from momentary bliss, found via kind over matter

Jen Curran picked up a postcard of mine at a rehearsal studio last month, & emailed me to introduce herself. She was in the midst of her last week or two at her desk job, & came on over to see if I was another creative soul out to inspire others to follow their bliss. Thankfully, she found that I was & emailed me about her background (an NYU/Tisch theater grad like me!), her 10-month-old blog (follow my bliss), her new online bakery Fanny & Jane & her current quest to find her grown-up passion while free of the cubicle chains (aka “plan-less”). She asked if she could write a guest post for me, & as soon as I clicked over to her blog I got entranced. I spent hours there, & responded with an intelligent, “Duh!” You can thank me later.

I quit my boring desk job exactly three weeks ago today.

While swimming with my boyfriend one lazy Saturday afternoon two summers ago, I made a promise to myself that I would quit that stupid desk job by the time I turned 29. Having been only 27 years old at the time, turning 29 seemed like a date so far off in the future, I figured I would surely determine the precise ways and means to go about quitting my job by the time my 29th birthday rolled around.

I will turn 29 tomorrow.

And I could not be more thrilled, pleased and contented by having made this giant leap. But I did not, in fact, determine the precise ways and means to go about it before I did it. I just did it because it was time.

So what the heck am I going to do now? Now that I no longer have a salaried income? Now that my employer no longer pays for (a portion of) my health insurance? Now that I wake up every day without a single responsibility besides the ones I choose to take on?

I’m going to follow my bliss. That’s what.

And would you believe, this is not the first time in my life that I’ve followed my bliss? The first time, however, didn’t happen quite so cheerfully.

When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to be an actor when I grew up. I dreamed of starring roles in movies, long runs on Broadway stages, and a life in the spotlight. It wasn’t out of a desire to be famous or recognized – not at all. It was out of a desire to perform – something I’d always done well and easily, something I’d always enjoyed and received praise for, and something within which I’d always found a great sense of community.

But my family had other opinions about my becoming a performer.

As the daughter of a single, teenage mom, and the first grandchild of my big Catholic family, I wasn’t raised by two parents, but by six. My grandparents, aunts and uncles were all deeply involved in the decisions my young mother made for my life, and as I grew up, they all had opinions about who I should be and what I should become. And none of their opinions matched up with my own. I can vividly remember heated arguments with my grandfather and uncle about how badly I wanted to be an actor, and how disappointed they were with my choice.

I was a stubborn, outspoken kid, though. And the one way to get me to do something was to tell me not to. So after spending all of middle school and high school digging my hands into every possible theatrical experience available to me, I moved to New York City at age 17 to study acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. It was an incredibly happy time in my life. Much to my family’s distaste, I was following my bliss to become a professional actor.

My happiness did not stick around for long, though. Almost immediately after college began, I fell into a painful depression. I cried constantly, I always felt overwhelmed, and I regularly overate to avoid my feelings. I still loved performing, but it wasn’t enough to make me happy. Acting school was hard and demanded a lot of my time and energy. And I couldn’t keep up with all the rules and schedules. I felt like a failure, and worst of all, I felt like my family back home had expected this to happen.

I ended up gaining 100 pounds in three years, flunking out of college with just a year to go, and falling into a pit of overwhelming debt. Three years after I moved to New York, I was miserable and clinically depressed. And my acting career was the last thing on my mind.

The short version of the rest of the story is that I ended up hitting rock bottom when I was 21 years old. I punched an emotionally abusive boyfriend in the mouth, I got kicked of the apartment I was living in, and I ended up an obese, homeless, jobless college dropout with $12 to my name. It was horrible, dark and lonely.

But I started seeing a therapist soon after all that happened, something I’d obviously needed all along. And I spent the next few years climbing out of the nightmare I’d created for myself. It wasn’t easy, but I worked my way through it. I eventually got a job, found a room to rent in someone’s apartment, and even started losing weight, ultimately losing 115 pounds total.

So by the time I found myself, at age 27, splashing around in a pool on a hot summer day, making promises to myself about quitting my desk job, I’d long since cleaned up that whole college mess for good. I’d gone back to school several years earlier and completed my degree, graduating with a BFA in Acting. I’d held all manner of part-time, and eventually full-time jobs to support myself. I’d adopted a cat, started performing sketch and improv comedy every week, and even fallen madly in love with one of my best friends, an amazing guy who treated me more kindly and with more respect than any man I’d ever met. I was in a great place in my life, complete with a salaried day job, an active and fulfilling evening and weekend schedule, a healthy exercise routine and a busy social life.

But it still wasn’t enough.

And I felt greedy admitting that to myself.

So many people in the world were never given the kind of wonderful life with which I’d been blessed and I knew I sounded snotty to complain about my situation. But I also knew that even though my life was the perfect life for someone else, it wasn’t perfect for me. Something was off. My career was not making me happy.

This can’t be happening, I thought. I can’t be in a situation of having to go against all odds to follow my passion – again. Can I?

I was. And even though it hadn’t exactly worked out perfectly the first time, I was determined to do it again, no matter what.

I really hated the desk job I’d ended up in by the time I was 27. It wasn’t a bad job at all – in fact, in many ways it was a fantastic job. Nice people, easy atmosphere, good perks. But I hated how I felt every day on my way to work. I felt bored, uninspired, like I was treading water and wasting my time. And worst of all, I felt like my life was passing me by and that all the things I was excited about when I moved to New York at age 17 had become dormant daydreams, not active pursuits. I also just didn’t feel like I belonged in that office. And the idea of working there for years made me sick to my stomach. Frankly, I’d felt that way about every office job I’d ever had.

Besides that, I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. At least not professionally. And that was hard to stomach. I have always loved performing, and I still do. I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. And maybe someday I will get paid money to do it. But I can’t count on that and the truth is, I love it too much to turn it into something that stresses me out and determines whether or not I can pay my bills. I would much rather keep acting as an awesome (and time-consuming) hobby, by performing twice a week every week with my sketch group, Harvard Sailing Team, and my improv group, the Baldwins, and enjoy myself doing so, than I would like to pound the pavement trying to land auditions and book gigs so I don’t go broke.

Being an actor was once my bliss. And in many ways it still is. But now it’s time to find out what else I love and to make a fulfilling, and yes, financially stable career out of it. It’s time to follow my bliss again.

So I knew it was time to quit that stupid desk job. But there was just one problem with this plan. If I wasn’t going to pursue an acting career, I had no idea what else I loved and wanted to pursue. And I had no idea how to figure it out.

At the suggestion of my (six years older and sometimes wiser) boyfriend, I started a blog called follow my bliss, which is about my journey to quit my desk job and do something that makes me happy. I began writing the blog a few months after I’d made my decision in the pool that summer. My goal in writing the blog was to discover what I wanted to do instead of acting, and instead of sitting in a dumb office all day long. I have many interests -  yoga, running, baking, writing, weight loss, the environment, animals, the elderly – but I had no idea which one of them I should turn into a career. All I knew was that I wanted to be doing something that fulfilled me.

One night, I was complaining to myself about having to go to work the next day. So I asked myself, What would you do tomorrow if you didn’t have to go to work? I figured I’d probably go for a run, maybe clean the apartment, and maybe I’d bake something. I’d really been enjoying baking lately.

So that sparked an idea – what if I tried to sell brownies at the comedy theater where I performed. It would just be a little side project to make some extra cash and see how I liked it. I made a cryptic mention of the idea on my blog, and my good friend Faryn, who is always curious, sometimes to a fault, read the entry and immediately asked me to elaborate. The next day, I surprised myself when I not only told Faryn my brownie-baking plan, but asked her to be my partner in the project. “Let’s sell brownies!” we decided.

What was just a simple idea soon grew into a full-fledged small business plan. We are two ambitious girls who love to find success in our endeavors, so it was only natural that we’d end up deciding to open an entire bakery that sold much more than brownies. We spent several months, still while working day jobs and performing in comedy shows at night, fitting in meetings and baking sessions for our new business whenever we could. We came up with a name, had a friend design a logo, launched a website, and almost overnight, Fanny & Jane was born.

We were thrilled.

We were also exhausted.

And we also wondered – is this what we want to do for the rest of our lives? I wondered, sure, it’s fun, but is this my bliss? I didn’t know.

The truth is, I still don’t know. But I’m determined to find out.

When I finally quit my desk job just a few weeks ago, I did it with the intention of continuing to focus on finding my bliss, whatever that may be. Luckily, I have this wonderful little bakery to spend time on for now. I plan to earn some extra money and keep myself busy this holiday season by focusing on growing that business. But I don’t really know if baking is my bliss or not. It certainly makes me happy, and it’s certainly better than sitting in an office all day long. And maybe doing it full time will help me to discover how much I love it or don’t love it. Either way, I will learn that much more about whichever career is perfect for me.

The best part? I’m okay with not knowing quite yet. Because what’s important to me right now is the journey, not the destination.

The practical side of quitting my job is something I get asked about a lot, understandably. The truth is, I didn’t do anything special or cutting edge in order to make this happen. I saved up a few thousand dollars over the last year, cutting corners where ever I could. I used my time at the desk job as best I could – working on my own projects whenever I had free time during office hours. And I was open and honest with anyone in my life (desk job boss aside, of course) who asked me about my plans. I was completely blunt about the fact that I didn’t really know what to expect by leaving my job, that I wasn’t sure what would happen, and that it’s not always easy to choose this path – it’s often scary, challenging and confusing.

But now that I’m here, on what I like to call “the other side,” I can honestly say that I’ve never been this happy in my adult life. This is the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. I didn’t like my situation. So I made a promise to myself that I would change it and I gave myself a nice chunk of time to make that promise a reality. And by the time my 29th birthday was on the horizon, I knew I didn’t have a choice but to take all the little seeds I’d been planting and let them grow. Sure, I could have saved more money if I’d stayed longer at the desk job. Sure, I might have made a more concrete decision about which career interest to pursue if I’d just put in a few more months. But I could also have spent another ten years doing that and never have gotten anywhere new. I knew I needed to stay true to my promise of quitting before I was 29 and take the leap. I knew I needed to start living my dream. Even if the dream doesn’t quite have a name yet.

I have been very blessed to have the opportunity to follow my bliss twice in my life – once when I was just a teenager and dead set on becoming an actor. And again, now, at the end of my twenties, when I’ve finally decided that acting (and the office work that sometimes comes with it) is not the perfect career for me either. And as blessed as I am to get to do what I want with my life, I know that these are not gifts that have landed in my lap coincidentally, that mine is not a lifestyle made possible by some outside force. I know that I am the person who has made these dreams into reality. It is my right as a human being to do that for myself, and I believe it’s everyone’s right.

It doesn’t matter to me if I have to cycle through hundreds of options before I find the right professional fit for me. I will not travel through this incredibly beautiful life I’ve been given being unsatisfied with my job. Period.

I will follow my bliss.

Related posts:

1. Grown-Up Gigs: ESL Teacher/ Drama Therapist/ Arts Coordinator Volunteer!
2. …And I say “No, no, no”
3. Tough (Question) Tuesday: What are two things that are preventing you from being an extraordinary _____?

Tags: Great Guest Post

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Gainful Goals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.