Why I never liked Marmalade...

Do not worry I am not going to use this blog post to dissect the reasons for my distaste of certain toast toppings. It's more my realisation that while avoiding dark chocolate and never understanding the fashionable fascination of a gin and tonic, I have still managed to create a certain bitterness in my life.

Now this bitterness may not be one I can feel on my tastebuds but it certainly leaves a lingering aftertaste.

I am a struggling or 'resting' actress, living and working in the catastrophically expensive London Town. Two years out of my masters at Drama School, although I was fortunate to have the funds, the year cost me my entire inheritance and I have only one paid acting job on my CV to date. With my thirties on the not too distant horizon , I am living in a mouldy room in North London because it's cheap and barely making my rent with every bitty, freelance job I can find and possibly hold down for a few months. Knowing that there was once a time I had enough money for a down payment on a flat or a year travelling the world does create a certain sting. Yet these things were never a priority for me.

I made a choice. That choice I decided when I was a child, all I ever wanted to do was perform and all I ever wanted to be was a performer. I couldn't or wouldn't choose anything else. Now I'm no longer a child and again I have a choice:

Do I continue to attempt to make a living from performing? Knowing that for probably 10 or 11 months out of the year that will be me teaching children, selling popcorn or programmes and making just enough money to scrape by. Therefore not creating any sort of future or building a career of any kind, but safe in the belief that I'm following my dreams and that I'm not a quitter.

Or, do I decide that I need to stop treading water and actually get a real job that can give me stability, security and safety? Knowing that 'quitting' as I put it, giving up, changing my mind and picking something new is the most frightening thing in the world to do , when all you have wanted since the age of 5 is to be onstage.

The ultimate cliche is that acting is a hard business, it's the first thing that comes out of every strangers mouth when you say Its the career you have chosen. Yes we all know its hard, and there's a lot of rejection and it can take a really long time to make it etc, but we are supposed to believe in ourselves enough to put up with all of that negativity.

We go see shows and look at all the other actors with success and know we can do what they do, but so can 50 other people.  We create our own work and discover that someone else has already created practically the same thing. We go to open calls and see a Walking Dead queue of people who look exactly like we do and we wonder what makes us the exception. The industry is saturated and there is endless choice, so evidently most of us will miss out and after a while that begins to hurt.

I think I have finally discovered where my hurt comes from. They say you should only do what makes you happy. Performing makes me happy but living this limbo existence waiting around to perform really doesn't.

Actors go through these ups and downs very frequently some more than others, I have had these conversations with myself too many times to count and every time no matter the cons I couldn't justify giving up on my dream.

Is my bitterness now a justification for that? However baffling it may seem, is following my dream actually making me unhappy?

Maybe happiness and following your dream are not mutually exclusive.
Maybe I need to find a new dream.

I cannot say what the answers are right now but I hope I discover them soon.
Otherwise I should just take free marmalade on toast to my next audition, because no matter how
good an actress I am, there's no way the panel will miss the bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

The Dream

a)To be a full time professional actress, performer
and singer in theatre, TV & film etc.
b)To go to an accredited drama school.
c)To have a lead role in a musical in the West End.

So now you are all up to speed with my dreams.
All humans have dreams. As children we are all told to believe in ourselves, and are nurtured as we go through a journey of ideas of what we would most like to be when we grow up. However, once we are 'grown up' there comes a time where we have to re-evaluate and wonder if our aspirations are at all achievable.

In life there are the forever dreamers, who will do whatever it takes to achieve their dreams. These are the ones who never stop dreaming. Then, there are the people who weigh up the pros and cons and eventually decide that they have come to the end of their aspirational road for one reason or another.

I find that I am often both of these people. In order to fulfil my dream, I have to be super confident that I will achieve it. I have to make a lifestyle choice. A choice to be forever uncertain, unknown and temporary. To allow my life to be determined by luck, being in the right place at the right time and the subjectivity of others. To fear that if i cannot achieve my dream, there is not another one that I would wish for. To fear that I may attempt it for too long and then be stuck for a career late in life. To fear that it may not be possible.

The three dreams listed at the top of the page are in no particular order. All are of great difficulty to obtain and I want them all. I have been attempting a) for just over a year now since leaving university and even though I have tried to remove the stigma that b) is absolutely necessary to achieve my dream, it still remains on the list. Like most people I find failure very difficult, (not so good if you are an actress.)I have tried to get into Drama School on three separate occasions and failed. Although there are many different routes to success as an actor, I can finally say that whether it is necessary or not, I want it. I want it, I need it and I believe that I deserve it.

That has taken me a while to realise again. I tried to tell myself that I didn't want it anymore, probably because it was difficult to achieve. Guess we cannot run from our dreams. Now that is out in the open, I guess I have to become a forever dreamer. I have to work extremely hard to achieve my dreams, and believe me there are many more of a similar nature to be added to the list!

For now real life is dreaming. We have to believe that there can be no reality where our dreams are not possible.

Who needs realism?

Over the last three years I have become more realistic as a person. Whether this was intentional I am yet to know, but it is an attribute that comes with growing up and one that unfortunately cannot be avoided.

Realism affects our ambitions, our hopes and dreams. That's why children are encouraged to fantasise, create stories and fuel their imagination in every way possible. Their innocence, determination and positivity is short lived. By adulthood it is replaced, by responsibility, cynicism and realism.

Often having a realistic outlook is beneficial. It is part of self-preservation, by enclosing ourselves in the idea of realism we expect to be disappointed, rejected and confused. That way we do not set our sights above our reach and can be pleasantly surprised on the rare occasions when our negativity is proved false.

However, realism can also cause extreme bitterness as it can vanquish the purity of undiluted ambition and prevent the desire to succeed. Many of us give up before we have begun, not because we don't believe we can do it, but because the stakes are too high and the statistics are against us. Therefore we provide the excuse that we are just being realistic.

I have uttered the previous sentence on many occasions in the last year, but when someone asked where my ambition had gone, I thought it was still intact just slightly matured. I was wrong it had been worn, eaten away by the need to grow up and think of the obtainable.

What is realism anyway? It is defined as 'a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary' in the dictionary. So a dream is now considered impractical. Haven't they missed the point? The whole idea of dreaming is to reach for something more, something you cant see, something that you may never reach but at least you tried.

That is the point, to try. To endeavour to reach your own goals however unachievable they seem on a daily basis. However realistic we are, we cannot foresee the future. We do not know what reality may throw back at us. How do we know if reality as we know it even exists at all? We don't.

So next time you really really want something that's slightly out of reach, dont accept that it is too difficult and impractical. Just ask youself, 'Who needs realism?'