Working hard to make your dreams come true.

I’ve not posted for a couple of days as I’ve been running around doing all the Christmas preparations and tasks that everyone is doing at this time of year.

I spent a very pleasant afternoon at my daughter’s school nativity, watching my five year old sing her first ever solo (dressed as an angel) and reduce a roomful of parents to tears – we do seem to be raising a houseful of musicians, one way or the other!   We’ve also spent almost every evening (and several of the days) in December out singing carols.  It’s a pleasant way to earn some Christmas money, but I must say that it isn’t easy.  Both my husband and I are also struggling through coughs and colds, so it’s a little trying to say the least.

My husband’s family are very arts-orientated, and all are amateur musicians, whilst my sister-in-law is also a professional actress and stage fight director.  Talking to her always makes me think about how arts professions are perceived by other people in more mundane jobs.

“Easy money”.  “Nice life if you can get it”. “Ought to get a REAL job”.  These are all perjorative terms I’ve heard in relation to working in the arts.  Without exception, they are all phrases used by people who have never *worked* in the arts.  On the surface, it seems like an easy life – getting paid to do something that other people do for fun.  Not having to get up in the morning.  Playing all the time.

The simple fact is that it isn’t like that AT ALL.  My sister-in-law often gets up at 4 or 5am to drive for miles to the next theatre engagement on a tour, where she has to put up a set, re-choreograph parts of the show for the new theatre, liaise with theatre management and check all the props and costumes – replacing or repairing anything missing or damaged.  By the time she’s finished all of this and run the cast through any changes, it’s evening.  Round about the time that most of us are sitting down to ‘Eastenders’ and a nice cup of tea, she is gearing up to put on a performance, which will likely run until 10pm or so.  Then she has to take the set down, pack it into a van and drive to wherever her accommodation is (often on someone’s mother’s floor, or a looooong drive back home), whereupon she can finally sleep, before getting up and doing this again the next day.  Because it is such a “glamorous” profession, and there is a lot of competition, the pay isn’t very good, so she does all this for minimum wage or less.  She doesn’t get weekends or holidays.  The tour keeps on rolling.  She can be booked into Devon one day and Northumbria the day after.

Stuff that for a game of soldiers.

My husband is in the middle of transitioning from full-time construction and electrical work into being a full-time musician.  This means that for a few years here, he is effectively working two full-time jobs as he builds up a music work portfolio to enable him to scale back his construction work.   His timetable is equally as mad as that of his sister, if not worse, because he has to somehow fit being a father and husband in there somewhere as well.

So why are they working these mad hours?  Because they both have a dream of where they want to be, and what they want to be doing in a few years’ time.  They both realise that sitting back and waiting for someone to hand-deliver the perfect career is not going to work.  There is no such thing as a ‘perfect time’ to start a business, or make a life-changing decision.  Careers and lives are built out of the bricks of determination and hard work.

If you are sitting there, worried about the possibility of losing your sole source of income, or despairing at the fact that you may still be doing a job you hate in another 10 years’ time, then I challenge you to push yourself.  Start something today.  Do something scary and challenging which will move you closer towards your dreams.  Then post about it, and let us all know what direction you are travelling in