creativity begets creativity

I have a lot to be thankful for these days.

Examples:
My health is in-tact.
One of my plays has been produced 4 times in New York.
I'm no longer addicted to nicotine.
I have a great cat.
My friends are very loving.
And lovable.
I live in Brooklyn.

Perhaps the thing I am most thankful for today is that I have something really wonderful to look forward to in October. In about a month and a half, I will quit my law firm job and start teaching after school programs. My roommate, Meghan has been working with this program for a year and thank goodness she had the foresight to recognize that this job was an ideal fit for me.

I never really saw teaching in my future--Even when I was a music education major for two years of my life. In everyone's mind but my own, it was something practical that I could do with a performance degree. Teaching in my mind had the connotation of being fallback career. A "those that can't" situation. Since I was pushed into pursuing it, the thought of later teaching was never appealing to me.

What they don't tell you when you're about to enter college for something creatively-oriented is that fallback jobs are actually quite abundant if you are adamant in your resistance to throwing in the towel on your real job of creating art. I've had plenty of fallback jobs, but never a fallback career. To me, that's an impossibility.

Artists excel at many things. We soak in information and direction at extremely fast rates. We process this information originally, and in a way that sheds new light on something that can often be dull, routine, and uninteresting. This is why corporate America invites us so often to the 45th floor--They need our bravery, our vision, and our enthusiasm to make their businesses greater and more successful, yet they often resent us when our inner light shines beyond our cubicles.

I've been a Director of First Impressions at a law firm (that defends big tobacco and the Bush family) for 4 long years because I hated it, thinking that that hatred would motivate and propel me to pursue art more vigorously. Maybe my break would come, I would become instantly successful. (I'm smiling right now, and rolling my eyes...) Let's just throw aside the seemingly obvious fact that having a full-time office job doesn't really allow for the vigorous pursual of one's passions. The most important concept I've become aquainted with is even simpler than that. Intellectually, you the reader have encountered it, but maybe it hasn't sunk in for you yet: You cannot plan for good timing or good luck. It's a tempting and romantic notion to think that you can prepare yourself for your own preordained greatness. We are constantly primping for and anticipating our moment that fate intervenes and gives us our big break. We're so consumed in thinking about that any-moment-now moment that we fail to find stimulation and satisfaction in the current one. And if our minds are not engaged in the current moment, we fail to recognize the fateful moments when they actually do present themselves to us.

You cannot plan for good timing or good luck.

Wow. I've just realized that this statement applies to so many aspects of my life.

In these 4 years, I have justified staying in a place I hate. Insane, if you think about it. Hate and animosity does not beget creative success. Monetary success, sure. A rise in status, okay. But remaining in a place in which it (literally) hurts to remain will never, ever make me a better artist.

I'm slowly starting to learn that a fallback job, or something you have to do for money, can actually be a job that you enjoy. I could say that I think teaching kids will make me better, but I am willing to go out on a limb to say this: I know for certain that teaching will make me a better, more well-rounded, and more complete artist and will give me a well of experience to draw from for the rest of my life.

I've known for a while that this change has been coming. I've been preparing myself for it in stages for months, though I had no clue how it would manifest itself. I'm glad that my roommate suggested it to me. I was ready for it and I'm so incredibly thankful that I was absolutely present to hear it.