My World is My Stage

When people attempt to look back and find that EXACT moment where they felt that shift in their professional career, they often tell some anecdote about people who once looked down on them breaking their necks to look up at them. No matter how sincere some of these stories are, their is always an air of snotty-ness attached the statement. …at the risk of perpetuating that, let me explain a moment of revelation I recently had. 

Before I start, as a kind of disclaimer, I, in NO WAY, think I have “made it” in my field but am just noticing, appreciating, being thankful, for a little upward movement.

I’ve been hired as a consultant at a local play development center to help them investigate the viability of one of their fellowships specifically for early-career playwrights of color. I was responsible for going through all of this informational material about the programs, some of their reports during its existence, and their grant proposal to funders to see what the history and focus of the program has been and what are ways it can improve. After forming initial thoughts on the subject, I interviewed field-wide practitioners on their thoughts about new play development, as it relates to early-career playwrights of color and collect their proposals on what an ideal program would look like. From these interviews, I am to write a report on the findings and help them think about the program’s redesign.

Well as I was conducting one of the interviews, I had a young staff member ask me “If there was anything else I needed?” A small gesture, admittedly, nothing more than just shear polite. I generally just ask for a bottle of water or politely say no, but this day I had a little bit of a headache (part sinus, part the drinking I did to celebrate Kappa Alpha Psi’s 101st birthday) and really needed something to eat. I ask if there was something I could munch on. To my EXTREME AND THANKFUL surprise, he brought back cookies, peanut butter-filled pretzels (an underrated treat!), an apple and some crackers!

I didn’t even think he would produce the crackers, but the fact that he went above and beyond for me really made my day, well shit, my professional career up to this point. While I realize one will never outgrow the role of getting things for invited guests to one’s organization, one does not always have the luxury of being asked “if there is anything else [they] need?”!  This small, possibly petty and vain and shallow, moment really made all of the stress, drama, disappointment, and the like I’ve endured worth it. For this brief moment, I thought that a career in this field wouldn’t be such a bad life, after all.