disillusionment passing through

I suppose it's true of all things that familiarity breeds contempt. I'm sure there's an exception to that rule, but I just can't think of it right now.

So, by that rationale, the same can be said of my job. I've been working full-time as a gigging musician for about 10 months now (full-time in the sense that I have no other job, rather than it keeping my busy full-time), and the cracks are beginning to show. It's not that I haven't enjoyed myself and learnt a lot from the experience, it's just that I feel it may be about time to start thinking about other challenges. My thinking is basically, that while I'm still in a position to gamble with my career without the repercussions of failure being too great, I think I should try my hand at other things.

With this in mind, I think I need to start being a little more proactive in finding work in other areas - maybe some musical theatre, or just straight acting work - who knows? For this however, I will need to really apply myself, get an agent, headshots, go to countless auditions, etc. Basically, become another wannabe actor, scraping round London for jobs. Not that I have any desire to move to London, unless I absolutely have to. What I'm slightly more inclined towards is to see if I can get a job with a touring repertory theatre company and really cut my teeth that way, going round the country doing a new play every few weeks. But even to get into that kind of work may be difficult as I have had no formal training, nor do I have any kind of showreel for prospective employers to look at. So this could prove a difficult road to follow. Nonetheless, I shall follow it.

I think it's a case of the grass always being greener. I've been making a living as a singer for a little under a year, and so now I'm really keen to try acting. I've little doubt that when/if I have been acting for a while, I'll yearn to start singing again - so maybe musical theatre is a happy medium?

All this implies that I'm not happy doing what I'm doing. That's not true, I am. But I just feel that while (as I mentioned above) I'm in a position to try different things, work-wise, I should take the opportunity. It won't be long before I have a mortgage, wife, kids, pets, etc.. and won't be able to take these kinds of luxuries with my career.


I shall leave you with this thought:

"If you took all the Kinder toys out of all the Kinder eggs, you could make yourself a Kinder World!" Mr Metler, Plume School, 1998