A Reintroduction to brokeGIRLrich – One of my weaknesses is Instagram. I removed the rest of social media off my phone ages ago and I used to only have a small, very intentionally curated group of friends on Instagram, so how much of a time suck could it be? Turns out, still a lot. And lately I’ve noticed a bunch of those ‘let me introduce myself’ videos from countless bloggers as I aimlessly scroll. It got me thinking that I’ve been blogging for 10 years and it’s been a long time since I’ve done a post like that. So, hi, my name is Mel! I majored in theatre in college. I accidentally took a class called Theatre Crafts as a literature major and I thought I would be analyzing scripts, but it was actually an introductory theatre class. I was then lazy and just forgot to drop it in time, so I figured, what the heck, it will just be one of my electives. I nailed that class. And I really loved learning about all the technical elements that bring together a show backstage. However, we had to volunteer for 10 hours in the school scene shop and I was wildly introverted. I kept walking up to the school scene shop door on work days, peering through at all the loud people in there who seemed to already know each other really well and run away. Those 10 hours were 10% of my grade and coming down the home stretch of the class, the professor pulled me to the side and pretty much was like “what the heck is happening here? Why don’t you have any hours?” So I told him I kept panicking when I tried to walk into the scene shop and he told me if I worked the running crew for the final show of the year, which would be a commitment of more than 10 hours, that would be fine too. So I did. I was thrown backstage with two upperclassmen for Charlotte’s Web and the next thing I knew, I was standing on small ladder with one of the upperclassmen holding onto my belt loops so I wouldn’t fall as a webbed contraption rolled offstage at me so I could slap on some giant, glittery letters and the web could be rolled back out at warp speed. I would then leap off the ladder, run to the other side of the stage with the other two stagehands and drop a bazillion baby spider puppets and make them dance. Sidenote: Do not hold onto people by their belt loops on ladders. Do not roll fast things at people unsecured on ladders. Do not leap off ladders. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life. I don’t think I had ever felt so alive. Financially, I was incredibly lucky to be at school half on scholarship and half parent funded. I graduated from undergrad with no debt. However, my dad was not having it when I said I wanted to major in theatre. So I just quietly double majored in literature and theatre production. I graduated in 3 years. The degree was technically called Studies in the Arts and you couldn’t even see my specialization was Theatre Production unless you looked at my transcripts. He had no idea I double majored until about 10 years after school. I got paid to stage manage for the first time ever when I was 20. It was a dance production. That is the face of someone who does not know what is about to happen. After I graduated from school, I went on to get a Masters in theology, because I am a bit of loose cannon with my attention span at times. Oddly enough, I worked part time for a little theatre company that did some really rough ‘don’t do drugs’ skits in schools and prisons. That, combined with some substitute teaching, was enough to save a little. I went to a seminary, which is actually very cheap. Tuition 2005-2008 was something like $3,500 a semester. I remember my first apartment rent, with some roommates was like $250 a month in Virginia. …I now feel very old writing that. LOL. This was all fine until the recession in 2008, which hit my dad’s business pretty hard. So I paid for things the last year of school. This actually went ok and I switched to a job working customer service at an insurance agency (to this day my most despised job). I also didn’t have the best handle on credit cards at the time, so while I had some savings, I also graduated with about $7,000 in debt. My personal life took a bit of a tailspin at the end of that degree and I suddenly realized I had no idea what I would be doing when I graduated. One of my best friends got a job offer in San Francisco, so I wound up moving out there with her on a whim. Pro Tip: Do not move to San Francisco on a whim. It is a wildly expensive place. I drove across the country, which was pretty awesome, then landed in San Francisco where my rent had ballooned to $1250 with an extra $150ish a month for utilities. And I couldn’t find a job. I remember going to the Rainforest Café very dejected and applying to be a hostess there because I had been a hostess in one at a mall in NJ for several summers in college and I was told I was underqualified to be a hostess in a restaurant in a location like Fisherman’s Wharf. It was a swell time. Leaving that depressing interview, I wandered Fisherman’s Wharf wondering how I had blown up my own life so good when I saw a cruise ship docked there. I thought, cruise ships have theatres. So I went home and applied to every cruise line I could find. About a week later, I was at a job interview to work at FYE in the airport and just had a terrible feeling in my gut about the job. I was offered it onsite and asked if I could think about it, which was not received well. I headed back towards home and stopped at the library to sign up for a library card and slumped outside the library and called my mom in tears. I hung up from that sad phone call and while I was sitting outside the library, I got a phone call from Holland America Line asking me if I was free to do an emergency fill in for a stage manager and fly to Alaska in approximately 48 hours. To be fair, she didn’t know what was about to happen either, but she was smiling about it. I was definitely free. I spent the next 5 years at Holland America as a stage manager. I moved back in with my parents at the end of the San Francisco lease since I was only home a few weeks a year. I paid off the credit card and paid my crazy San Francisco rent and then saved for several years. I the middle of that period, I took a year to go to England and get a Masters degree in Theatre and Performance Studies. It was a good adventure and I had always sort of thought I might get a doctorate someday because two professors had a really strong impact on me during undergrad and I thought they had really cool jobs. However, I left that adventure with about $30,000 in debt. Which brings us to brokeGIRLrich. It was the first time I really had to start figuring out my finances. I funnelled most of my paycheck once I was back on the ship into paying off that debt. I also left that job and joined the circus. Probably the biggest name gig on my resume, but also the hardest work and the lowest pay. I actually made about $3,000 more a year but I went from having about 3 months off a year to 2 weeks. And I actually had a fairly decent work/life balance on ships most of the time whereas the circus was just insane and full and constant and I kind of hated it very quickly. But I couldn’t leave…