Living Like A Monk

We've just had an austerity chat in the office. I'm still very much a learner in the austerity stakes. While the money pressures of living alone have curbed my ability to spend money on things I don't need, I do still have a tendency to splash out. I still shop in Waitrose, for example. I know I should stop but I can't quite bring myself to. I bloody love Waitrose. I also had to buy some clothes at the beginning of March in order to wear something colourful for my dazzling television debut. Apart from that, though, I've done alright. I've definitely turned the volume down on the bit of my brain that expects Things as a matter of course. I struggle a bit with social spending but life is about to change significantly...

From my previous hints, you may be aware that I have been gearing up for Significant Changes to take place in life and that. As of now, I know they're actually going to happen so I don't mind letting you in on my news. About a year ago, my Mum surprised me in the middle of a phone conversation by offering to send me to drama school. I stopped talking coherently for about ten minutes and just made noises to reassure her that I was still on the other end of the phone. It took me about three months to decide whether I was going to do it and a further six months to actually fill in and send five forms off for MA Acting courses. It should have been six but one of them got lost in the post and I was feeling the pinch and delayed sending off the £35 audition fee until the point where it was no longer an issue. Anyway, I've had four auditions so far, I've received one reserve offer from Glasgow, two full offers from Birmingham and Guildford, I'm waiting to receive a response to my audition a week ago back from Central and trying to decide whether I need to go to East 15 at all. Whatever I choose to do, I am set for next year.

Now, this is both terrifying and exhilarating. I expected that it would take me a couple of attempts to actually get a place. I was not expecting anywhere near this level of success and I am fair giddy about the Guildford offer as I loved it when I went there. What it tells me is that I offer something that people are interested in working with and that is so exciting. The main reason I want to go is to get some more training, work with people who love it all as much as I do and not have to spend every day staring, pointlessly, at a computer screen. But...

I don't know if it is going to work out. I don't know if I can cope with being an actor. That's the smaller voice in my head. The big clamouring, shouting voice is saying "you're never going to save up enough money to live on, you know". I've got a year now that will probably cost me £6000/£7000 just on living costs. And that will be on a strict budget. I spend more than that in half the time now. And then the smaller voice pipes up again saying that I'm going to be as poor as a church mouse, possibly for the rest of my working life if I choose to go down this road. The next few months will see the start of austerity times as I am moving back in with my Mum, hopefully will get a second job and will spend all the rest of my time flogging things on eBay and exercising. It's going to require a lot of discipline and frugality.

The thing is, what's the use of all the stuff? It is nice being able to buy things, it really is. But I don't have any dependants and I don't have to lead an extravagant lifestyle to spend time with lovely people. The truth is that I have started to realise that there is more to life than security. It is the fear that plagued me throughout my twenties and stopped me from doing anything more exciting with my life. If it gets too much, that'd be the point at which I say "well, I've tried it, I've proved something to myself and I've got some enviable educational administration skills to fall back on". But right now, in full possession of my own life and a determination to actually do something worthwhile with it, I will be jetting off into the sunset.

I'm not the person I was even a year ago. I wrote a post ages ago about my need to hide aspects of my personality away as though I was ensuring some sort of air of mystique in order to keep up the pretence that I am more interesting than I actually am. You know what, maybe I am interesting; no need to pretend. I have awards and trophies and I get offers from drama schools. And, in a moment of glorious closure, we revisited the short play for which I had received the "four... after a pint" comment from an audience member regarding my looks. This time we were performing as part of the All England Theatre Festival for which we receive adjudication. The adjudicator started discussing my performance and said "I don't know, she said she was a nine..." Imagine my heart plummeting as I waited for the end of the sentence "to me she was more like a ten". I nearly cried.