I have a strange life. Seriously, I realized it earlier this week. I spend hours working as a Corporate American five days a week for forty-plus hours. I wear suits and conservative khakis, depending on the day or the number of meetings I have to attend. I work on spreadsheets. I speak to people in a pleasant voice. I am able to juggle hundreds of random minute details and churn out emails, powerpoint presentations, and other useless documents. I organize and assess process while simultaneously watching for opportunities and impacting the bottom line. I even utilize corporate phrases like "impacting the bottom line". It is a very organized and seemingly efficient environment where I spend my day.

Then I leave to go to the opposite extreme. I go to rehearsal, as actors must do. I've been doing it for most of my life at this point. It is loosely-organized chaos. People talking over each other, people showing up late (often that person is me), people going off on tangents in the middle of making a point. We can't find the schedule, has any one seen the new script, what version are we using? There is laughter and noise and then someone might say something off the wall and everyone has to crack up all over again. Then we read and read, maybe adding notes along the way. It is everything that my day job is not.

What I realized is that I am not always comfortable in either extreme. I wish my corporate job could be more creative and I wish my artistic endeavors could be more organized. What is aggravating is that I am good at both. I am very good at the skills required for my corporate job...organizing, filing, advising, consulting. But I am actually a mighty good actress...the ritual, the character development, connecting with others. I long for the day I can find balance and actually combine the two together. I believe that both arenas can learn from the other. After all, corporations are good at getting and retaining money, and are masters at organizing and moving information. Theaters, however, are all about innovation and creative thought. Plus, they are WAY more efficient at getting things done and setting up infrastructure. It might not seem that way during a crazy rehearsal, but when you compare the fact that most theater companies put up a whole show in just a few weeks to watching companies spend months in meetings and thousands in dollars to take action on small items, it seems pretty obvious.

I have functioned this way for many, many, many years. It is exhausting in all honestly, but I need to do it. If I quit either, I would be missing something. In the arts, my brain feels relaxed. It knows what to do and functions very well. I can produce good work there. At my day job, I have to concentrate on little details. It keep my brain fresh like when people do crossword puzzles or sudoku. Plus, I need to earn a living! I have a dream of opening a business that combines both sides, but I am still working on getting started. I have NO idea how one goes about starting a company or a consulting business. I read about it but it just doesn't seem logical. Hopefully, I will figure it out soon so I can start towards a life of balance!