First off, 5 months wasn't enough time to be in New York. I've been doing the bad job/actor for almost 8 years. It took nearly a year to adjust and find friends in this extremely difficult city, but it has been worth it. I wouldn't leave for anything.

I'm confused as to what kind of actor this woman wants to be. In nearly every city there is a community theater group. Join it. Run the box office. Start an improv group and perform in your local comedy club. Write a piece and go to a poetry circle. Screw the fact your union status is up. And screw the MFA. And an agent? Bah. Pedigrees like that don't matter. Just loving it does.

LW talks about passion, but yet there is this underlying desire to be, dare I say, lauded by others for your work? Even to make money doing it so that you don't have to work in a real estate office? Those are empty goals to chase. The hard facts are that your work goes unappreciated and it's most definitely unpaid. Check the statistics on the latter. What is it? Like 80% of SAG members are without paid work?

Don't give up on your passion. It's obviously got a hold on you and forcing your mind to squelch it is giving in to all the complacency and conformity of our society. There is a shortage of wildly psycho creative people out there.

I get asked, "why do you do it for free?" I answer "because, deep down, it makes me better than you. I do it to escape the mind-numbing monotony, the house with a big yard, the upper management bullshit and other symbols of what passes for a life around here."

This letter, and the response, almost made me weep. Seriously. I'm a writer, like Cary, not an actor, but all artistic needs are similar in their ways, aren't they?

I, too, fought the urge to write fiction for years, mostly because I feared the criticism of others. So I wrote a masters thesis about Iris Murdoch, because I could and figured I'd be good at it, because it didn't really matter that much to me. It won an award at my university. Then, I moved on to writing non-fiction articles for various motorsports publications, because I knew most of the other writers were gearheads--lovely people, but usually not writers first--and I figured I'd be good at it because, again, it didn't really matter that much to my soul. During all of this, for years, I struggled with office job after office job--I was good at those too, because they didn't really matter--and told myself, periodically, that I should just tell the Fiction Writing Demons in my head to shut up because you can't make a living at that and besides, you probably aren't that good at it anyway. Just be a good manager and forget about it. Just like the LW.

(I should say, I took up the *teaching* of writing, part-time, as a hobby. "Just for fun," I said. So see, my subconscious wouldn't let it go. One should really pay more attention to oneself.)

It worked, for awhile. Then, I thought my ship had come in: I got a job in my "office" field, writing technical documents! Perfect! An office drone that had "writer" in her title!

Except that I had a nervous breakdown. Not *just* because of the technical writing--which I was woefully unsuited for--but I do believe that had a lot to do with it.

So I quit, and got a lower-paying, less-stressful office job that does not intrude, at all, into my personal life--but that does pay the bills quite handily. So that I can come home, every night, and write. A novel. That isn't very good right now, but the story speaks volumes to me, every minute of every day, and assures me that it will tell itself, if only I am patient, and give it time to reveal itself. I love it, even when it frustrates me. I feel like I'm a whole person, finally (oh, and I still teach, part-time, because teaching others how to write teaches me how to write too.) Even if it doesn't get published. Who cares? I'm doing it. Because I can. Because I must.

So, dear LW, do it. There is no need for your life to be one thing or the other. Engage your passion, live it any way you can. You have to. It's what you were put here to do.

Break a leg. ;-)

I too never completed coursework. With only 20 hours to go towards a degree I quit. Worn TFO from working full-time during the day and full-time at night in school. There, now my dirty little secret is out. Despite never fininshing, I've achieved much professional success; in this order: as a model, freelance writer, television reporter, and travel editor. But it doesn't change the way I feel about myself (Loser). To go back to college now means an additional 15-20 hours of refresher shit that's designed to discourage even the most committed. Oh well, poor me. I guess I'll just get on with living. It was the desire to achieve those things that drove me, not the credentials.

Now, I want to write cookbooks and become a chef! Try and stop me.

LW's letter was melodramatic and Cary's response was over-written. Forgive my bad mood, but you guys should look around a bit. This stuff happens to nearly everyone. It's a part of the human condition. Self-sabotage and laziness, regret for our self-sabotage and laziness, confusion, lack of direction, stumbling.

LW, my advice to you is to stop lingering breathlessly over send buttons, stop writing about your "problem", stop trying to define it, and stop boring your friends with it. Snap to and either go help out some theater company in Boston or wait a few more years or find something else. Stop pining and get playing in this life of yours. Pretty soon you'll be a dozen years out of school, then twenty, then more...and you'll have less choices than you do now, so live it up!