hiring freeze, so there was no recruiting to be done, and running the office and HR for a staff of 15 was not a full time job. Honestly, I was bored and just sticking around so I wouldn’t look like I was jumping around again on future resumes. The office felt cold for the last few months. But I do miss most of my colleagues. They were (are) a good group. 

Since I have savings, I decided to take a week off before I dove into job hunting 100% and after the election on Tuesday night, I could not have been happier to not have to show my face to the world or be forced to talk to people in an office. The Democrats fucked up and nominated a bad candidate (not saying she was unqualified, just not a good candidate because she was too strongly disliked). I never thought Clinton had it in the bag, despite what polls told us, and my deepest fears were confirmed that the American people are, collectively, pretty stupid. Clinton included. She didn’t even GO to Wisconsin. Come on. 

How did I cope on Wednesday? I ordered a Trump cat toy off Amazon so she could scratch his face off and went to yoga. 

The toy didn’t go as planned. She likes to sleep with it. I pretend she’s smothering it.

I’ve spent the last two weeks going to yoga daily, cooking, sending out resumes, chatting with recruiters, and hanging out with my cat (her birthday is tomorrow, so I’ll tell her you all say happy birthday). I’m also shocked at how much fun unemployment is with a cat. Speaking of cats, I’m volunteering with a few adoption organizations to clean and feed cats who are waiting to be adopted at the UWS Petcos. This is also fun. And kind of sad. I might adopt 5 more cats. Who knows. No promises.  

And while contemplating my next steps, given my savings and severance, I’m considering doing a 200-hour yoga teacher training course in January with one of my favorite teachers. I don’t know if I necessarily want to teach yoga, but it’s been a constant thing in my life for so many years now and I want to deepen my understanding of the practice. So, I might sign up for that and do temp work until then to keep myself afloat. 

Lastly, I’ve been sucking at this blogging thing lately. I’m still backlogged on my Poland posts and I have so many things that I could just ramble about. So, I’m going to try write once a day if it kills me. Starting today, starting now. Here’s to post #1!

(Really, lastly, don’t forget to donate to Planned Parenthood.)

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I found out I was getting laid off about six weeks ago. It wasn’t something that was totally unexpected, but my bosses admitted that they’d made a mistake and needed to hire somebody with more experience who they didn’t need to teach advanced digital marketing to. They were eliminating my position entirely. Okay, fine. I got it and I was kind of relieved. I’d been stressed out and working my ass off to try to get to the level they needed.

Then I freaked out. The first thought was: I needed to find another job, and quickly. The second thought to pop into my head: do I really want to stay working in theatre? I wasn’t positive, but part of me was saying no. I was tired of working for what felt like zero dollars and feeling like the whole world was crashing down around my colleagues and I whenever the smallest mistake was made. To be blunt: there was never an instance where what we were doing was saving lives. Ever. Period. Yet I always found myself being stressed as fuck about my work load. (As per usual in theatre, we had about 14 times as much work as we could handle.) 

We were selling tickets to Broadway shows. That’s IT. I thought about why I worked in theatre and it was because I liked the fun work environment and the free tickets. But the more I thought about it I admitted that the work environment wasn’t that fun and I could afford to buy TDF tickets to shows (and I still have a valid student ID too!) if I had a job that paid me what I was worth. And while it’s fun to get comps to shows, it’s more fun to love your job and be good at it.

But just for the hell of it, I still applied for a few theatre jobs here and there. Through a reference I got an interview right away at a very small general management company who needed a new bookkeeper. The woman I interviewed with was disheveled and said she thought her current bookkeeper was an idiot because she asked questions. I knew right there that this wasn’t the boss for me. She also looked at my address on my resume and asked, “Whoa. Are you rich?” Excuse me?. She said she paid her current bookkeeper $30k but could maybe offer me $35k but no benefits. HAHA. Nope. Sorry. Like I said, I was done undervaluing myself and this woman was batshit insane.

The next gem of a person that I ran into at an interview was a woman that couldn’t even be bothered to meet me in person. She was a seasoned talent agent who was striking out on her own and she needed an assistant. We were on a phone call and towards the end when I asked about benefits, she said, “Oh no, I don’t. There are a lot of people out there who would really want this job and they’re on Obamacare. I have to run my business as I feel comfortable.” This is also known as an internship, or slave labor. 

This is common practice on Broadway. There are so many people wanting to work for these companies that they don’t need to offer benefits or a livable salary. During my hunt, I was talking to a good friend who’s a pretty successful company manager, and occasional general manager, and he said, “You know I used to think that people who left working in theatre couldn’t hack it but then I just realized they’d just smartened up to it.” And another friend who occasionally raises money for shows told me, “Broadway will always be there. You can always go back.”

In the end I found a company that really excites me and a role within that company that utilizes my skill set. It’s not theatre, but it’s all about promoting culture in the city. The workspace and people are awesome. And I’m making a way better salary than I would’ve been elsewhere. The photo above is the view right behind where I sit. Not too shabby.

So I’d love to hear about your experiences working in theatre. Let me know!?