When I was a girl, I stood one day in the art shop of the NAC, reading something, and it hit me. A voice said in my ear, quietly and rationally, "Be an actor."

I'd been debating what to take in university -- English? History? Anthropology? -- and unable to decide. Now I knew. I'd done a fair bit of theatre and improv in school, but it hadn't actually occurred to me that this -- more fun than anything else -- could be a career choice. Apparently it could.

I went off and studied Theatre Arts in a town six hundred kilometres or so away from where my parents lived. (This had nothing to do with acting, and more to do with the fact that I couldn't be in the same room as my mother without fighting with her until I was at least twenty-six or -seven.)

Two years passed. I loved being on stage, and all the words and workup to being on stage. Sadly, I was cast much less, and in smaller roles, than the prettier, less chubby girls. And when I lost my student loan funding (due to events wholly beyond my control) I panicked and chickened out. I wasn't pretty enough to be an actor, nor was I stable enough to deal with constant rejection. Was I crazy? Did I want to starve and commit suicide under a bridge? No!

I wandered off and started working for local government instead. I got cats. I lived with a guy for a long while -- long after it stopped working out, in fact. I drifted to better jobs within said local government, as things opened up before me -- not great things, but all right. I got married. I bought a house. I kept on performing, in amateur theatre, getting better roles, and still loving it.

Eighteen years passed, mostly in a sort of daze. Every now and then I would wake up, wonder what the hell I was still doing here, marking time instead of doing something meaningful, and get seriously depressed. But the thing with serious depression is, it's so much fun all on its own that you don't really have time to consider the issues behind it. Then by the time you're over it, you're so worn out that a bit of boring normality is great, really.

This time, I saw the depression coming, looked it in the eye, and said, "Oh no, not again," and surprisingly, meant it.

All right then, I said to myself, if we're not going to angst about wailing and bleeding out misery, then something must be done. But what?

A change! I shrieked back. Change everything! Get divorced, move to Wales, write poetry and work in a bar! Finish one of your novels! But whatever it is, get out!

Well, that did strike me as a bit extreme. I considered. Yes, writing... and boy, that cottage in Wales seemed attractive... I don't know about divorce -- a new lover would be exciting, yes, but in the long term, is there really someone all-round better out there?... but what it is, what I need, is creativity. Ahhht, dahling.

I rolled my eyes at myself, talked sternly about benefits and mortgages, and considered further. No, seriously, I said, what about freelance writing? Mortgage, bah. I don't need a house, I said.

You'd feel differently about that if you hadn't got one, I replied.

Lookit, I said, about the writing. I feel dead already. Am I supposed to carry on like this until I actually AM?

But the thing I love best about writing, isn't the writing -- it's reading it, performing it out loud. I write, constantly, and even think in print, but I don't think of myself as a writer. I perform. All the time, every day. I get dressed up in character to go to work, and another character to go out dancing. I transmute myself at intervals. And when I'm on stage, I'm alive.

You aren't any prettier, I said. You're also twenty-ish years older.

Ah. But I've got a more realistic viewpoint now, I said. I don't expect to be a star. Performances need good, solid people who aren't stars, too. And no matter HOW bad auditioning and rejection is, is it any better than waking up every single morning and hating oneself for taking the easy way out and into a life of nothing?

You'll feel differently about that when you don't have gym access. Or nice food. Or money when you want it for books.

Maybe.

I still have the civil service job; I am the queen of safety nets. But we'll see what we can do.