So, what's next?

Writer's note: This post is from 2015 and I'm not sure why I didn't publish it earlier but here it is!

Now here's the downside of what I'm going through...

I'm totally torn between two different factions. On the one hand I am madly in love with my company and all the wonderful things that we're doing. I can't even think of something that could replace it. But then there's this part of me that is sadly still torn between this and the opera. How do I embrace the inevitable change that could be the end of my 11 year run with the opera? It's a battle that I feel that I am facing on multiple fronts, both personal and professional. My biggest fear is that I will lose the personal relationships in either instance. I'm sure that's not the case but I can't help but think of it that way.

I guess the easiest way to to solve this is to make a list of the two things and compare right?

My happiest times at the opera have always involved the people that I'm working with. From learning how to be a stagehand, to times at the console, to becoming a part of the creative process--they've all been enveloped by a variety of people. When I came into the opera I didn't know anyone, not a single person. Not only did I have to face learning about the people I was working with but also had to re-assure myself that I knew what I was doing. When Dave hired me in 2004, my initial reaction was denial; I had been out of the game for at least a year and maybe the last time I picked up my wrench was to tighten a bolt on my dining room table. But the wonderful thing is that he saw something in me and quickly attached me to the then lighting supervisor, my former boss Ken. Ken was an interesting person; at first I was totally scared as hell of him. But he did teach me quite a few things about being a lighting supervisor but the most important thing I think he taught me was how to just plain survive the drama that was Virginia Opera. Of course working with Jay was one of the highest points of my tenure...and then he left...That definitely left a giant whole in my opera heart--who was going to be my partner in crime? Dave returned in 2012 and made that whole close a little but then he was promoted from TD to Director of Production. In an instant I felt alone again. I'm not opposed to working alone but it's a different kind of feeling when you feel alone in your environment. Trying to hold on to that friendship/work relationship started to become fairly complicated last year and I feel like something was lost. Guess that's one strike.

My job was a rocketed progression of promotions. From stagehand, to programmer, to touring electrician, to master electrician, to lighting supervisor I had the opportunity to learn a variety of things over several years. I embraced programming...after all, that's where I started. But what I realized about my promotion is that with all of that I was losing pieces of me that I didn't want to lose. And to try and justify that by saying, well just get your fix on your off time. There is no off time. I was starting to sacrifice my off-time which should have been family time to take on a ridiculous amount of outside work. It was a bad decision. Not only was I losing my family time but I became distracted from all the other things that I was supposed to be doing for the opera. My creativity was being fed, but my job was suffering. Strike two.

I think that's two pretty significant strikes.

So if it's that easy to drop those two reasons out of my brain, why is it not so easy to walk away?

Simple answers would be loyalty, respect, dedication. Those are usually the things that leave me attached to things that I no longer want to belong to. I like to describe this relationship as Ike and Tina.

So where are my strikes against my company? Well I think the obvious ones would be long days and long, long, hours. I mean, but what arts job doesn't have those? The opera does, the shop did, even my stupid pizza delivery job did. But I don't even feel like that is that big of a deal. I could say that we're a bit disorganized, which makes my little obsessive compulsive brain go insane but again, what new company isn't? Every step is a step towards organization and progression.

So with all that being said, what's next? What is my next move? How do I continue from here now putting on paper what I have been avoiding saying out loud.

Reason number 32 why I have this blog I guess.