To What's Next

Being an artist comes with a lot of pressure. It's mostly self-induced, at least in my case, but that doesn't make it any less terrifying.

It's been over a year since I graduated, and I've found myself recently trying to compare that anxious, little graduate with today's slightly-less-anxious, little me. I've been trying to step back and objectively evaluate my standing as a working artist, attempting to figure out whether I'm on the path to success or not. This mental marathon is difficult for a number a reasons: I judge myself harshly, I'm scared to ask what others think, I find it nearly impossible not to compare myself to the people around me. But the most difficult part of the process is figuring out what "success" means to me.

In the world of entertainment, everyone has a different definition for "success". To some, you aren't successful unless you've won an Oscar. To others, it's more than enough just to be able to wake up every day and go perform with their friends in a coffee shop somewhere. I know my goals lie somewhere in the middle, and the more I learn about the process of making art, the more they shift.

Today, I opened up the paper to find a review of the show I'm working on in the Los Angeles Times. And that was really freaking cool! I wasn't mentioned by name or anything, but right there in black-and-white were the names of the people I'd been working with for the last two months. These were people I had dinner with, people I shout directions at daily, people I tease or praise or laugh at every night. They were just people to me, but in that moment I was overwhelmed by their celebrity.

And my first thought was, "Have I made it?"

And my second thought was, "What does that even mean?"

I put the thoughts away because I had to go to work, but later they resurfaced when an audience member at the post-show talk-back asked the actors, "For which of you is this your first big break?" From where I was sitting in my little corner of the rafters, overlooking the stage, the question was met with a lot of confusion. Some people wanted to know what she meant by "first big break"; did she mean first regional production? First starring role? First paid show?

And it hit me that, maybe, none of us really knew where we stood in the grand scheme of Show Biz. The concept of one's "big break" is, like most things in the industry, elusive. It's also relative, and it can't really be identified when it's happening. It takes years of work and experience to be able to pick out the gig that sets up the rest of your career, but as artists we carry around this fantasy that, "Maybe this job will turn out to be my big break!" That's a lot of pressure to put on one job, and to put on yourself for the duration of that job. It's almost like a sect of perfectionism, which is murder on the creative mind. How can you truly do the work if all you can think about is whether the work you're doing is good enough? As I've been told by many a teacher: Expectation kills Exploration.

So this game I've been playing with myself, trying to figure out where I'm at in my life, is kind of a non-starter. It really doesn't matter where I'm at; what matters is what I'm doing now and what I'm doing next. I'll have time to reflect on the great story of my life later. Right now, I'm working with some brilliant and entertaining artists, and I'd like to sit here and enjoy it.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a close friend about how hard the first year out-of-school can be. She said it was like being at the bottom of the ladder again, being reset to freshman status. I completely agreed. But the great thing about being at the bottom of the ladder again is that the only place you can go is up.

To all of the recent grads out there: it's gonna get easier. It's not going to be easy, but it will get easier. A year ago, I was working at a job I despised with people I despised, wondering where in the hell I was supposed to go from here. Today, I really listened to the words of the beautiful show I'm a part of:

"'What's Next' is all anyone needs to begin."