Humbug

I haven’t written in this blog in awhile.  No one reads it so I can use it as an emotional dumping ground or a place where my most embarrassing thoughts can roam.   Someone asked me why I maintain these blogs for everyone to see. I don’t know.  I just do.  Perhaps in hopes of someone with some sort of authority someday saying that it wasn’t useless and handing me a cheque for a lot of money to make it into a book and then…but do I even really want that?  I don’t think so.  The cheque – yes! but the book deal – maybe.  This blog post is going to be about me figuring out what I want in life.  First of all, let me say that I am currently reading one of those ‘how-to’ be an amazingly rich and successful person books.  It is called The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Certainty’.  Why this book?  Well, its been in my book collection for years.  Actually, I don’t think I bought this book, I think it was my brothers.  Anyway it ended up in my book collection and I’ve been curious about it for years.  I decided to de-clutter my one bedroom apartment and have been compiling an inventory of everything I own.  This de-cluttering of my home is meant to be a precursor to cleaning my car once and for all (I hope).  My car has a lot of stuff in it.  Stuff that I know not what to do with.  Anyway this book (and a couple of other things) have been making me think about what I want in life.  I’ve been keeping a list of experiences, and stuff I want to have since sometime in 2009.  I’ve been adding to it and altering it with a new list every month or so.  And I’ve crossed off some of the things I have accomplished.  I believe the first thing I wanted to do was be in a musical which was the reason initially for this blog.  That has since changed.  Instead of being in a musical when I had the opportunity I changed my mind and preferred to go with writing a musical which I did this past summer at the Toronto Fringe.  I’ve since recovered from that experience and am looking for ways to do more musical theatre writing.   I am now working on another musical Killjoy. I still have big dreams for Nobody’s Idol.  I truly believe in that concept in all its various forms and think it will be on broadway (with or without me).  Or someone will write a different version of the same thing but have the opportunities that will take he or she to the steps of Broadway.  I can’t remember why I wanted to write this post?  Oh yeah in an attempt to figure it all out.  What do I want?   It’s difficult to be confident about the unknown future.  I just wrote what I really want to write musicals and plays and screenplays and stuff.  I am doing this in a sense but yet haven’t made enough to make a living.  I’m coping with the condition of being a starving artist.  I don’t mean to be.  I’d like very much to be a full over-stuffed artist if possible.  But here’s where I fall into a trap.  Say I can’t.  I mean I know I shouldn’t say I can’t because I suppose someday in the future I might see the dollar signs that comes along with the burden of being a writer of lyrics, plays, melodies and other such scripts.  Only the lucky ones get paid.  Maybe I could be one of the lucky ones if only luck would have it.  So then what would be my number 2?  I suppose teaching is the next best thing.  But I don’t want to teach in an elementary or high school.  I was thinking college or university.  I suppose to do that I would need to get a graduate degree.  So the graduate degree I would want – if I were to go that route – would be Musical Theatre Writing which is only offered at NYU (it would seem).  That would be wonderful to spend 3 years or however long it takes at NYU, but who can afford that?  They do have a summer program.  But even still, its a lot of money.  I mean I could figure out how to make the money but maybe my time and money would be better spent on actually writing and producing my songs and scripts.  But even if I go that route – I’m confused about when the part where I get to make money from it happens.  Or if it ever really does happen for people like me.  By people like me I just mean ‘the not typically very lucky ones’.   I feel like if I can’t get the graduate degree in the field I want then what’s the point.   This is the part of figuring it out that frustrates me.  I decide I want this.  The universe and other people say, no way.  So then, I say if not this then I guess this would be ok.  The universe and other people say, no way.  So then, I say I really don’t want this but I guess its the easiest thing for now.  And then I get stuck with a life I didn’t want and those very same people and universe ask – well, what do you really want?  Anyway at this moment on another file I have started an account to apply for NYU.  But why? I’m not going to get in so why get my hopes up and even I could get in I couldn’t afford it and I don’t think I could get financial aid.  Plus I mainly want to go to the summer program.  But I do have to be an NYU student to do the summer program.  Oh humbug.