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Are you doing what you really love?
My house is filled with artwork right now.
Madeline, my eldest child, is working on her portfolio to apply to art school. In fact, she’s away this weekend looking at the school at Chicago Institute of Art. She’s seventeen. She’s talented. And she’s driven as all hell.
My daughters have dreams they are actually pursuing. Madeline wants to be a visual artist. Ava wants to be an actress. And my husband and I cannot push back. We are both working in the industry we dreamt of working in. Why should we ever tell our kids that can’t be anything they want to be?
One thing I want to tell them is whatever you are imagining your future to be, it might be a little different than you imagined. Life often forces a remix.
When my husband was a young performer, he wished he would one day see his name in Playbill, (the iconic magazine you are handed in Broadway theaters). Now he is in every Playbill, listed as “Jim Cairl, Director, Online Advertising and Operations” because he works there.
I wanted to be a published writer. And technically, that is true. But the day I finish a novel or a play or when I can make a living doing this, is still to come. Instead I’ve worked mainly promoting other talented people and their writing. I don’t mind it one bit. One of my articles was just used to advertise a…