Amorphous (or you can be anything)
July 21, 2011
I follow @Liz_Money’s Tumblr (and you should, too). Today she posted something that I thought is particularly close to my heart, this image:
"Cutest thing evar." - Liz Money
It’s intended, of course, to be a humorous take on professions showing how any profession can be used by “the Dark Side.” But it also makes another point: these people got trained in the careers listed above, but the skillsets they learned can be used in a variety of different ways.
Just because you have a degree in a specific field or training in a specific field doesn’t mean you can’t do something else. Half of your college education was in “general ed”! People forget that. You are more than just your major in college, and you can leverage the education you do have to, well… do anything you put your mind to.
The problem is that what you WANT to do is not necessarily what you SHOULD do, especially when money comes into play. It’s very difficult to make a living as an artist, whereas it’s much less difficult to make a living as a marketer or public relations manager.
I know dozens of theatre types who are absolutely convinced that they can’t do anything but theatre and be happy. It’s just not true. A stage manager can translate her skills into project management, running a camp, or human resources. An actor can translate his skills into being a teacher (i.e. “performing” in front of students), a salesman (e.g. performing in front of customers), or any number of other careers. And you can be happy doing it.
This isn’t going to convince anyone, but I just felt like sharing Liz’s link and blabbing about this.
July 21, 2011 at 9:54 am
I think about this a lot, actually. As a theatrical electrician, as it stands right now, my skillset, though wide, is not well suited to many careers outside the entertainment field. The last time I managed to write a blog post, it was tangential to this concept.
The vast majority of my skills focus on manipulating equipment that’s not found anywhere else, be it the lighting instruments or control consoles. These skills just don’t translate to anything I can think of.
To apply my knowledge of electricity to something like contracting? I’d need to both learn a whole slew of building codes and obtain a license. My electronics skills, warmed over from my first year of college? Definitely not honed to a point of ‘employable’ nowadays.
It’s a question I ask myself a lot. “If I wasn’t doing theatre, what -would- I be doing?” And an answer never really presents itself.
July 21, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Sure, but your education and training was more than just flipping switches and pressing buttons. Half your education in college was “general ed”, and then another significant chunk of education has nothing to do with facts and knowledge and everything to do with generalized abilities like teamwork, discipline, and enthusiasm.
An actor’s knowledge of Shakespeare is completely useless in the corporate world, but everything else is relevant. Actors learn a lot of things that aren’t technically acting skills, thinks like: showing up on time, working independently, working as a team, memorizing vast amounts of information in a short period of time, speaking in public, accepting criticism, following direction, thinking outside the box, empathizing with others, working under pressure to meet a deadline, quickly adapting to changes, ambition to bigger and better parts, and many more things. And every single employer out there wants those qualities in their employees.
Likewise, you are more than a button-pusher. You are a critical thinker, a team worker, an independent worker. You are someone who can start with a concept and follow through to a finished product. You are someone who can learn new equipment and leverage knowledge of existing equipment to better improve the capabilities of the new.
To put it bluntly, your lack of knowledge about building codes and lack of a license are your own doing. You are fully capable of learning these things and getting a license — I know this because I know you are great at what you do already.
Fortunately, Derek, you are in a situation in which the lack of an electrician’s license and/or knowledge of building codes is irrelevant. You are making a living doing what you want to do — which is fantastic! I’m very excited to know that. And I think if you can do it, you should. But there are people out there who think that, for whatever reason, they can’t do anything but what you do, and when push comes to shove, they’ll sit down and bitch about it rather than go learn about those electrical codes and get that license.
I’ll give you an example, though. My friend (let’s call him Andrew) is an actor and one of my best friends. Andrew went to college with me and got his B.A. in Theatre. He has all of the qualities and abilities that I do (e.g. the ones I mentioned above). He’s smart, he’s talented, he’s one of the best writers I know, and he’s got the ability to learn anything he wants to learn. But for some reason, he’s absolutely 100% convinced that he’ll be absolutely miserable at anything that’s not acting. He thinks he has to be an actor. If he’s not an actor, he’ll hate his life.
And so he waits tables. He works at McDonald’s. He does all of these things, and then he bitches and moans about how he can’t pay the rent, about how he hates his life, about how he can’t find a real job, about how because he works these crappy jobs, he has no time to do theatre (which was the whole point to begin with!!).
But the truth of the matter is that he’s not looking. He’s completely and totally bought into the starving artist thing, and he feels like if he takes the skills that he has and applies them to a different field, then he’s selling out.
And, you know, I understand that to an extent, but at the same time, my pride doesn’t put food on the table, nor does it pay my rent or allow me to go see the shows I want to see. If I can’t pay my bills, I can’t do theatre.
I’m not selling out by finding a second field that a) I’m good at and b) I enjoy enough to not hate myself… No, I’m not selling myself out. I’m enabling myself to have the time and money to do what I really want to do: theatre.
I know that Andrew is capable of finding another field in which he’s interested. He’s obsessed with comics and art, with writing and movies, with baseball and politics. In each of those fields, I can think of at least a dozen jobs he would be qualified for, if he applied and sold himself well. Sure, he won’t be making a shit ton of money at first, but everyone has to start somewhere. He doesn’t have to be super passionate about the job, but it should be something where he’s at least content, knowing that now he has the time and money to do theatre in his off-time.
To turn this back to you, you are in an exceptionally good situation in which you don’t have to have a second non-theatre job. That’s great. And honestly I have a ton of respect for you, because you’re doing what I haven’t been able to do.
That’s what I’ve been trying to get at on Twitter, but it’s hard to communicate in 140 characters or less.