Essential Worker to Full-Time Artist

Many of us have been hit by this pandemic in many different ways. Some people haven’t seen much of a change to their daily lives, while others have been utterly shattered by it.

I can’t categorize myself to be that of the latter, but I certainly can’t say I’ve come out of this last year without a scratch either.

For much of the pandemic I worked as an essential worker for a grocery company I hated and had plans of leaving it just before everything went to hell. I had an interview for a new job the day the pandemic hit, everything I thought life was going to be for the rest of the year, hell, the rest of that month, was completely destroyed.

To this day, I still have nightmares about those first few days in the pandemic. The huge crowds, where no one was wearing a mask, people pushing each other to get their basic needs in bulk, while others, like me, were happy to have just one of those essential items. People yelling at my coworkers for not having anything, for not being able to keep up and serve them faster. Items I intended to buy being pulled out of my hands by another person. Not being able to buy toilet paper. The hell of it all was never ending and scary beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before or since.

For lack of a better word, I was trapped within this horrible job, where no cared if you got sick or if you got hurt lifting more than you could handle, I was trapped with no other available options for work or simply just surviving. That’s all I was doing at that point, surviving, when I simply wanted to feel at least safe. Forget feeling happy or content, I just wanted to feel safe.

However, I stuck it out with this first company for as long as I had to before my chance to escape finally came with another grocery store hiring for the holiday season.

Once I was hired with this new grocery company, I was put to work full time and was able to survive with even a small sense of happiness. All the while hoping I would be one of the seasonal hires this company would want to keep. Of course, this wasn’t what ended up happening. This place, I soon discovered, unfortunately came with its own set of problems I wasn’t entirely prepared for.

I was politely let go for the reason that with the sales being as impacted as they were by Covid-19, they just couldn’t afford to keep me even for a part-part position.

This news, while it didn’t surprise me all that much, still left me shattered and scared.

I’ll be clear, I realized fast that being let go was a blessing in disguise for reasons I will mention in an upcoming piece for Vocal, but in the immediate aftermath I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to get by, pay my rent (which to be fair is very low) or survive as I had been surviving. I had no savings, and what little I did gather usually went to the next small emergency rather than being stowed away for the giant disaster I refused to believe would ever come.

Then I realized through the help of loved ones and friends I made at this second grocery company, that this was my chance to start over. This was my chance to build the life for myself that I had wanted to live for years. The life of a full time artist, committed to perfecting their craft.

The first thing I am before anything else is a writer. A writer with a deep love for the darker and morbid things life has for us, and talking about these things in fictional short stories and novels. The kinds of stories that force people to think and challenge themselves with issues they may have never taken the time to think about beforehand. Maybe find a new way of thinking about an issue written within the pros they might have agreed with or disagreed with before reading the piece. Writing is in my blood. Writing is what I was made to do. I can’t imagine my life without writing and nor do I ever want to imagine my life without it. If this is the chance I have to really make something of my craft and get it out to the world, then I will take it.

The next thing I am is a performer, a Drag artist to be specific. I’m a cis-woman who dresses as a hyper feminized version of a woman, but with my own twist of being a story teller to make my performances reach out and grab the hearts of those watching. Drag is not an easy industry to a part of. It’s expensive and it has become very competitive, at least depending on who you’re working with in any particular show. None of this was a surprise going in for me. I knew it would be taxing on my body. And I also knew this so many different and strong personalities within this historically male dominated industry, I knew there was the chance of people trying to throw drama my way, or put in their two cents about what I do isn’t real Drag. Thankfully, my experience in the two years I’ve been doing Drag now, I haven’t had anyone challenge my art or even me as a person. Which serves me well.

With more and more people getting their Covid-19 vaccines, more and more places are slowly opening up. Do I have my issues with this choice, yes; but that is also the topic of another Vocal piece. But the decisions have been made and the venues I used to perform in as a Drag artist are now starting to open back up, with many safety measures being taken of course.