Huzzah! Another blog about the crippling uncertainty of life...

Please forgive the title, as it was written by my 7th grade self. The same one who wore a spiked dog collar and fishnet stockings to Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

Mom, you deserve a medal.

If you've been wondering, "How are things with Michele?" THEY BLOW.

The Job is reaching the end of a post-Hoiliday Season hiatus, which at one point was looked upon as a well-earned break. We were so nuts during the Holidays that at one point I did 18 shows in 4 days.

It was also a nice opportunity for my Second Job to start, at one of those theme restaurants that hire actors to walk around in character and interact with the customers. I'd been so busy with the Holiday show that I hadn't been able to start training in the last few weeks of December when everyone else did.

LONG STORY SHORT: When I finally heard from the Second Job, it was the news that due to unforseen circumstances, two female characters had been eliminated from the show, so though I and a few other ladies are still TECHNICALLY employed, there was no word on when we'd be able to train, or work.

Cue Depression

The money I'm making on unemployment is barely enough to pay the bills, and did I mention that The Boyfriend is unemployed as well (Hey, did you guys know there's some kind of economic crisis going on out there?)?

Thus began several days of lying on the couch, eating DiGiorno's pizza and watching Battlestar Gallactica. 

I was upset about one thing and one thing only: Though the New Job was resuming this month, it is by no means full-time. I needed the Second Job to be able to pay my bills, work down my debt and (oh, yeah) eat. I saw no alternative than to go back to the Restaurant Industry. And if THAT happened, I could no longer call myself a full time actor. THE HORROR.

Here's Where it Gets Better:

The other day, I was doing the dishes, feeling depressed, and being bummed out about how depressed I was. And then a thought occured to me; clear as day, as if I'd known it the whole time (which I probably did) and I just needed to remember it:

This was not an unfortunate setback in an otherwise on-track life. This was not a shocking surprise, like it had been when The Boyfriend got laid off. This was my life. And I could waste time being depressed about possibly having to wait tables again, or I could treat it like another audition: "Hmm, I thought that was going to go a different way, but oh well, on to the next thing."

It was nice, being able to say that all my income came from acting, and I didn't have to work in a restaurant or as a temp or any of the other jobs actors do to pay the rent. But let's face it; it wasn't THAT much income. It was JUST enough, and without The Boyfriend's support (both emotionally and financially) would NEVER have worked.

So... here's the plan:

1. Visit parents in Florida, curl up on Mom's lap for four days (sans dog collar)

2. Enjoy what shifts at The New Job you have, and relish the feeling of doing what you want to do, a few days a week at least.

3. If the Second Job calls, they call.

4. Suck it up

5. Find another job that doesn't make you hate your life, that is flexible, and makes you enough money to be able to afford your monthly MetroCard. 

I remember the feeling I had when I heard I'd been cast at the New Job, and I knew I could leave the Restaurant I'd worked at for the past five years. I'd walked out into Times Square and blasted this song on repeat: 

I still feel a whisper of it every time I walk into the dressing room, so I'm going to hang onto that one instead of the one that makes me too depressed to shower.

       

  

There is no point in having an external hard drive if you don't back up your files...

Also, don't drop your laptop....

Greetings from The Boyfriend's Computer, which will be my new home until I can scrounge up the money to buy a new one.

Farewell $400 Acer mini-laptop, you shall now join the ranks of the iPod I dropped in a glass of water, and the Nikon camera I fell on top of while wearing heels on a cobblestone street.

But the good news is, I didn't back up any of the files for actorwithabusinesscard.com, hooray for me. So now I begin the task of re-building all the code I spent the last two years adding on to the original template.

Right click-->View Source, you are now my best friend.

That being said, the website will most likely not be updated for a while. I hope you all enjoy watching that Deerhoof music video. Who wouldn't, right?

On the upside, The Job is on a post-holiday hiatus, following an extremely successful and critically acclaimed Holiday Show. I have a well-deserved month off after working a Helluva Lot. My personal best was 18 performances in 4 days, booyah.

After that I slept for four days and went on unemployment, so really what was I going to do but reformat my entire website?

See?

Silver lining.

It Pulls You Under

About a month and a half into living as a working actress, making a couple of hundred dollars a week and letting my boyfriend support me financially, I finally break down.

There are a lot of things about life as a working actor that break people down. For most people, it's the rejection. It's constantly feeling like you're not good enough. For some people, it's the frustration of knowing that you are good enough, and nobody gives a shit.

I can deal with both those things. What finally got me last night was something different entirely.

In February The Boyfriend and I moved into a gorgeous one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. My half of the rent is more than I was paying for my Queens studio apartment, but in February I had a steady job, making enough money to pay rent and keep up with my student loans, and still have money to put away in savings. Good for me.

But now, in this performance job that I ADORE, I'm barely making enough money to pay the rent. It's only thanks to my generous parents, a NY Lottery commercial and the payout from a class-action lawsuit that i forgot to opt out of that I've made it through July.

The Boyfriend, however, cheerfully tells me, "Don't worry about it, baby. I get paid tomorrow." And I love him, but the fact that HE has enough money to pay OUR rent does not make me feel better. WE should have enough money to pay OUR rent.

Nobody ever told me that the hardest shit to deal with in this life was going to be the Financial Aspect of it, and I call Shenanigans.

Why isn't that ever on an episode of Smash? Huh, Telsey? Why doesn't Karen Carpenter have her credit card declined trying to buy macaroni and cheese at a Duane Reade at 2 o'clock in the morning?

So last night I spilled fucking water on my fucking iPhone again. I am the biggest dick on the planet, and no one should ever give me anything worth over $50, because I will ruin it. Spoiler Alert: my phone is fine, I got it in rice right away and it only had a little bit spilled on it in the first place. But in my haste to rip open the rice bag, it exploded potato-chip-style all over the floor of the kitchen, and then I spent the next hour and a half crying. Like, snot-pouring-down-the-front-of-my-face, Irish-funeral-keening. The Boyfriend hugged me as I hyperventilated, and once I'd calmed down I went into the living room and fired off an email to Best Friend Cate. 

As previously mentioned, Best Friend Cate is an incredibly talented writer, who moved to Poughkeepsie when her boyfriend got a teaching job there. And she spent the first six months there living much like I am living now. Shitty job, not enough money, being supported by someone else, all the while with all this talent inside her, just waiting to be discovered.

To say her response made me feel better would be underselling it completely.

"You're doing everything you're supposed to be doing," she said, "and shit--you're only in the financial situation you're in because you took a chance on a job that is going to move your REAL career forward... You chose to work in a field where nobody gives a shit about you... You chose this--years of people not giving a shit, and having to balance the non-shit-giving with paychecks so that you can survive until people do give a shit... It's slow. It's called our twenties. We can't all be Lena Dunham.

"BUT look at Christina Hendricks. Maybe I'm biased, since she's the first woman I've ever wanted to motorboat, Vince-Vaughan-style, but she's in her mid-thirties and her career is only now taking off... Total nerd girl, too. She paid her dues. Am I saying it will take you another 8 years to get there? No. But it might.

"I love you. Hang in there. Remember that a big part of this is the transition period. It pulls you under."

Seriously everybody is being so fucking supportive it makes me want to throw up. In a good way.

So here is the part where I try to turn this incredibly depressing blog entry into an inspirational cry to action, whoopie. Perhaps I should include some quote about perseverance or never giving up or whatever. But instead I think I'll end with a message to myself.

Dear McNally,

Calm the fuck down. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't, everyone would do it.

And yes, that was paraphrased from A League of Their Own.

Stop whining. If you're so worried about money, get a second job already.

Kaboom.

Squeaking By...

Every time I go use the coinstar machine at the Food Emporium on 43rd street, there is ALWAYS some manager's discarded clipboard on it. Like the people in that neighborhood never have the need to cash in the coins they've been hoarding for months on end in order to get the $65 cash to keep their bank account from overdrawing. So we might as well use it as furniture.

This time though, some guy came in right after me to cash in his coins. First time I've ever seen anyone else use that coinstar machine.

I gave him a little smile as I took my voucher, a kind of, "Glad to know I'm not the only one."

He shrugged.

Leap; The Net Will Follow

Week one of my lack of a Day Job is over, and though I have a start date for the New Job, I have spent the entire week at home, staring at the walls.

Most of the days have been productive. I've been submitting for background work everywhere I see a listing, and working on my website and my reel and my resume and all sorts of productive things. I put up a new Wall of Inspiration, like the collage I had up in my old apartment and managed to save most of.

I've made myself a sizable To-Do list and I've been ticking things off one by one. I've started putting together a database of Casting Directors of projects that I enjoy and would like to be a part of, so that I can start becoming more familiar with the names I see popping up in Backstage and Playbill.com.

I cleaned the CRAP out of the apartment.

I made a list of Open-Mics around the city.

I feel good. Except for at night, after The Boyfriend has drifted off to sleep and I can see my swiftly dwindling bank-account projected onto the ceiling above my bed.

A couple of the days have been bad. My super-supportive Dad, who has been self-employed and working out of a home office since I was in second grade, sent me an email with all the guidelines on How to be Successfully Self-Employed. Number One on the list is: Get Dressed.

Some days I did not get dressed.

I am far too much of an ambitious freak to enjoy a "vacation" of any kind. I've come to terms with this.

BUT today is a GOOD DAY.

Today I know when my first rehearsal is for the New Job, and today I booked background work for tomorrow! And even as I was text messaging Best Friend Jen to tell her I wouldn't be able to come with her to IKEA, I got a phone call and booked ANOTHER background job for Tuesday.

Today I only hit snooze TWICE and am totally aware that I am incredibly lucky to have such a supportive Boyfriend, Mother, Father, Brother, future Sister-in-Law, Best Friend Jen, Best Friend Cate, Ma and Popi and incredible professional colleagues such as Harmony Stempel, (who just mounted her One-Woman show in NYC) to inspire me.

Today is a good day.

The Day Job

In order to be an actress, you have to work in a restaurant.

Yeah, it seemed pretty ridiculous when I read it back to myself too. But for some reason it's just one of those things that everybody thinks. And for the most part, very true. The amount of people who would ask me as I cleared their empty plates, "Oh, are you an actress?" made me wish the answer was no.

But alas, I am the stereotype. Or at least I was.

How I Got the Job:
Fresh out of college, I worked at a summer camp for the first few months after graduation, while living at home with my parents. I was the musical theatre director for the Queens College summer program, and making about $400 a week, all of which was going into savings upon preparation for moving into my new apartment in August.

And then August came, and I moved in, and the summer ended and I didn't have a job yet. A girl I'd gone to school with worked as a hostess in a busy Times Square restaurant and offered to get me a job there. Two days later I was hired, my first day of training was a double, and I stayed there for 5 years.

5 years is a long time. And I wasn't doing the same thing for that whole time. Sure I started out as a hostess, making just enough money to wrack up a $2,000 credit card bill on monthly MetroCards alone, but eventually I moved up the ranks, and by the end I was a pretty big deal. 

But still, 5 years at the same place, doing the same thing over and over again takes its toll. Almost every year I had a night where I threw my hands up in despair, came home and searched CraigsList for a new job. But ultimately, I decided, what was the difference between getting fed up at this place as at any other place?

5 years is a long time. And that same five years has been filled with my trying to build a successful acting career; With rejections and tiny victories. Shows have opened and closed and been cancelled due to lack of funds. I have spent money on train tickets to do film for nothing more than food and a copy that I never saw because nobody ever fucking finishes anything. I realized a long time ago that I do not have the ideal temperament for the life of an actor. I have so many actor friends who float from job to job and apartment to apartment, never really sure of how much money is going to be in their bank accounts at the end of the month and not really caring either way.

I don't do that. I lie awake staring at the ceiling going through elaborate scenarios in my head of What Will Happen If I Don't Pay the Cable Bill On Time. The cable guy comes. He laughs at me. They take away my TV and I forever have a black mark on my Time Warner permanent record and am never allowed the option of DVR service again. Then someone punches me in the face and I die.

5 years is a long time. But in that time, The Job was a stable, unifying thing in my life. I always knew what to expect, I had a regular schedule and people that I could switch with, and managers who counted on me to be responsible to do the right thing. I succeeded, and I climbed the ladder, and I really saw that there might be a future for me in the world of restaurant management. If this acting thing fails, I think I might have a bright career in the Hospitality Industry.

And you know what?

Wait for it...

FUCK that.

A few Wednesdays ago I had an audition. For a job that pays. And I got it. The next day I put in my two weeks.

It's not the title role in Evita; I don't even know if I'll be making enough money to live. I don't know if I'll have to get a part time job to still make rent and pay bills and eat everyday. But I don't care. Because though in the past 5 years The Job has been a shining star and the only stable thing in my life that I had besides my boyfriend and my cats, there has been many a time when I've looked at a casting and said, "I can't audition for that. It rehearses on Saturdays. I WORK on Saturdays." 

From now on, for as long as I can, I am a full-time actor. If I have to do background work every day off I have for ten hours, a donut and a $75 check that doesn't come in the mail until 6 months later, it will be worth it just to say that I am doing what I want to do.

I have had a great time at my restaurant for the past 5 years. I've made wonderful friends and learned lovely lessons and pigged out on some serious chicken parm...

But I'm out.

Peace.