love in the mail: the IKEA 2005 catalogue arrived today, an unanticipated treat. oh IKEA, how you do seduce the nesting instinct in me. i want to crawl into your clean white kitchens and fresh, grass-green living rooms filled with smooshy furniture and mysterious swedish storage possibilities.

not that we’ll have time or money to buy anything from IKEA; i’m about to launch into another year of working 3 part-time jobs (two theatre, the third of the “day job” variety), and andy, besieged by a sudden flood acting and improv offers, has turned down the salaried promotion his cafe offered him. as we move into our late twenties, i admit that the specter of financial solvency, health insurance, IKEA furniture, grows stronger and those “what am i doing with my life?” doubts do come nagging around the edges.

still, we’ve gained something in our first year in chicago: momentum. a lucky few rocket to success in this biz, but most of us labor at it the hard way – one friendship, one job-well-done at a time. and it feels like a slow race between two possibilities: will we make it before we get so tired/poor that we give it up? it’s the elusive definition of “making it” that’s a slippery slope. when do we know we’ve made it? when we’re making a living in the arts? then how do we define a living? in financial terms? when we’re happy? when we finally think we can relax and let down our guard and occasionally pass on an offer because we have faith that another one will come along? when it all stops being so scary?