Trains, metaphors...

I'm going to go ahead and skip all the "I've been too busy to blog stuff" and get right to it.  Things are great right now.  Lots of things floating in the air right now but definitely, there's a lot of potential and I'm choosing to look at it all as positive.  In the past few years since I've been living here I've gone from waiting and waiting for fun/good/awesome things to happen that I can write home about to realizing that I can usually tell when I'm on the way to stuff happening that is fun/good/awesome and that that alone is good enough to write home about.  Granted, this when I'm looking at this blog as a way to "write home when there's something to write home about."

I digress.  Point being, knowing how things ebb and flow, I can be so much more patient when good things are dangled in front of me and not instinctively run at them, knowing that what will come will come.  I had a moment this week where I almost ran at the thing and preempted a bunch of stuff that wasn't ready to be preempted.  I've often spoke to friends (especially fellow freelance friends), about how, ultimately I would like to be fully freelance, stitching together a living with voice over and film scoring jobs and the occasional TV or film job, here or there.  It's pretty much the dream right now.  The realistic dream.  Not that I don't still dream of being a full time composer.  But that's mostly what this blog is about.  So you all know that.

In the past few months, I've secured two well playing freelance jobs, one at TruTV and one at CNN.  I'm mainly working at CNN and still at NY1, with TruTV promising shifts when people call out sick or take vacation, but the simple thought that between those two other freelance jobs, I could supplement a whole new approach to my income, with voice over and music playing lead roles.  It'd really be the perfect scenario.  So the setup is there but in the execution is where the problem lies.

I took a few days to think it over. At different points during that time span, certain things occurred to me I hadn't initially realized and by the end of it all, it just didn't seem like the right time to make the leap for a myriad of reasons but it only took a few to really make me see.  I was far too eager, for starters. As I have been for the past few years.  But also, I was getting too far ahead of myself in terms of what was possible.  Without going too far into detail, it really came down to whether I could expect enough work from either freelance job to justify leaving the full time job.

Consensus: it's not time.  Oh, how I wanted it to be though.  Good thing I have long train rides during which to think these things over.  I even thought of a metaphor one night this week.  Working at 9am until 1130pm can really make you loathe waiting on the train platform at night.  I'm going to preface this by saying that soon, I'm going to start taking cabs home on the company's dime because they reimburse after hours cab fare.  But these last few weeks I've been taking sometimes hour long train rides home (including wait time) knowing that I needed to wake up at 730am at the latest.  And that's when it gets really really frustrating when you miss that first train or a connection.  After I moved to my current neighborhood a few years ago, I suddenly had about 9 different paths I could take to work.  So, on the way in, it's a matter, sometimes, of just taking the first train that comes. On the way home though, it's a guessing game as to which train is going to come first and then it's a gamble as to whether either path is going to get me home any sooner.  Forget for a minute that we're working with a range of about ten to twenty minutes difference, at most, in commute time.  Or maybe don't.  My ultimate conclusion, and what calmed my frustration, was that it doesn't matter what path you take sometimes and if it does, it's a difference of a few minutes that really isn't going to translate into a more restful night's sleep.  You're really at the mercy of the train schedule and the fact that there really is no train schedule.

Just as in life, sometimes you're at the mercy of what's available to you and have to make the most of the options available to you.  So maybe I don't need to rush at anything.  Not necessarily arbitrarily choosing my path but realizing that when the time comes, I won't need to.  That train will be coming and I can get on it and catch it without having to run down the stairs and risk spraining my ankle.  Nobody wants that.