When I was younger, I could never imagine myself working in an office. I just couldn’t imagine busying myself with office politics and menial tasks. This thought never left my consciousness, even as I fell into my second office job. It was gnawing away at me as each day I thought “Is this where I should be?”. The answer was – is – definitely “No.” As I was implanted in superannuation administration companies, insurance companies and (worst of all) Investment Banks, my spirit was dampened little by little each day.

I often wonder whether I’m being unrealistic and overindulgent and think that I should remain grateful for the opportunities that I’ve been given. Grateful, in fact, for even having a job in the first place. I wonder whether everyone else has the same painful, gut feeling that they’re wasting time, expelling energy in the wrong way, and if they simply ignore it for the greater good. If so, it must be easier for others to sideline their “pipe dream”, but for me the urge was too strong. I would come home after work most days and spend serious time thinking “This is really wrong”. Ultimately, there’s only so much of that you can take. I am indeed grateful. I’m grateful that the pain was too huge to merely put up with it.

I should be clear that I wasn’t in a concentration camp. Far from it. I had plenty of opportunity to travel, including the three or four months I spent in Singapore. That was an amazing experience, something I would not have imagined I would be doing this year. At the same time, it was a big disruption to my personal life, and made my theatre commitments a struggle to say the least (I almost have nervous fits thinking about how I flew home from Singapore and right into Dusty rehearsals just two weeks from opening). I’ve also gained a lot of experience, and had to face up to customers when I was very clearly wedged between a rock and a hard place. In the end, it was all too serious for my liking.

My current boss was in Las Vegas for work when I send the email. I was a wreck with anxiety. More so than seems reasonable. In the following discussions (there were three, each with one management level higher), I was equally nervous. “People quit,” I was being told by my friends, but it’s still no fun. I surprised myself in how open and honest I was regarding what I didn’t like and why I wanted to do something else. This helped the discussions and we tried to work out a way to make things work while staying with the company. In the end, I felt it was best to make a clean break and move on. I wanted to be ready for the next opportunity.

So where to next? I’m on the tail end of working out a strategy to stay alive. I thought long and hard about how I was going to do this, and it just sort of fell into place. My major focus will be a project I’ve been working on since December. I’ll be launching my own service for the global musical theatre community. It’s something I’m unbelievably passionate about, and I feel I’m the right person to give it legs. Having built it from scratch makes it my baby, and that feeling of creation is thrilling. It’s launching soon, so I’ll have details for you then, including where I want to take it.

I appreciate that this project is not going to feed me, so I have lined up some part-time work doing what I love – web development. In a complete shift of environments, I’ll be working for a community organisation that is unbelievable moral. What a change from Investment Banks. That was incredibly attractive to me. The timetable suited me well and I felt I was the perfect person for the job. I’m happy to say they thought so too and look forward to cracking on with that in a fortnight’s time. I will also continue to do some freelance work for some existing clients. That’s work I love too.

I finish up in 9 days, after 13 months of employment with the company. I’m busting at the seems to start my new arrangement. More than that, it feels like a new life. I’ll once again own my own time and do things I love, in my new home town. What could be better than that?

The day after I arrived I was right back into theatre to conduct Dusty: The Original Pop Diva, a musical about Dusty Springfield’s life. To say I had to paddle fast is an understatement. I arrived back in the country less than two weeks out from opening night, and didn’t know a note of the score. Neither did the orchestra, who hadn’t rehearsed yet. I spent a week at 3 rehearsals getting as familiar with the large score as quickly as possible, and then spent 4 rehearsals with the orchestra of which three were dress/tech rehearsals. When working on a show I have a recurring nightmare that I’m working on a show but have no knowledge of the script and am just pushed on stage while everyone else knows what’s going on. Well, that nightmare came to life in this show. The orchestra, who were almost all alternating with another musician for the run, worked really hard to get up to speed quickly. By the time the opening night came around, we were just finding our feet enough to get through it and sound decent. I’m about to race off to the final two performances today. I’ve had a blast, but I sure will be glad when the anxiety is over.

Getting back into the daily commute to Sydney is torturous, and I am taking advantage of the opportunity to work from home when I can. The extra sleep does wonders for my temperament. I’m being motivated by the end goal; a big change I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I’ve finally got in my short-term horizon. In the past few weeks Nico and I have set the date for when we will be (finally) moving to Melbourne. Nico’s uni will be finished, so we’ll be packing up and heading down at the end of November. We’ve tentatively lined up a place (pictured below). I’m tremendously excited about the move. I expect this will be the first of a couple of life changes for me as I spend some time to determine where I want to be in another years time (or rather, what I want to be doing). I’ll be setting dates and making plans, and it’s all very energising.

As part of the upcoming move, I’m taking the opportunity to cull what I don’t need to hold onto. This time around, DVDs haven’t made the cut (with the exception of a few TV series which I haven’t got digital copies of yet). That has meant converting a large number of my DVDs for my Plex setup. The DVDs have always been at a disadvantage because guests have always preferred browsing the movies in the Plex library rather than the physical DVDs. Also going in this cull will be clothes, drawers full on random and useless things, and old technology (sometimes accompanied by their original boxes).

I’m also taking my first break from work at the end of this month to head down to Melbourne and catch up with some friends down there. Nico is also coming down, and we’ve got tickets to see three productions in the week we’re down there (Merrily We Roll Along, Anyone Can Whistle, and Sugar). Could I have any more to look forward?

Off to Dusty now for the last dash of two performances. Ah, to have my weekends back.

Some highlights and lowlights of the week just passed:

• An endless stream of late, annoying, stinky and incompetent taxi drivers who manage to turn every minute of every trip into an agonisingly frustrating journey. This was punctuated by the odd conversation with the drivers as they told me they were making about $7 an hour, and one South African driver who was extremely excited
• The arrival of a sore throat, which has now transformed into a man flu of terrific proportions. If there was ever a “chesty sneeze”, I have it. It sounds more like I’m trying to cough up a piece of steak that I’ve had rotting in my throat for at least a decade.
• I was notified early on Monday morning that my colleague wasn’t going to be joining me this week, so a sales executive flew up Monday morning to help relieve the pressure on me. Then, when he got a special email on Monday night, he flew out Tuesday morning leaving me solo again. My boss then flew up on Thursday for a few hours to help out, but otherwise I’ve been doing double duty up here. As my first onsite project with this company, stepping up and taking on this responsibility wasn’t expected, but at least diving into the deep end can be personally rewarding.
• I caught up with Becky and Bec in a great little restaurant that I would have happily recommended until Bec found herself violently ill afterwards. It was the only place in Brisbane I’d found so far that had that cultural “Melbourne” feel.
• On my way out of my apartment in Brisbane I heard some shouting coming from another room. My curiosity was aided by the fact that the elevator skipped past me 5 or 6 times, leaving me to hearing the barrage of white-hot rage directed at “Sarah” by some man who was entirely unhappy with her. I listened for any hint of violence, but it seemed to be purely vocal. This man was seriously unstable to be exhibiting rage with such intensity for at least 10 minutes steady. I was glad to be checking out of that floor.

Overall, a decent week, but glad to be on my way home.

Although I didn’t get the post this before my flight, I’m posting it now because I’m too lazy to reshape it.
 

The opening weekend of Spelling Bee went wonderfully, but not without incident.

Prone, as I am, to a disgruntled stomach, it seems I was to disagree with dinner between the Saturday matinee and evening performances. As I was getting ready for the 8pm performance I was feeling a little unstable in the digestion department. Just minutes before we were about to start the show, after deciding it was not just a bout of nerves, I had to race off to the bathroom and almost instantly lose my dinner. Thankfully my microphone was not live at that stage.

One of the great (and also inconvenient) things about this show is that I never leave the stage once I’m on until intermission, and then again until the end of the show. There were some dodgy moments during the performance when I broke out in sweats and felt nauseous, but I got through Act 1 without any further incident. Some of the intermission was spent back out in the toilets, and generally things picked up a bit during the second act and I didn’t have to make any emergency dashes off stage.

After the show, against my better judgement, almost everyone headed back to my place for a party, which helped to take my mind off things. Heading to bed at about 2:30am with Kenney, Izzy and Jack in their quarters (on my floor), I woke at around 11am with all but Izzy having dashed off early in the morning. To my surprise, the place was remarkably clean too, thanks to Nico and Izzy’s whip around.

Usually once a show opens having just finished a mammoth (and tiring) production week, things calm down a bit and you can start getting the rehearsal withdrawals. Unfortunately, this week is a bit hectic for me. At the moment, Monday night I’ll be at No Way To Treat A Lady, Tuesday I have my very last committee meeting for the theatre group, and Wednesday I hope to catch a production of The Last Five Years that I did some rehearsal piano work for during the last month or two. Thursday I’m flying off to Brisbane for work, and will return on Friday afternoon with time to get back to Wollongong for Spelling Bee. It’s kind of exhausting just reciting the itinerary.

In other news, Izzy and I applied for a wonderful apartment-of-our-dreams-type-place and we are extremely eagerly awaiting news of whether we have been successful. After being so depressed and anxious about the apartment-hunting process, and getting bad vibes every time I walked into an apartment, this one was like the clouds parted and a great ray of light directed us to it. It’s the first place I had seen that I didn’t think was a step down from my current apartment. Our fingers are crossed, and if this doesn’t come through I don’t think I’ll have the energy or time to continue the hunt until after my medium-term Brisbane engagement concludes.

At the moment life feels like an out-of-control treadmill just racing around on a loop. I’m running on top of it, jumping from one step to the next because it seems to be the way to keep upright. Eventually I’ll get too tired and I’ll need to find a way to slow it down, but for now this seems to be working.

I’m now in a position where, if I had that time machine, or even a kitted up DeLorean, I could go back and say that everything is going to be okay. Not just okay, but really great. I didn’t know that I’d have some really cool opportunities come up, nor that I’d be this stupidly busy.

Amongst Spelling Bee opening Friday week, I’m trying to look for an apartment in Sydney, doing my usual long, train filled days, I’m also being shipped around a bit for work. Next week I’ll be in Brisbane for a couple of days, the more consistently once the show opens. In a month’s time I’ll be in London and there is talk of Singapore after that. Thankfully my passport application is now being processed!

I’m very excited to be this busy (and occassionally outrageously stressed), and I’m looking forward to fewer committments after I leave the theatre committee and finish this show so I can fully enjoy the travel opportunities I’m being given.

Now, if the me that is 9 months ahead wants to let me know if I’ll have any hair left by then, I’d appreciate it.

from my Apple iPhone

I’m slowly coming to the realisation that if I ever hope to have a social life again (at least, over the next 6-12 months), I’ll need to move closer to work. They’ve been great in letting me work from home two days this week, but there are certainly no promises I can keep doing that. It would be nice to be 20-30 minutes away from work, rather than 2 hours.

And so the hunt begins. In my non-existent downtime, I need to find an appropriate room mate and find somewhere to live. I hope I have the former tentatively penciled in very lightly with a 4H pencil: darling Izzy. The latter will be difficult, but at least there is no urgent rush.

It’s all qualified in my head; renting in Sydney could be a nice stepping stone, and certainly a change of scenery that I’m looking for.

I wonder if my Mum will travel to Sydney to pick up my washing?

Good

• A quiet day in the office. Heads down, bums up.
• Train trips went quickly. Return trip was aided by an episode of Mad Men and an American Theatre Wing podcast.
• Helped out a young guy who left his phone on the train when he got off a few stops before me.
• Coming home to find Nico has washed and ironed my work shirts from the last two days.

Bad

• Finding my kitchen smelling like effluence instead of affluence. Attributed to a VERY stinky bin and piles of dishes to be washed.
• My new bed time of 9:30 not allowing for the work I had to do. Note the time of this post.
• My neighbour harassing me again over minor issues (apparently I’m to be blamed for placing my rubbish in the wrong bin – clearly I rarely take my rubbish out at all).

I spent the weekend preparing the house for what I knew would be less time at home to do chores. I even washed the exterior windows and cleaned the window frames and walls outside. What I didn’t expect was how much time this job was going to eat up. Being out of the house for 14 hours of the day is exhausting, not to mention my 5:30 wake up each day. Other than that, I love the job so far and the people are great. I just hope I find a way to restore the work:home balance somewhat. At the moment, it’s 90%:5%, and it’s a struggle.

The biggest change was when I left my job mid-year. I often had heard that you feel like an adult the first time you get a full-time job. For me, that empowerment came the first time I quit my full-time job. Standing up for myself was a great feeling and I won’t deny it, having that power wasn’t bad too. I fell into that job by accident, and was continually moved into more challenging work. I got along with the people really well, and had a few bosses who liked me and always offered me more interesting things to do. One boss was a rough and ready jock-ish man who played football and took great pleasure in teasing his team. He sat next to me and our days became about whatever insults we could hurl at each other. At the end of my performance review he told me, “I’ve worded your assessment in a way that would make it extremely difficult to give you anything but the highest possible pay increase.” It just turned out the highest possible pay increase was very small at that level. I think that boss genuinely was concerned about my career as when I was moved to another section of the company, he said “Make sure they look after you.” His boss, who was very honest with me and always up for a chat came to see me on my last day and wished me well. They have since asked me to go back at better money, but I’ve moved on and don’t think I’d be doing myself any favours if I went back to work there. It would be the easy option, and I’ve vowed against that.

This year I also visited Melbourne three times, once during the January heat waves, once at the end of winter for a 3 week house-sit and just recently with Nico. Although the weather was nothing special, I decided Melbourne is where I want to live. One of the draw cards of my pending employment was that they were open to the idea of sending me to Melbourne. I’ve since discussed this, and I’ve reiterated that moving to Melbourne is what I want to do and they’re hoping to accommodate that (and help out with the moving costs) in 6-12 months time. Co-incidently two of my good friends, Brett and Tim, are heading down to live in Melbourne at the end of January, and they too hope for re-energisation that life changes bring.

This year has also seen me cut back on the amount of theatre I do. Where usually I’d be involved in 5+ shows, this year I was only on stage for one (A Slice of Saturday Night), and played in the orchestra for two (All Shook Up and West Side Story). After having to be convinced to be a part of it, Slice turned out to be possibly the most fun show I’ve ever done. With a cast of 8, all extremely talented, I was working with some old friends and some new ones. The show itself – set in a 1960s London nightclub – is not exactly inspiring, but it was full of fun songs, dances, plenty of comedy and a healthy dose of improvisation as we mingled with the audience in intermission. It was a joy to just be playing a teenager (with a great accent, no less) without being a nerd (like Seymour and Leo Bloom). The audiences, particularly those who were teenagers in the 1960s, really got into the show. After our intermission improvisations they were so warmed up sometimes they turned into quite an uncontrollable bunch. During several performances, mine and Juliette’s big kissing scene was accompanied by audience member’s yelling out things like “Get in there!” and “Just kiss her!” It was a wild show that I adored, and I can easily understand why a few people in the cast had returned to it after having done it a few times before. I’d leap at the chance to do the show again.

2009 also saw me struck down with glandular fever which really knocked me around for a long while. Getting unbearably sleepy at 3pm each day was exhausting, and I was even rehearsing for Slice whilst I had it. Crazily, I was at work through the worst of it, and just as I was starting to get my energy back my boss’ colleague sent me home with remote access and told me “Any work you get done the next two weeks is a bonus.” For those two weeks I worked for two hours, napped for one, worked for two hours, napped for one etc. Even now I still have the odd day where I get incredibly tired and can do nothing but crash on my bed, but it’s becoming less frequent.

I also saw some great concerts this year, most notably Liza Minnelli at the Sydney Opera House. The concert was raw, thrilling and undeniable proof of why that woman deserves to be the icon she is. Watching her perform I didn’t see “showbiz”, I just saw an honest, gut passion for performing. You can see in her eyes that she knows what she’s best at, and she intends to do it until she drops off the planet. My friends were equally blown away by her performance and I would gladly go again if she sticks to her promise and returns to Australia (although I think Brett was more impressed by the 90 year old lady in her blue sequinned flapper dress and her 70 year old daughter who had so much fake tan she may have been mistaken for a basted duck). Other great performances this year were the Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, and Avenue Q which I saw twice during it’s Sydney stay. A large bunch of friends and I also spent a weekend in Sydney to see Guys and Dolls and Chicago. Very special mention to an amateur production of Musical of Musicals: The Musical I saw in Melbourne which was so cleverly performed and directed that I had serious concerns about undue pressure on my bladder.

Although I tend not to write about such things, I will mention I am ending the year in a very joyful relationship, one which I am sure will bring a lot more happiness.

2009 was not a good year for me in terms of blogging. After a bad WordPress upgrade left my blog a little crippled, I decided to start a new, but it took almost a year to get it off the ground, but it’s here now!

2010 is starting strong with my new job and I’ll be on stage again in March in a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I expect these next few months to be exhausting but hopefully rewarding. I’m focussing on my biggest goal for 2010 which is a practical one: I want to be settled in Melbourne before the year is out. Everything beyond that is a bonus.