Supporting my habit

There are moments I catch glimpses of myself in the bathroom mirror at work and really see what I look like in my day-glo orange polo that's tucked into my khaki shorts with my visor on and I think to myself, "Jessica Dean Turner, you're living the dream."

Or I'll be getting yelled at by some shoe salesman in New Jersey who has demanded that "my people" take him off our call list, or I'll be sending out email after email to schedule and reschedule and re-reschedule my life around auditions, rehearsals, and my side job for my side job, and I'll remind myself the same thing.

I wear a lot of hats- or visors, or name tags, or reading glasses and button downs- to support this lifestyle of a young artist. Beyond the buckets of money I'm pulling in (I'll be doing my autumn wardrobe shopping at the laundromat lost and found, and splurging on nothing but the finest dollar menu treats) I'm also getting an untaxed education on what goes into supporting myself in a non-fiscal sense. Here's what I'm doing to support my actor-life that doesn't involve time sheets and sensible shoes:

1) Being more vigilant about the words and concepts I choose to describe my current state:

I am making the conscious effort to no longer describe what I'm doing as a "struggle". Not being able to afford a Starbucks blueberry scone and iced coffee everyday is not a struggle. Being tired because I have a job to wake up to early in the morning is not a struggle; not having one is. This is just new. It's just a different muscle, a different discipline, and as soon as I start allowing myself to slip into the song and dance about how I'm "struggling" is when resentment slips in, and it's a slap in the face to all the things that I am blessed with.

2) It's fine to lie down with Coltrane and a McFlurry when things are hard for a little while, but you have to get back up:

I have no delusions about the fact that things aren't always fair, people will let you down, feelings will be hurt, and things are just sometimes plain discouraging. I'm an optimist, but I ain't crazy. I know that things aren't and cannot alway be as rosy as I'd like and there are days where all I'll want to do is come in from the Blue Line, shut down, and try again in a decade or so. I'm learning that hiding behind strength and put-on positivity when you're hurting is just as detrimental as wallowing in your bad day, with no plans of resurfacing. In my last NPR binge, I heard the quote, "The heart that does not get the chance to break can only harden." I do a good job of finding the good, but sometimes the best service you can do for yourself is setting down your venerable load, having the hurt, and rising again, richer despite only have $3.53 in your checking.

3) Reminding myself that, "It's not a race, Jessica, don't try to keep up with anybody but yourself":

I'm taking myself to task on measuring my own progress by my own means, not avidly looking over the fence at what anyone else is doing; the neighbor's grass will always be greener if you spend all your time watching there's and not watering your own. Stay in your lane, pray for, support, be inspired by the work of others, but don't drive yourself crazy and miserable counting anyone else's blessings. If anything, steal from them.

4) Letting go. Not everything and everyone can make the trip with you:

One of the more bitter pills to swallow is that in support of myself, I'm taking some inventory on ideas that were once comfortable but are no longer serving me, things I at one time accepted despite the fact that they don't benefit me, situations that never lived up to their potential. Gotta bag and twist tie all them insecurities, all that self-doubt and deprecating attitudes, the fears, and throw it away. Forgive, and get out. Bag lady, you gon hurt yo back draggin' all them bags like that. I'm giving myself the gift of release, trying to. My apartment's too tiny for all that mess, I barely have the space for the things I actually need.

5) Treating the people in my life that I love like I love them: self-explanatory. To feel loved give it. Often. To those who deserve it.


My director recently asked me about my new apartment, and in my automaton Midwestern way, I replied "It's really nice." Then I paused, and corrected myself. "No, that's not true." I'm writing this from the busted couch on the back porch with the breeze blowing through the windows lined with Rex Goliath bottles, next to the mini-picture of the Dali painting of the melted clocks. No, this place isn't perfect, by any means. It's messy, and for right now, exactly what I need. It's mine. For the moment, the best thing I can do to support myself, is own where I am, be right there with it as it evolves in whatever way it does.

Til then, I better lay out my khakis and polo for the morning.

Viva la day job.

Love is what makes you smile when you're tired

Sometimes I think my family and friends are on the payroll for some basic cable network to keep me in the dark that my life is actually a reality show. My own little Truman Show that comes on a channel I don't get, probably with some pseudo cool name, like "Jess in the City", or "Lifestyles of the Broke and Shameless".

Moments like this past Monday make me certain that I'm going to turn and see a boom protruding from the wall before some hired hand hurriedly hides it. 

Maybe. 

Monday morning, after being turned away from the CTA for trying to bring my bike on board during morning rush hour- see: haters- I now had little more than an hour to peddle from the westside to my job interview at Navy Pier.  Dressed in my interview garb, Google Maps telling me I had to about 10 miles, and I had not had my Wheaties or even a swig of Great Value instant coffee. 

A girl's gotta eat, gotta work to eat, gotta have a job, gotta peddle. Zooming through Chicago morning rush hour, Motown Pandora providing ironic underscore ("Everybody plays the fool... Sometimes...")

I felt like I was on some strange "I Want to Work for Diddy" challenge, like I had fifteen minutes to get to the Bronx and get Mr. Combs a sugar cookie, but I made it, on time, a little sweatier from the journey, having been called some colorful names by drivers, and having lost a shoe from my bag that I had planned on changing into post-interview (if you see a pink and gray cross-trainer out there between Laramie and Sacramento on Lake Street, it's scared and lonely and wants desperately to return home) but I was there and ready nonetheless. 

Thank the lord for clean public restrooms  to freshen up and McDonald's large dollar coffees. Amen.  

One month ago today, I closed my first professional show in Iowa City, was living with six cats in an 1860s mansion. I was exhausted, humbled by the experience and the outpouring of love that came from the ensemble and community, and anxiously looking ahead to the next adventure, wondering what shape it would take and what permutation of the ever evolving Jessica would be embarking on it.

With my luggage, my bicycle bruises, my country road tan, and abundance of lessons, experiences, and new tribesmen and women who I'm proud to know as artists and have as colleagues and friends, I came back to Chicago to join the hustle. 

The event I described above was the most vivid example of what that hustle feels like, and it cannot be created in a classroom. My month being back in the city since Riverside's closing has been filled with building this new muscle, the willingness to audition for everything and go broke/tired/hungry for the opportunity to keep going. 

Lessons from the front have included:

The mathematics of "If I get on the train at 6:30 for a 7:45 audition, will I be done before my transfer expires or will I have to put more on my fare card?" Graduated from word problems to simply, problems? Word.

The grace and integrity of how to walk into the room as if you didn't just contend with a thousand degree heat and a string of unfortunate events involving friends, lovers, mailmen, and the realization that you are vying for a spot that so many others are-who, for all intents and purposes are exactly your "type"- and still do your best work, or at least try.

The bounce back ability when you walk out of an audition knowing that you just dropped some doodoo in that room, but not dwelling on it long enough to stop putting myself out there... Although long enough to ease my bruised ego with some mini bottles of Chardonnay and a movie. Then I got it together. 

How to, always, always, always remember the joy- even when, especially when, my feet hurt, my tires are flat, the things that were working are now missing, and when they smile in your face and you never hear from them again. The saltiest first date,  cue Prince: "All I wanna know is baby, if you said my audition was good, HOW COME YOU DON'T CALL ME ANYMORE?"... Can I at least get my headshot back? 

And most importantly, how to maintain my own process when nobody's there under fluorescent lights at 9 in the morning to coach me through anymore. How to trust what I've learned, use what I've learned, and move that forward, how to fuse all these things so that my training enhances my art, and my art enhances my self and vice-versa. 

Under is over. For real for real over. And while the sadness (and at times, joy) that knowledge brings me ebbs and flows, I'm feeling the beginnings of a different kind of strength that can only come with independence, the  

knowledge that this leg of the journey is my own. This is in no way meant to downplay the men and women in my life whom I am blessed to call my inspiration, my encouragement, my family, my friends, but to fully honor the gifts they give me continuously, I have to stand as I am and forge my own way. 

I'll close with this, since I've decided to celebrate the month of August Wilson August, with a quote of his from the preface of King Hedley II:

" Before one can become an artist, one must first be. It is being in all facets, its many definitions, that endow the artist with an immutable sense of himself that is necessary for the accomplishment of his task. Simply put, art is beholden to the kiln in which the artist was fired."

Let it burn. 

And stay tuned for Lifestyles of the Broke and Shameless.

The title of this post is a quote from Paulo Coelho.