Reprogramming Directive

Some girls take courses at all the best schools in France
Riding their horses and learning their modern dance.
They’re clever and cultured and worldly wise.
But you see the world through a child’s wide eyes.
Their dreams are grand ones, you want what’s just in reach.
Some girls you learn from, some you teach.

—“Some Girls” from “Once On This Island”

Some girls grow up fighting about things like:

• Their choice of boyfriends
• The way the dress
• Maybe they get bad grades in school / didn’t get into the right school
• Drug or other alcohol related problems
• Going out/partying too much/too late
• Getting into trouble with the law
• Cheating on significant others / backstabbing friends

I have fights which are work/career related. Not “I’ve decided to become a stripper” or “I can’t be bothered and want to work at fast food counters” type fights. Just “I know what I’m doing right now is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life because as crazy as it may seem to the rest of the world I really do want to write Broadway musicals so I would really like to get some reasonable sort of work/life balance and more time to myself so I can work on this” fights.

I like to think – and hope that I am not alone in thinking – that I am a reasonably mature, stable, high-achieving, independent, focused young woman who knows what she wants but doesn’t foolishly chase after it without triply thinking things through and several contingency plans. I’m well aware of the sheer virtual impossibility of this dream; and thus the proportionally greater effort that needs to be applied to actually get anywhere with it.

Unfortunately, I still have the same five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes as everyone else. On any given day, work and work related activities (including work done before, during and after the commute to/from work) consume 840 minutes; other activities necessary for survival (e.g. sleep, eat, personal hygiene) take up 600 minutes; leaving me with a scant – let’s see now – oh, ZERO minutes left over to do anything.

The insightful reader will probably point out that I’ve not specifically mention weekends at the moment. Kudos to you, I’m just going to say that I’ve not really had a full weekend off without doing any work since I’ve been back from New York. Not to mention also teaching piano on the weekends, dealing with massive issues with an apartment and somehow trying to fit some sort of social life in. The insightful reader might also point out that I obviously do not want this bad enough if I am still trying to fit a social life in. To you, I’m going to say two things:

1. We need rest and relaxation to produce anything worthwhile. No wonder I can’t write anything good – not only am I really new at this, I’m also sleep deprived and stressed.
2. If you thought that was an excuse, try this instead – I refuse to believe that in this day and age, we have to choose an extreme of one or the other. Yes, I am Gen Y and frankly, I don’t think it is so unreasonable of me to want a career that I love and that I am passionate about which still leaves me with ample non-work time for a social life.

Should I choose the smoothest course, Steady as a beating drum? Is all my dreaming at an end? Or do you still wait for me Dreamgiver? Just around the river bend.

Anyway. Somehow whenever the discussion about me taking my current job part time so I have time to pursue what I really want to do with my life comes up, I inevitably come across two viewpoints:

1. “THAT’S SO AWESOME YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO FOR IT!!!” (thanks all who fall into this camp…much morale support needed and appreciated)
2. “…” – such silences can be split between
   • Those who think I’m an idiot for even considering it because how could you possibly contemplate a deviation from the tightly structured career path at a Big Four Accounting Firm (with all capital letters included) and that I must be lazy; and
   • those who think it means I’m not serious about and/or committed to whatever it is I am taking part time.

The former group of detractors normally come from the point of view where in their mind it is incomprehensible to take any sort of reduction in monetary benefits (i.e. salary) to gain in other benefits (i.e. work/life balance, time to pursue your life’s passion). This attitude is also welded to the concept of “sacrifice now, enjoy later” and the need to “secure the future”. A few problems I have with this argument are:

• Monetary benefits are all well and good, but as a senior manager I admire once said to me, “past a certain dollar value, it doesn’t matter how much more they pay me, it doesn’t make up for the extra time at work”. Of course, I’ve also spoken with partners who have said the exact opposite (“it’s certainly worth it, I get paid a lot”) but I question how in tune that is with my own personal values and the way I want to live my life.
• I appreciate the need to plan for the long-term but really, when is enough enough? Past a certain point, the dollar value earned just doesn’t give the same incremental gain to happiness or fulfillment. And it’s not like I’ll be able to take any of it with me anyway.
• This is all based on the premise of living for a very long time. Not that I am trying to jinx or ill wish anything, but we can make all the plans we want but we really have no idea what will happen tomorrow. There is No Day But Today. I don’t want to be forever working and waiting until that far off “someday” when I have enough money/security/other such and such to start pursuing my dreams. I don’t want to look back and have massive regrets that I’ve wasted my life.
• I don’t think just because I want to do something part time means I can’t be serious about what I choose to do in the time I’ve allocated to that part of my life or that I’m not committed. Although there is a positive correlation between time invested and seriousness/commitment to the task, it’s not necessarily causal; strategic focus, discipline, efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility are better measures.

Sometimes I think I’m stuck living in the future so much that I don’t know how to enjoy the present anymore. I feel physically and mentally drained and utterly exhausted every moment of every day. I dread every morning because I know I’ve got a massive stack of things left undone that I’ve already pushed back and need to be done because I can’t push them back any longer. I’m feeling guilty sitting here and writing this instead of working, because I had originally planned on doing work tonight but I couldn’t bring myself to. Just like how I was meant to work last Sunday but couldn’t force myself past the massive headache and then subsequently felt deeply guilty for not working.

Most of all, I wish I didn’t care as much about not letting other people down. I wish I could just let go of it all and not feel a thing. I wish I could bring myself to go on and buy a plane ticket right now and just…leave…

In a cruel twist of irony, I get this in my inbox today from Velocity Rewards, telling me about the great V Australia sales fares from Sydney to LA.

The past few months have really been a whirlwind for me. Not long after I was done with my audit busy season, I found out I was going to the Times Square New York office for a short ten week secondment – something that had been on my goals at Ernst & Young ever since I started as a trainee just over six years ago. I’ve lived in New York before as an exchange student and I loved it; and now having lived there for ten weeks as a working professional, I love it even more. Not because of the work, but because of how absolutely amazing the city is.

Coming back to Sydney after spending months is New York is always such a bittersweet thing for me. It’s so hard for me to describe the dichotomy of the person I become when I’m there and the person I am away from it all. Life in New York just seems more vivid and more real; sometimes I drift through the days here in a grey haze and nothing registers. Even with the ridiculous working hours (ridiculous because they really aren’t necessary), when I leave work at 10 or 11 PM, it still feels so early because your evening plans start at midnight. Leaving work at 6:30 PM in Sydney – early as that is – still feels incredibly late. It’s dark, everything is closed and I’ve got a horridly long commute home. Most of my waking hours – except for a few cherished moments on the weekends and some times after dinner during the week – kind of feel like this intellectually interesting puzzle which is both surreal and meaningless.

Anyway. The reason things have been so quiet here (apart from the usual refrain of work, etc) is I’ve been planning a trip to NYC (surprise, surprise) to study at Tisch over the summer (northern hemisphere summer). I’ve wanted this so badly for so long – pretty much ever since I found out more courses like the Musical Theatre Writing Workshop focusing on the three different components of musical theatre writing are offered over the summer session. While EY is reasonably accommodating as far as large employers go, the full two year Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at Tisch has never been a realistic option.

Summer school, however, was totally within reach, after all the scrimping and saving, and begging to get time off work. And as soon as I knew I could afford it, I spent – goodness only knows how many – hours talking to managers and partners and clients, rearranging my portfolio and the timing of my jobs so it could all happen. My time off has been booked in for months and months in advance. All the paperwork had been done. While I was in NYC for work, I’d done my homework and gotten internships at theatre companies lined up.

Originally I had enrolled in three courses – plus internship time – which was probably a little too ambitious to begin with (classes from 1 through 7 PM, Monday to Thursday for four weeks, plus additional classwork and other stuff on top? Bring it on! Yeah…I never learn). So when I got the first email, I actually breathed a little sigh of relief:

Cancelled - Crafts of Musical Theatre: Bookwriting

Just over a week ago, after finalising all my visa paperwork and getting the visa appointment scheduled, I got this:

Maybe Cancelled - Crafts of Musical Theatre: Music

Yesterday, at 6:12 AM, I was sitting here, shivering in the pre-dawn winter freeze, about to walk out the door to catch the bus so I could make my visa appointment at 8 AM in the city, and I get this:

Cancelled - Crafts of Musical Theatre: Music

Too good to be true. I am not paying ~$3k in flight and visa costs and 1 month off work to study 1 subject. Thanks, common sense and economics. I think a lifetime’s worth of careful planning – with said planning paying off – has spoiled me. There’s only been once other instance in my life where perfect planning did not get me what I wanted. I remember being immediately and totally devastated. At the moment, I feel – numb. At least I think I feel numb. That’s when you don’t feel anything, right?

I’m not sure the full impact has really sunk in – I think I’m still in shock. Maybe it’ll start to hit once I start emailing my friends in NYC to let them know I have to cancel on the plans we’d been making (like all the restaurants we didn’t get to try the last time around, the events we wanted to go to or trips we were gonna take), or my cousin who has also booked in leave to fly down to NYC from Canada so we can hang out for the second time in the fifteen odd years we’ve been apart since we were kids.

Or you know, we could go with the “I’ve-grown-as-a-person-and-learned-to-be-mature-and-resilient” and I’m dealing with this in a rational manner. I kind of like that idea more anyway, but my gut is telling me that I’m in denial.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. Everything at work has been scheduled with absolute precision so that I can finish everything by the end of June – since I’d wanted to fly in just in time to experience the crazy American-ness of the Fourth of July. It seems pointless now to take four weeks of leave, but I can’t think with all the noise going on. I feel like I need some time off just to meditate on what I’m going to do.

Maybe for once in my life I should do the irrational thing – caution be damned – and go anyway, just for the hell of it and see where I end up. You only live life once, right? It’s moments like this that I wish I could just let go of the constant analysis, weighing of pros and cons, drawing up budgets, logic, planning – all of it! – and just do what every single atom of my soul wants and run off to New York with nothing but $100 in my pocket, my laptop, keyboard and some clothes and live the life of a starving artist. Right up to the point where my inner cynic pulls a reality check on me.

Sometimes I really hate being the sensible and mature person. It feels like I end up with more work and having less fun. Usually some level of my mind understand that being sensible and mature pays its own dividends in the long-term, but this is not one of those moments.

This is an I am meant to be going to New York to study musical theatre in TWO WEEKS for a whole month where I don’t have to deal with numbers and accounting standards and audit methodology and being an intelligent automaton ticking off checklists and can actually go and do something creative but everything – EVERYTHING – I have worked for over the past year has just…collapsed…and there isn’t ANYTHING I can do about it moment.

This post has been really hard to write, in part because my thoughts are going everywhere and I have no idea how to structure this mess into anything cohesive; and in part because some of it I don’t really want to think about. I keep hoping that somehow when I go to sleep that I’ll find out I’ve really been having some sort of weird extended waking nightmare and this hasn’t happened; but even though it’s two in the morning now, I don’t – can’t – sleep because, well, that would make the next day come faster and facts are always harder to deny during the day, and the fact remains that I am not going to go back to New York for the summer.

A big thing I had really hoped for this July was to get clarity on what it is I want to do with my music – whether it’s something I can really look at pursuing as a viable career or whether it’s something that I have talent but no genius for. “Talent isn’t genius” and I’m so scared of finding out what the answer is that I half wonder if I don’t subconsciously make myself work stupid hours so I have all these excuses as to why I’m not trying hard to find out the answer here, that I have to push myself to go all the way to New York to find it (or maybe it’s just that I really, really love the city).

But now I think my thoughts are pretty much going in circles and I can’t really say anything else that I haven’t already said. I guess I should start the process of telling everyone that I’m not actually coming and try to get some sleep. Work and its deadlines make allowances for no one. Sometimes I wish I had less work ethic/scruples and more willfulness/self-interest; then for a penny I’d throw my arms up in protest and call in “sick” tomorrow…yet despite all of this, I’m still going to be at work by 8:30 AM.

C’est la vie.

Dropped - Crafts of Musical Theatre: Lyrics