Over the weekend, Jenny and I started making real, honest-to-goodness plans to move in together. This is a big deal. We have been talking about it (read: I have been pestering her) on and off for months, but this weekend, we started talking concretely. If all goes well, I will move into her place permanently in April, and I will be able to retire the stupid backpack that has been my constant companion since she and I got together a year and a half ago.
I am excited, do not get me wrong. I am super excited. I am also a hopeless romantic, and I am now starting to confront all of the factors I cleverly ignored when I started pestering Jenny to move in with me. Like?
Well, like money. In short, I do not have very much. This has not been a problem for me previously, because I knew what I was getting into in theater and entertainment. The bohemian lifestyle has suited me rather well for the last five years. (I don’t mind eating peanut butter for a week in trade for one really fantastic night on the town.) The thing I didn’t realize, though, was that it gets a lot harder to be a bohemian when you’re in a relationship with a grownup with a 9-5. It’s one thing for me to live in a less-than-great neighborhood whilst in pursuit of theatrical glory, but it is entirely another to ask her to move someplace crappy just to support my dreams-- especially when she can afford to live where she wants to. It is one thing for me to be a teeny bit late on my bills, but it is another when it impacts her and the electricity in HER apartment.
I don’t want to be a kept woman, I want to be an equal partner. So the long and the short of it, is that Mama needs a job, pronto. The arts are still a disaster here in the city, so I have been applying to every temp agency I can find. The tragedy is, however, that almost all my work experience has been in theater production, so I get a lot of glazed-over looks from the women at these agencies who say “well what do you DO, exactly?”I am not sure how to sell myself, and really just not sure what to do. I don’t know if I can stay in theater production anyway, because for me to work full time nights and weekends while she works days is not entirely conducive to a great relationship. All I know is that I have a certain amount of newfound let’s-be-a-practical-sort-of-grownup zeal which I wish I had had when I started college. (I think my exact words at 18 were “money? psh, who needs it?”)
Does this ever wear off? Am I going to be resentful of my newfound-grownup-job (if I can ever get one, with my lousy skill set?) And more importantly, why is there not an instruction manual for this kind of shit?!?!
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