Picking up the trail from where I left off in December, here is my Drama Queen saga...
I sat on my couch feeling sorry for myself. "Everyone is the expert of something," the teleconference coach stated. Enrolled in a 8-week course to launch my "infopreneuring" career, my goal was to write a non-fiction book and marketing plan I could take to Book Expo in LA. The problem was that I had neither a topic nor an area of expertise. It was 2003 and I was creeping up on 34 with as much clarity on my career as I had had at 20.
I graduated from college with a Bachelor's of Science in Journalism. Majoring in advertising, I landed my dream job as a media buyer three years after graduation. Three years after that I was an account executive and could not care less about advertising - so I left the safety of my paycheck and health insurance to pursue writing. Except that I soon discovered a penchant for comedy and took the route of performing instead. A few years later I wrote, produced and starred in my own short film which then lead to the creation of two screenplays and a brief involvement with a cult (more on that later). To pay the bills I donned the hat of project manager meets sales consultant. It barely paid the bills which brought me back to the worlds of waitressing and temping until I finally met a man who would work a real job while I watched Oprah and dabbled in "being creative."
So here I was on the couch and as I reflected back over the previous 12 years I concluded that I had blown it. I had wasted a dozen years resenting Corporate America, procrastinating on any number of good ideas and distracting myself with romance. It seemed that by their mid-thirties any number of people had pulled their act together to produce a decent living - be it at a job or even at writing. Not me though, and as I sat there facing the culmination of my choices I felt the urge to cry. Except I didn't. At that moment when I could neither beat myself up nor feel sorry for myself any further a subtle realization crept over me. These thoughts... these emotions... they were familiar. They were identifiable and fixable. I knew they'd pass and I knew then that I was the expert of something. I wasn't the expert of feeling sorry for myself so much as I was the expert of drama. I could take the smallest passing thought, the slightest comment or casual look and spin it into a three-movie franchise called, "What About Me??????????????"
And that is how I finally identified myself as the expert of something. I was an expert drama queen and could see all the phases of my life bleed into each other with the fullest sprectrum of emotion one can experience without being bipolar. I hung up from my conference call and the seeds of my realization took root in a book called, Drama Queen's Guide to Dating. The book I eventually wrote remains unpublished and I dare say that copius amounts of drama have continued to unfold in my life over the past [gasp] seven years. Life is as stable as it can get (knock on wood) with a great corporate gig, loving family and fabulous house, and yet there is yearning for more.
