Recently, Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) spoke about almost quitting the music business. She then posted a video explaining why. She stated. “I started saying no.“ She continued, “Slowly but surely, I remembered who I am. And then you go home and you look in the mirror and you’re like, yes! I can go to bed with you every night. That person, I know that person, that person has balls, that person has integrity, that person has an opinion.”
Quitting the dance scene has been a shadow following me around for quite some time. Last year I did what I promised myself to be my last working performance. I said to myself, “This is my last dance gig – I am going to peruse something else still within the entertainment industry but something that’ll bring back the hunger of creating. I am happy and fulfilled with my achievements and have reached everything I’ve dreamed of.” One year later I still find myself working as a dancer not having walked away. Then I stumbled across this video and thought to myself, “Why? Why give up everything I am and everything that I know, when instead I can remain doing what I have a passion for simply by saying no to the things that make me unhappy and redirecting my focus and energy?”
Five years ago I embarked on a new chapter. I had graduated from my fulltime Performing Arts course, and three months later I was offered my first contract at Universal Studios in Singapore. I had never left Australia and never owned a passport. Once I completed my one-year contract I began to think, “This is awesome! Where to next?” Five years later I have a few pages left in my passport and can say I’ve experienced above and beyond some of my wildest dreams. But why do I feel like there is so much more?
As an artist we go through a common phase of reevaluating our lives when we have no contract, work, or no next step forward. It is that transition phase we go through when we have no direction and are continually waiting for the next tour or the next approval for an audition we attended a month ago. I have known this feeling one too many times. I have stared at my application form for a business degree for hours on end thinking maybe I should try something new. Then I get an email saying I got the job for so and so; surprise surprise, I feel like myself again. But hold on, why are we waiting approval from others? Why cant we be the ones who decide yes or no? We are in control of our own art. As Gaga stated, “I am not a money making machine.” We depend on that last gig to pay our rent, but forget how it actually made us feel. There is a vast difference between getting paid doing what you love, and being dependent.
I had a talk with a very successful actor in the business. He said to me, “I started producing films and acting in my own work. I knew that if I was going to succeed it was going to be on my own time, not on someone else’s clock as I wait for them to choose me for their film. I was an aspiring actor but I was one step ahead. I made my own and became successful that way. You need to think ahead of time and where you want to be in 10 years time.” This was probably the best advice I’ve ever been given; be your own boss.
I aspire to inspire myself and those around me, whether it be on stage, off stage, on film or off film, creating music, through writing, or through literally just be-ing.
Living a life in limbo can be a blessing in disguise. This world is of infinite possibilities that lie on the other end of fear, buried in the back of our minds. . Get out there and do what needs to be done. Only you can do what you do best.
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