Thursday, November 19, 2009

Singing day jobs

There's a great article in the Calgary Herald today where they take a look at the cast of Calgary Opera's upcoming Manon, but not in the traditional way: They find out what they do for a living. Yes, we all sing and even make money at it every once in a while but it's neat to see that it's not just me that needs to supplement in between shows. For this show the non-opera jobs range from lawyer to contractor to trucker.

As for me: I freelance doing Partnership Development (helping businesses work with other businessess), project management for non-profits (I helped run the Toronto Halloween campaign for UNICEF a couple of years ago), and some occasional web coding and, need be, design.

Anybody want to 'fess up to their day jobs? I know you're out there.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Gerrit - I hate that people are always surprised that one needs a "day job" to sustain themselves...currently I don't have to day job it as the teaching has pretty much taken over my life! That being said, the year I was in the COC Ensemble and made my mainstage debut (and was 8 mos pregnant) I was working a 20 hour week doing a contract for the Canadian Diabetes Assoc. as the assistant editor for publications. Now THAT was a stretch!

:-)

Gerrit said...

Hi Elizabeth - I hear you. I think that part of it is that people hear about the big names and the amounts of money involved and think that it accounts for everyone. I think that the best parallel for the public is professional sports: People hear about the $20 million/year players but forget that most athletes don't play for the Yankees and that the people who play for small town teams (or any city in Canadian Football), usually have jobs in the off season.