What the fuck am I going to do with my life?
Here are the facts as they stand. I love theatre. Theatre is absolutely my passion. It’s something I’m good at and something that makes me get up in the morning. I don’t laugh so hard my stomach hurts when I figure out a math equation, I don’t sob over legalese. Theatre makes my world stop and it makes my world spin and all that cliched nonsense. But I am also passionate about the Spanish language and culture, International Relations, Medicine, Creative Writing, and all manner of other things. I want to become a neonatal doctor and work in impoverished countries helping babies have a fighting chance. I want to work in the UN or the US Embassy in a country like Costa Rica or Chile. I want to join the Peace Corps. I want to spend my days in black clothes in dark coffee shops smearing ink across a page…. (That’s what writers do, right? I’m just guessing.) I want to spend my days in NYC, living my life and auditioning and studying my craft and performing on Broadway and inspiring other little girls born poor and always pushing at their bones to chase their dreams, because it can happen.
I’m just scared that this isn’t the right path.
I wish someone could come back from the future and let me know what I will be happiest doing. I’ve long since given up hoping to be happy and wealthy, and I’d rather shop at the thrift store for the rest of my days than hate my life. I understand that studying Musical Theatre is a crap-shoot. It’s a dreamers dream. It’s stupid and it’s financially irresponsible and it’s so completely exciting that sometimes I get a little tingly behind my eyeballs when I think about spending hours in a dance studio and studying plays and acting on stages in the biggest city in America. It’s kind of dumb, but I have a hard time feeling any shame when strangers ask me what I’ll be studying in college because while they’re pushing pencils and wearing slacks, I’ll be a starving artist in love with the stage and, to me, that is really romantic-sounding.
And now I’m romanticizing being poor and living off of ramen.
And I don’t care. I have all the time in the world to go to school and study Spanish or International Relations or fight through med school. I’m in the prime of my life right now and this is what I want to do with this supple, energetic body. Ew. That got a little weird. Sorry. My point is that I can go to school at any point, but I’m at the best point of my life to be staying up late and dancing 4 hours a day and main-lining coffee and putting myself out there to be beaten and judged and still be able to keep on keepin’ on.
I’m over the rant. Does anyone else feel like they’re on a speeding train headed toward an 8-pronged proverbial fork in the tracks and you have absolutely NO idea which track you’re supposed to steer the train onto? I need more sleep. I’m headed to the glorious OBGYN in the morning to get blunt objects shot into my arm with a gun so I don’t catch a “nine month parasite”. If you catch my drift.
XOXO Ivy