This is a little throw back to a short blog I wrote about a year ago on a different platform, before this nifty site was even conceived. I really enjoy re-reading my own words about where I’ve been with my career to stay focused on where I’m going. It isn’t easy to build your own business, and personal brand of comedy, but as the glimmers of success start to show themselves, I can’t help but be excited for the future. Sure, I have no idea where my next paycheck is coming from at the moment, but somewhere out there, someone is about to look for a variety comedian for their club or private event, and I’m only a Google search away.
Here’s a little story about that time I was finally ready to let go of those rigid, bland business clothes, and make the leap from corporate to comedy–
In the fall of 1999 I was ready to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I hadn’t thought too hard about it in high school, and I didn’t really want to go to college but enrolled at Boise State anyway and was trying to enter into adulthood as quickly as possible.
I’d grown up envisioning that someday I’d be on Saturday Night Live, yet after I graduated high school I didn’t think a dream like that was a good idea. Pack up and move out of my parent’s home to try and stand out in an endless sea of other wannabes? No thank you. I wanted to be responsible and have a REAL job. I’d show everyone. This Class Clown was going to become a respectable business woman.
All I ever cared about was making people laugh and being the resident goofball in my circles, so I didn’t know the first thing about being “professional.”
As I walked through Fred Meyer’s one day I looked inside the Washington Mutual Bank branch inside the store and saw the peppy Tellers smiling and laughing. “Hmmm. I could do that.”
The next day I turned in a job application and within a few weeks I was hired. I was a banker! I found my CAREER .
It didn’t take long for me to climb the ranks. I blew through my monthly sales goals, mastered the mystery shopper calls, and was a customer favorite in every office I worked in. 7 of my 10 years in retail banking were spent as a branch manager. As time rolled by I supressed the urges to ditch banking and tried to convince myself that I would work there until retirement. Why try to follow other ambitions when I had put so much time into being a great (and fun-loving/kooky) manager? So I trudged along, trying my best to have fun with it, and simply focus on making my teams happy to come to work each day.
Thankfully, the winds of change blew right in my face and I willed myself into a new job opportunity a while back. I left banking over 4 years ago. HOORAY!
Yesterday as I began purging my closet, as I tend to do about every year, I paused and stared at the giant corner section of suits/slacks/blouses/skirts. The items looked back at me. Mocking me.
It is the decade of Megan the Banker hanging importantly in the deep pit of my closet.
Why is all that crap STILL IN MY CLOSET? I’ll tell you. It is a safety net. That daily professional uniform sits marinating in the nooks of my subconscious.
When I was a banker I had a comfortable salary, decent benefits, and I was REALLY GOOD at my job. Even now, as I work from home on my own projects (Idaho Laugh Fest & Zip Zap Zop) those clothes remind me that if I ever NEED to I could go back to banking to help support my family. I never, never EVER want to HAVE to do that, but I COULD.
I have no intentions of ever putting on another suit. I doubt I could even fit into the ones I own anyway. I’ve had 2 more kids since I last wore that snazzy gray size 4 Banana Republic pant suit.
I’ve ditched the business apparel and my work now as an entrepreneurial comedian requires very little dressing up. Some days I feel accomplished if I actually transfer my 4-month post-eleven-pound-baby body into anything other than my candy cane patterned PJ pants. I LOVE that I don’t have to dress up. I much prefer sneakers and flats to high heels (Which I still have 20+ pair of, and must also be dealt with in the next upheaval of closet clutter.)
It’s time to finally clean that corner of my closet once and for all. Be gone business wear! There is no going back. There CANNOT be any going back. Not to banking. Not to suits. Not to the Megan I thought I needed to be at some point.
Oh, and while we are on the subject, does anyone want to purchase a gently used suit?
