On the Actor's Hustle

"I feel like on a scale of one to ten, I kinda hit ten when I stopped having to serve people food. So, I've been riding ten ever since. This is great." 

-Chris Pratt of "Parks and Recreation" to Ellen DeGeneres on the recent successes of his career.

I really have to stop worrying about losing my job.

The poor economy is hard on everyone, but according to a recent study, my age group (18-34) is hit the hardest by it. I used to joke that those of us graduating with degrees in art were actually better off than graduates in other fields in a recession because we always expected to be unemployed. Everyone else had the rug pulled out from under them. “But I have a degree in human resources?! I should have a job!” is somehow a stronger argument than “I have a BFA in Acting and I got an A’s in yoga and circus skills, dammit!” Still, the awareness that acting jobs are hard to come by doesn’t make this first year out of school any easier.

It is nearly impossible to launch an acting career while working a 9-to-5 job. Over the last few months, I’ve found a number of part-time gigs in Chicago. I’m a nanny, a knitting instructor, a waitress, and a standardized patient (that's where I act like a sick person in order to prepare doctors for their USMLE Clinical Skills). These gigs (usually about 30 hours a week) pay the bills. But my job, first and foremost, is being the CEO, CFO, marketing director and product of the Maura Clement Corporation. My duties include, but are not limited to, rehearsing my upcoming play, seeking out and doing auditions, sending out headshots, staying physically fit (God bless all those Groupons for yoga), keeping abreast of what’s going on in the Theater (mostly through Jacob Perkins' facebook page), seeing shows around town and avoiding accidentally responding to adult film audition postings on Craigslist (*please note, dear reader, that “adult actress” does not refer to your age.) I continue to remind myself that I am an actress for a living, a waitress to pay the bills.

Scheduling my life is a nightmare. I always seem to be bartering for my time. Here’s a recent example, I needed to travel to Minneapolis for my Montana Shakespeare audition on a Tuesday, when I usually nanny. The family gave me Tuesday off in exchange for my Saturday night, when I often waitress. So I tell my manager at the restaurant that I can’t work Saturday and cross my fingers that it all works out without anyone firing me. And up till this point, it always seems to. This seems to be the case nearly every week. The juggle is how do I keep my art always my first priority without totally pissing off the people who I currently depend on financially?

The obvious conclusion I’ve recently come to is that if I get the acting job, which is after all the whole point, I’m going to have to quit all other jobs anyway and move to effin’ Montana. SO WHO CARES?!  Now I’m not saying I plan on being inconsiderate or a bad employee. On the contrary, I try to be a great nanny and waitress so that these people continue to think I’m worth all the hassle. But I need to give myself a break and not worry about losing these jobs because I see no end to the hustle. Am I going to always have a pit in my stomach for fear of losing my humble income? Hopefully one day the hustle will just be made up of acting gigs (How will I ever balance all these movie offers?! Life is so stressful!), but the reality is that in this field, we artists are continually interviewing for the next job. 

I'd like to transition the hustle to being made up of commercial gigs, teaching gigs, Standardized Patient gigs, knitting gigs, and acting gigs. That would be perfect. That would be a ten.

But regardless of the career hustle, life happens. There are things that are more important than my acting career and those things are people. Life happening is the best way to get perspective on the relative insignificance of whatever triviality I am worried about. Today my brother Jeff returns from his second 7-month tour in Afghanistan. So I dropped everything, got out of work, hopped a flight (very generously donated by the Dave and Jenifer Clement Foundation for Getting their Daughter Places) and am eagerly waiting to celebrate his safe return. That’s real life. My best friend Tina came to visit and we adventured around finding Chicago’s photobooths. That’s real life. My godmother is bravely battling a tumor. That’s real life. A boy brought me flowers on a third date. That’s real life.

Never forget that the best way to enrich your artistic life is by living your real one.

Chicago Photobooth Pub Crawl

Like every good adventure, it began with a dream. Tina Le, visiting from New York City rolls over in the morning and says to me, “I had a dream that we went to a photobooth and I licked your face.” I responded, “Let’s make it happen.” And so began a beautifully improtu photobooth pub crawl around my neighborhood, Wicker Park. Now, I don’t go out much and I don’t often buy drinks when I do go out. But I am type-A and I do love goals. So let’s say this evening I was a goal oriented drunk... Buy a different drink and take a photo at all the places with photobooths. Our first stop was the famous Reckless Records on Milwaukee Ave, a place I knew Tina would love because of it's wide selection of Jack White 45's. No drinking at Reckless, but Tina did find a record for her collection.

Next stop was my favorite bookshop, Quimby's ($3 a photo, black&white) on North Ave. Best part of Quimby's was the props they had available. Both Tina and I paid homage to our favorite book, Just Kids by Patti Smith, me with the book, her with her Robert Maplethorpe tee. There was also a fan, cause Tina is my geisha, and a rubber shark cause I am a bathtub explorer.

Our journey was destined to because of a serendipitous street art exhibit that was happening under the Damen Blue Line train station. Kiam had hung a mirror in the shape of "I AM" on the brick wall. We wrote what we were on a post-it and then he took this polaroid of us. We wrote, "Maura's best friend" and "Tina's best friend." How sweet.

Tina says this photo looks like she's meeting a celebrity.

A short jaunt down Damen past Division led us to the Rainbo Club ($3, sorta sepia, analog). The bartender proudly declared that their photobooth was one of two analog photobooths in the state and apparently Liz Phair took the cover photo for her album Exit in Guyville there. We drank Old Fashioned's in honor of Don Draper.

We continued down Damen to my favorite place on the adventure, Bar Deville. ($5, sepia, digital) We drank Tina's favorite beverage in the world, hard cider. There is free pool, lots of space, funky upholstered furniture and the feel of a French dive. We upset some gentleman by borrowing the pool equipment for props... and Tina bit my ear.

Our final stop was Beauty Bar on Chicago Ave where the bouncer was kind enough to let us not pay cover to get in to use the photobooth... but tragically...

And so ended a very well documented evening in Chicago.

Advice for Moving to a New City in your 20's

Robert and I in the bean's reflection.

I've lived in the windy city three months, my car is buried in the snow, and I don't have to leave my apartment today so I think it's a good day to reflect on things I've learned recently. Sometimes when I am looking in the mirror pinning braids on top of my head or laying in bed around noon knitting because I'm a waitress who doesn't work till 6, I wonder who is this adult woman I've become? 

Things I've learned in the form of advice for twenty-somethings maybe moving somewhere:

• First of all, I think moving is awesome. I think everyone should try it. Chicago is great.

• Buy a table. Go on craigslist and find some family upgrading from their first table with the fingerpaint stains to a nicer one and buy it. The kind dad who sells it to you might also show you how to fold down the seats in your Civic. Maybe you didn't even know the seats could do that! A table is a good idea for many reasons: 

1. Fabric gets dirty if you cut it on the floor. You can now cut fabric on your table.
2. You don't have much money. That means when you break your Macbook because you store it on the floor next to your bed and you groggily reach over in the morning to check the time because you can't find your phone (it's probably in your bra from last night, but anyways...) and you drop it... your mom won't pay for a new one. A table is a great place to keep a computer. Because, be real, if you break this Macbook, you're going to have to replace it with a small, weird HP that costs $250... and nobody wants that.
3. Eating oatmeal in bed is sad. Effin' sad, Maura. Stop it. Buy a table.

• Get a serving job at a restaurant you can't afford to eat at. If you can't afford to eat there even with your discount, that's better! People pay you to talk to them. If the restaurant has a theme, like, for example, sweet country goodness, dress up in that theme at work. The people will love it. They might even refer to you as a banjo-picking Zooey Deschanel even if you can't pick a banjo... you probably need bangs though... some of this advice is kinda specific... Oh, and be really nice to your busser and dishwasher. He works harder than you and makes less money. And if you are very nice to him, he'll start calling you, "Maura, numero uno..." (but probably only if your name is Maura...)

• Go out with people after work. You aren't in school anymore. You don't have homework. Buy a round of beer for everyone. Be generous. Plus Daydream Believer will probably play on the jukebox at the bar you go to and you'll want to dance to it... just check to see if the floor below you is wet with melted snow before you hop excitedly off your bar stool to do so... if you don't, you will fall. On your face.

• You may be really good at something. But you may be crap at teaching other people how to do it. Or you may think you are really good at something and you may have learned how to do it wrong years ago from an 8 year-old. I had this experience at the yarn shop. Now, I'm not saying I'm crap at teaching knitting... but I had absolutely no vocabulary to speak about the things I did with my hands and things like "dive, scoop, swing, twist, wrap" mean different things to everyone. Also, I've been casting on my projects wrong my whole life. Thanks, 8 year-old MaryGrace Joyce. Thanks. So take a humility lesson and try to teach something that you are awesome at to a group of 8 people. It's very hard, but you will get better at it. Also, become an apprentice somewhere, learn from a master. The tricks of any trade aren't actually tricks, they take practice. Oh and if you have a tattoo of a yarn ball on your body, you better be able to tell someone what Merino Wool is. Just sayin.

• Talk about your heroes with people. It's way better than talking about yourself. Talk about Tina Fey. People love Tina Fey.

• If you move to a new city, throw a party before you think you have enough friends to invite to a party. Chances are people will come, chances are people want friends too, chances are people will bring booze, chances are you have more friends than you thought.  

Chicago friends, December 2011

• Don't beat yourself up because you aren't learning Arabic right now, or whatever language you feel like you really should be learning to be a well-rounded, global citizen. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn another language... I'm just saying that it's your first year out of college and you will learn Arabic when the time is right... also you haven't finished Mad Men yet, so please... one step at a time. 

• Surprise parties are more surprising if everyone at the party is also surprisingly missing an article of clothing.
  

• Convenience is important. Support your neighborhood. Put your money in the bank next door to your weird house across from a Shell station and (now) vacant Christmas tree lot. Get your hair cut at the salon down the street. Volunteer at the cool, indie writing center for kids on Milwaukee. Buy your furniture from that Polish thrift store. It's a great feeling to run errands on foot... within a 5 block radius. 

• Buy something you've always wanted. Just do it. Then you won't have to think about whether you can afford it or not... Cause it's sitting on your table... which you bought to hold things you don't want to break.

• Find an awesome, classy bar which is right next to a cheap Polish bar so you can enjoy a good beer before some less good beer. A classy bar is Bangers & Lace, a swanky place with craft beer and great hot dogs. It is next to a bar without a name whose "Always Special" is $1.50 PBRs. The bartender is a 63 year-old woman named Helen who dreams of retiring to Krakow to smoke cigarettes with her sister. (Ya'll get the theme, there are a lot of Polish people in Chicago.) Also, if the guy you are with throws out a drunk homeless person and helps Helen move a keg, she'll probably give you free beer and even ask you to watch the bar while she has a smoke. (Indeed, you can take-out hot dogs from Bangers and eat them in the Polish bar. win. WIN.)

So there it is, a little glimpse into my mind and new life. 2012 for me is to be the year of a quieted mind. So I leave you with this song. "House of Diamonds" by The Bowerbirds. As the song insists, "You are free. You are already free."

A Very Knitted Christmas

This Christmas everyone in the Clement clan who was not living in the desert got a knitted present from yours truly. Here they are!

Claire and Harald the Houseplant Monster

Mom in her Burberry Cowl

Stephen in his Christmas Scarf.

How did this man get so handsome?? His girlfriend Hillary gave him the wooden tie and pipe for Christmas.

Dad in his Clockwork Scarf

I love this pattern; it grows in a circle so eliminates the excess bulk of other scarves.

Absurd things that Laura Weber made me ten years ago...

While sorting through a box of old papers this morning that my mother found in my closet on Rosenberry Hills Drive, I happened upon countless collages which my childhood best friend Laura Weber made me. I was so floored by all the effort that the Binker went to in order to celebrate my birthday, congratulate me on my latest play, or MJ me. I must note that we had an unhealthy obsession with the late Michael Jackson which began on a Girl Scout camping trip where one of us taped a photo to the other's back without their knowledge... Thus "MJ-ing" someone was born. Enjoy these pieces of history.

This is an excerpt from my Michael Jackson scrapbook which Laura made me for my 16th birthday. Yes, that is me and my parents at the BET awards.

That is my crew from Hogwarts. This was a gift to celebrate playing a witch in Macbeth in 2003.

This is me winning an Academy Award. I'm so glad Jennifer Love Hewitt was there to see it.

I wish I'd written this...

http://musicforants.com/blog/?p=6681


I effin' love John Darnielle and you should too... this is him holding a wombat.

My wish for you, dear reader...

Treat yourself to peace of mind this Christmas. Although there are people we've lost and we miss, although work is hard, although our dreams seem distant and unattainable at times, although we are "never quite free," it still is a beautiful world.

It's so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever
And you'll never want for comfort, and you'll never be alone
See the sunset turning red, let all be quiet in your head
And look about, all the stars are coming out.
-The Mountain Goats, "Never Quite Free"