Me Me Me

In my experience, if you want something badly enough and you keep banging on the door, your wish will come true. This has happened once in my personal life — I really, really wanted to marry my darling husband, even though we were only 21 years old when I came to this realization — and I got my wish. That story had a happy ending that continues to this day, knock on wood.

It’s happened three times in my professional life, with mixed results. I wanted to write for The New York Times, and I didn’t stop pushing until it happened. After four articles that got edited by committee, I thought…this is NOT fun! That was a long time ago, but things can’t have changed much; most of the articles in the Arts & Leisure section read as if the writers wouldn’t know a decent lead sentence if it rammed into the back of their car. My second wish was to write a book about actors who got their start in theater. That one came true — and a total of 10 copies of my book were sold. The third thing I wanted was to be the editor of a theater magazine. I got THAT wish, too — but after 114 weekly issues, the magazine went bankrupt, and nobody came knocking at my door with a comparable position. (Thankfully, I got a great job overseeing lifestyle coverage at Child before getting back in the theatrical game at Broadway.com.)

What is the point of this recitation? It’s to remind myself that professional jealousy of any kind is a waste of energy. Of course, New York City is base camp for breaking the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Thy neighbor’s wife? How about thy neighbor’s success? Wouldn’t it be nice to be a known quantity in the competitive world of publishing? Why do people with not-so-much talent end up with big-time bylines? The answer may be that they simply WANT it more than I do at this point in my life — and at the end of the day, what looks like success might not translate into happiness.