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I’m not naturally a people person, so shortly after deciding I really liked stage management, I thought it would be a good idea to make management books a regular part of my reading diet. The thing is, whether you’ve got one person or five hundred reporting to you, in a theater or in a boardroom, it’s a good idea to learn more about management. After a while, I realized that a lot of these books repeat the same premises over and over again – so, as long as it was well writt

There are very few things I get really excited about, but good theater is one of them. Actually, it’s why I picked my entire career path. I was entranced by the magic of theater, the audience’s suspension of disbelief and the feeling that you can make happen onstage. I think a lot of people (though not all) choose their careers like that. I think they have some sort of romantic notion that acts as a trigger, pushes them through their studies and spurs them through different

Martin’s guest post last week about what you can learn from his best summer job really got me thinking. As someone a whopping decade removed from Martin (which is ridiculous, because plenty of days I still feel like I just graduated from college… and then I do something crazy like try to go out drinking with my brother who i s still in college and realize, no, I am definitely not 21 anymore), I reflected a lot on my various places of employment over the years: Cashier at Wa

So we’re about halfway through the year, how’s everyone doing with their New Year’s Resolutions ? I was pretty excited a few months ago to cross off  my first resolution , to find and furnish (in a financially responsible manner) an apartment. Thanks to my great hand me downs from my grandmother (who has pretty awesome taste) and Walmart, I managed to come in way under budget. Resolution #2 – join a gym and lose the circus weight (15 pounds) is sometimes edging towards suc

Salaries are a pretty closely guarded secret for most people – although clearly not me, since I’ve been posting my salary for the better part of a year. I can understand wanting to do so anonymously, but it would really be helpful for people interested in going into the arts to be able to get a better idea of what they’ll actually be making. When I used to tell people I was majoring in theater, older professionals would respond with “don’t.” What does that even mean? Were t

My friend J$ over at Budgets Are Sexy was kind enough to let me guest post today! Hopefully he's enjoying the extra day of paternity leave with his newest Penny. So if you've ever dreamt of running away with the circus, head over there and check this out. When I was eleven, I made a bucket list.  It has some crazy things on it like go skydiving (nailed it) and learn how a watch works (why did that seem necessary??), but I specifically remember rejecting “run away with the ci

**This is not a sponsored post. But it should be. I’m looking at you, Starbucks and Raise.com . However, there are affiliate links.**   If you’re taking your first baby steps into the personal finance world, you might be reading about something called the “latte factor.” This is essentially the amount of a small expenditure you regularly indulge in multiplied by the number of times you do it. So if you stop at Starbucks on your way to work every day, that’s $5 a day, $25

Every job has its tools and one of the biggest money suckers for a stage manager is their kit. What’s a stage manager kit? Well, it harkens back to the idea that a stage manager is the person who is “absolutely responsible for absolutely everything” for a production… which is an over or under simplification of sorts, but one of my professors in college described it as that and I never quite shook that definition. Your kit is how you pull this off. Has your actor walked h

After all that jetsetting through my twenties, I recently transitioned to a pretty normal job. Now I work as a Production Manager for an Off-Broadway theater. It’s sort of a step away from Stage Management, but uses a lot of the same skills. If, for some crazy reason, this was a path you were thinking of following here’s what 24 hours in my day looks like – a busier day (because the days I go in and work on my blog and update Facebook for 8 hours are not nearly as interestin

So, like I haven't rambled about my weird adventures enough in the last two weeks... if you wanted to know more about what it was like to live on a cruise ship, check out my guest post over at Budgets Are Sexy . Some people do crazy things like recycle their toilet paper to save a few bucks. I preferred living on a boat. Right out of college, I landed a job as a stage manager working for a cruise line. This turned out to be a pretty sweet gig. First, because I got a job work

As if I weren't ill adjusted to normal life enough from my days at sea , once I left ships, I joined the circus. The days honestly all started to blur into one of two types over the following weeks and months I was out with them. Except travel days. We lived on a train and train runs were glorious. The views were spectacular and there was never such a good reason to be lazy, stay in your PJs all day and watch TV. I miss them like you wouldn’t believe! So here's a glimpse at m

As if I weren't ill adjusted to normal life enough from my days at sea , once I left ships, I joined the circus. The days honestly all started to blur into one of two types over the following weeks and months I was out with them. Except travel days. We lived on a train and train runs were glorious. The views were spectacular and there was never such a good reason to be lazy, stay in your PJs all day and watch TV. I miss them like you wouldn’t believe! So here's a glimpse at m

I realize I advocate some crazy ways to pay off debt, like going to work on a cruise ship... and that life seems way out there to some of you. But one of my favorite kind of posts to read is 24 hours in someone else's shoes... so today I give you 24 hours in a cruise ship stage manager's shoes. The good, the bad and the ugly. First the good: Average Port Day 8:00 AM - 2:30 PM - Sleep or Explore Port Sometime before 12:00 PM - Check and answer e-mails. 3:00 PM - Rehearsal for

Sometimes I feel like a really inefficient side hustler, which is not entirely inaccurate, but writing the last few posts, and this one, reminds me that hasn’t always been the case. Whereas substitute teaching was definitely my first side hustle (oh, that’s a lie actually, I think pet sitting my neighbor’s cat when I was 12 could claim that title), the most consistent one over the years has been my pal eBay. I made my first ever eBay sale on June 12, 2003 and even without l

The other day I wrote about how mystery shopping won’t make you a millionaire , but today I wanted to write about a different side hustle that does have the potential to rake in some real cash – substitute teaching. If you work 9-5 Monday-Friday, you’re out of luck in this category, but if you have more leeway with your hours or work evenings and weekends, this could be a great side hustle for you. What do you need to become a substitute teacher? That varies from state to st

Some side hustles really seem to rake in the dough, even to the point where people turn them into their full time jobs. Mystery shopping is not one of these side hustles (although Kyle at The Pennyhoarder did do it full time for a while with ridiculous results – but his entire website is pretty much him pulling off insane hustles with ridiculous results), for the average Joe or Jane, mystery shopping is akin to what my grandma calls “pin money.” Honestly, my first experie

Sometimes I think arts and humanities degrees get a bad wrap. A recent comment over on my blog fired me up and led me to write an entire post on why a theater degree is not useless, and in all honesty, for me, a theater degree was not only totally useful, it’s been the catalyst to my crazy, awesome gypsy life.   Let me throw out a few disclaimers here. I think there are people who have, or find, big, hairy, audacious goals and dreams. They feel it deep in their soul that pain

During the time I was in college, I had three student worker jobs. Throughout all three years I was an undergrad, I wrote for the school newspaper as a freelancer and occasionally took photographs for them (at a whopping $5 a photo and $10 an article – if they even got published). Since that wasn't really enough cash to pay for much of anything, I also worked in the school scene shop and as a stagehand at the campus performing arts center – both of which were jobs that helped

Conventional wisdom says to go to school, major in something reliable that will make you lots of money, find a boy, settle down and stay there forever. Recently a commenter of my blog left the following note for me: I never understand why parents always seem willing to let kids invest in all these exotic majors – like French Literature, or Theater, or whatever. There is such a small job market for jobs related to these fields… For my youngest, I have made it abundantly clear