At the beginning of this week, I felt like I was going nowhere. I was stuck in a dead end job, all of my closest friends were out of the Salt Lake Valley, and I just felt like I had given up on living life. I felt like I was just going through the motions again, putting on a happy face so no one would bug me, and just keep going until I was kicked out of my house and faced with homelessness and starvation. So, not the best beginning of the week by any stretch of the imagination. Anyways, while I was at work on Tuesday, someone who I had worked with and I had come to love got laid off. Right then and there. She was a single mother of 2 that had no where else to turn, but she was laid off because she wasn't meeting the demanding schedule my bosses laid out for us. It got me thinking of the importance of having a stable job. I decided right then that I was not going to wait around for my turn to be laid off. I decided that I was going to dust off my dreams and goals from a couple years before and I was going to go back to school and receive my Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Musical Theater, with the eventual goal of becoming a high school drama teacher.
Why, you may ask? Well, if you'll allow me this tanget, theater is what defined my high school expierence. It gave me identity and something to look forward to every day of high school. I loved to perform and I had so many amazing opprotunities to do so. Plus, I don't know if I would've actually graduated high school unless Phaidra followed her rule on GPA and never let me fall underneath that, and for all that, I thank her so much. I wanted to do that for other kids.
The next four days were a desperate scramble to find exactly where I should go and how I'm going to pay for it, and to put it delicately, it's going to be one hell of a challenge. Dropping out of school costs alot, finanically as well as reputation and even self worth. But I haven't given up yet, I'm going to go back to school or die trying. I vowed to myself that I was not going to end up like the poor mother of two at my work, but that I was going to have a stable job and do what I love, teaching the art of theater to kids like me, that needed purpose in their life and turned to theater to find it.
I guess the whole point of all this is, people need to have purpose in their life, like what I found with theater in high school and throughout my college career. I've already felt the effects of having goals to work toward. I've been working out regularly for the past week and plan to AT LEAST until I go back to school, I've started making plans and not waiting till the last second to do so, and I just feel so much happier. Like I have a purpose. Which is the best feeling anyone can have. So, please, find some purpose in your own lives. Wether it be love, success, fame, whatever form that comes in, jump on the opprotunity to make a difference. It's the best thing anyone could do for themselves and others around them. Thank you so much, I love you all.
-Michael Howell
