Before I start tonight's article, can we just take a moment to appreciate Dolly's sequin cardigan. I can just imagine sitting down to my Mum's christmas dinner wearing this wonderful woolen thing, haha!
Anyway, today I want to talk about comfort. Being comfortable in a routine, in waking up and being comfortable with expecting the same thing five days a week. Now for some, this is the ideal lifestyle, and I fully appreciate why being able to rely on a structured income and routine is necessary. But I want to share my thoughts about risk vs. comfort.
I am a young girl with no current responsibilities; I have student finance to back me up and I don't have a family to support; therefore structure and reliability isn't my priority right now. But I still want to aim this post to people of all ages and responsibilities.
Approaching my third and final year as a student, I'm obviously starting to think about what the next couple of years will include, mainly debt and job hunting! But here's the thing, as an actor I'm going to have a 'normal' side job, this could be working as a sales assistant, or behind the till at McDonalds, anything to pay the bills. PAY THE BILLS - what a horrendous phrase. Now I have always been an ambitious worker, I think the most important thing is to dream, and dream BIG! And yes, paying the bloody bills is obviously a necessity in adulthood, but I think it's such a shame that some people make this their only necessity! Now I'm writing this, funnily enough, with the comfort of student finance and my parent's to run home to; this time next year it could be a whole different story. But I want to stress the idea of always bettering myself and my ethic of living as a hardworking, ambitious dreamer! If anything, I want to always work on improving myself, whether that be improving my burger flipping skills, or making sure I never give up on the difficulty of achieving my dream!
Dreaming big and taking huge risks is bloody scary, but that's okay. Finding a spider in your bath is also scary, or falling over when running to the canteen on your first day of school (which definitely happened to me). There's hundreds of "normal" and pedestrian things to be scared about, so why not be scared about dreaming big, be scared about something that excites you. Don't let comfort defeat you, fight normality and routine, just give it a go! Inspire yourself. Open your eyes and see your potential. In the wise words of Dolly, you just need to pour yourself a cup of ambition! I understand earning money is important, but try not to get stuck in comfort. You can always find comfort with a nice book and a cuppa in bed. D'you know what excites me the most about my life right now? The fact that I wake up at 7:30 on a Monday morning with butterflies in my tummy, because I know that I have an unpredictable week, of loving what I do, ahead of me. In all honesty, I sometimes wake up wishing it was still Sunday, lets not get too ambitious here, but you get my jist? I have taken a risk by coming to Drama school, it's not comfort and it certainly isn't the norm. So I urge you to challenge yourself. And that doesn't mean run away to become an actor, this is aimed at everyone - office workers, if we didn't have you, I wouldn't even be at Uni because my application wouldn't have been notified.
Just try to ease yourself out of the comfort of your normal, comfortable routine. Is comfort really a way to make a living?
