Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Why is it that when teachers talk to you, they are insistent that you go to grad school so you can teach? When Chicago improvisers talk to you, they tell you to pick up and move to Chicago. Are those huge kinds of life shakeups really necessary for someone's career and craft to thrive? Is the measured approach not even a little viable?

As far as grad school goes: I am not even somewhat tempted to dive back into the pool of academia again. Moving to Chicago, however, is a somewhat more difficult idea to dismiss. I have been telling myself that I will stay in and around Nashville in order to build an improv community there. They're the people who got me invested in improv, and that is where my allegiance lies. I've been thinking that I am living my life in a smart and safe way, because luck fails me more often than it comes through. But maybe I'm just scared.

If I moved I'd be moving alone, with no support system in place up there, no job planned out, no money to survive, no place to live, no real guarantee that I'll even be doing anything worth all the stress of figuring all of those other things out. I'd also be able to get some real improv training and actually take steps towards making performing and teaching a full time career. And Chicago's cool, I guess. Well, it's freezing actually. Kind of the worst temperature.

If I stay... I stay. Plans remain unchanged and I can keep building myself up and getting my life in order. I think that it's pretty clear to me that Nashville isn't where my path ends, but I'm also pretty sure that I'm not exactly ready to handle some insane cross country move yet.