I'm starting to get restless.
I'm almost three years deep into a 'normal' job. And while I'm good at it and enjoy the actual work... I'm tired. It's that bone-deep exhaustion that I've learned should not be ignored. I only work one day this week because it's tech week for the show I'm in (we open Friday!), and I'm so excited to just... not wake up at 6am. I would turn in my notice this week if I could -- despite the fact that they just announced all employees would be making one extra dollar per hour during the summer.
Maybe it's because I'm in a show -- a rare occasion here in the desert. I know I'm not star material and maybe I never will be, but I am now more happy being a one-line character than I would have been five years ago. I keep thinking of Jesus' words, "Follow Me."
I want to. But where is He, that I might follow? And what must I leave behind -- my job that's paying our bills or the dream I've been clinging to for nearly three decades? Of course my bias/special interests say to leave my job and follow the dream, but is it too soon? I want to follow God's timing, but I don't know what that is. How can I follow a guide that I can't see or hear? He says things like 'love your enemies,' and 'bear witness to the kingdom of God' and 'repent,' but that doesn't tell me whether or not I should be leaving my job or if I should be pursuing this dream of mine.
I want to be self-employed somehow. I miss being able to set my own hours. Even at college, I had control over when I did things as long as I attended classes. Classes were only an hour and fifteen mintues. They were just a part of my day, not the whole entire day like a day job is.
My husband is self-employed now (though it's commission, and he's not 'big' enough yet to maintain a reliably sustaining paycheque), and I'm really kind of jealous. Kyrie is so close to done, so hopefully publishing (read: maybe a small income) is in the not-too-distant future, plus I have two dance film ideas that can hopefully happen by the end of this year, but I can't assume both of those will sustain us. There's no money in dance films unless those films bring in choreographer contracts.
The other day, I remembered for the first time in a long time how my dad, a self-employed contractor, has never lacked for work. Whenever he started getting to the end of his bookings, the phone would start ringing again and he'd suddenly be back to booking six to eight months in advance again. He did no advertising, but he never ran out of work. God always brought more contracts. And I wonder if that's what I -- what we -- need to do. I never realised till now how frightening it must have been at times to know how completely our family's lives were in God's hands, how the only reason my dad ever had work was because God brought it to him. It's completely possible -- I lived it. Everything I ever had as a child -- food, lodging, clothing, lessons -- were as a direct result of God's provision. But my dad is also a much more righteous person than I am. God has blessed him, a righteous man. But I -- I am not the good Christian I used to be. My mid-to-late twenties were a very dark time and I made some very poor choices in those years when I thought God had abandoned me and nothing mattered anymore.
I am less than a decade away from the age my dad was when he started his business. It's not too late. Maybe it's the perfect time. I am in a more calm place now than I was in 2019 when my mindset was 'theatre professional or bust'... and I almost quite literally busted. I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps for every audition, every gig, every piece of choreography, every show, and I almost literally died. The only thing that stopped the madness was the pandemic and even then it was years before I properly acknowledged that I was burnt out and that I needed to breathe in for a while without pressuring myself to create -- at least not at the level I had been.
Or maybe it's too soon. Knowing I have a neurological condition that sets me up to do things before thinking them through is making me paranoid that I'm missing something vitally important and I'd be rushing into things if I quit my day job now. There's also the fact that every time I even think about coming close to broaching this topic with my husband (because isn't a good wife supposed to discuss these kinds of things with her significant other?), he suddenly relapses back into the angry person who rages at me for hours over literally nothing and of course I have to put my life on pause and sideline all my exhaustion and all my needs until I can talk him into being a reasonable human being again.
Again... how on earth am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to follow a leader I can't see? How can I follow the timing of a clock that doesn't exist?
