SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : PSYCHIC INCOME : Paying the Price to Set Artistic Spirit Free
Four years ago, Egan L. Badart was a successful, hard-driving real estate agent. He lived with his family in a 6,000-square-foot home with a swimming pool and an acre of ground in Pasadena. He had assets totaling “a little over $2 million.”
Then calamity struck. A perforated, cancerous colon incapacitated Badart for more than two years. Inexorably, his business and investments slipped away.
He lost it all. The cars, the house, the money--even his family.
Badart is back on his feet again, but there’s something different about him. Even though he could use his real estate background to replenish his personal fortune, money doesn’t mean that much to him anymore. The intensity with which he once pursued the real estate business is now channeled into an earlier passion that through the years of wealth and success never ceased to haunt him.
Acting.
For many, the road to a middle-age crisis is paved with the manuscripts of unfinished novels, molding canvases and moth-eaten ballet slippers, those forgotten talismans of a creative urge neglected for the demands of day-to-day living. In some cases the creative drive is unflagging and inspires people to tailor their lives in accommodation.
But others may stray from their dreams of artistic success (or simply artistic survival) to find that it boomerangs back on them. For the seriously creative person, denial of that drive can mean big problems.
“The real estate business never made me happy,” said Badart, a boyish-looking 38-year-old with intense brown eyes who goes by the stage name Egan Ryann. “I think when you do something that goes against your nature, that when you forget to address the needs of your soul, you’re going to get sick.”
Now Badart lives simply in an eight-by-ten-foot rented room. He works at real estate a few days a week to make ends meet, but he drops everything when an acting opportunity, such as a meeting with an agent or a casting call, arises. He’s poorer, he says, but definitely happier.
For some, the creative drive is accompanied by a distinct vision that often borders on a sense of mission. Take Maureen Michelson. In 1984, she left the relative security of a promising journalism career to start New Sage Press, her own publishing company in Pasadena. With eight book titles to her credit, Michelson has established her operation as a respected small publishing house.
“I realized that I had a lot of talents and ideas that weren’t being expressed in the publishing world, and I wasn’t willing to work at a job for 30 years before I could put some of my ideas into fruition,” she said.
The question of money, of course, may rear its ugly head before all who venture down the creative road. But Michelson eschews the pursuit of commercial success for projects she believes will leave a lasting impression.
These projects often are realized at her own personal expense. “Women and Work,” for instance, a book of photos and essays featuring women from all walks of life, made the American Library Assn.’s 1987 list of “Best Books for Young Adults.”
Michelson admits to cutting profit margins by upgrading the quality of paper and photo reproduction, while still keeping her products affordable to most.
“Somewhere in my late 20s I decided that having a good paycheck and being in a prestigious place wasn’t enough,” she said. “There was an inner need that had to be filled. I didn’t want to get stuck in a niche with a steady paycheck.”
Apparently, she isn’t alone. These days an increasing number of people are contemplating a return to their early, creative aspirations, some experts say.
“As baby boomers are coming into middle age, they’re asking the classic question, ‘What’s it all about?’ and, ‘Did I make the right choice?’ said Dr. Carole Lieberman, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA. “They’re often looking for things that are less traditional, such as taking different time schedules, or turning a hobby into a skill that they can use on a new job.
“Usually, it’s something they always wanted to do when they were younger--that they abandoned for something more lucrative. And then something gives them the courage to go back to that original idea.”
But what about those bouts of bill-induced insomnia, those dark nights of the soul when the pinstripe suit, buried in mothballs, calls out fondly, and the rugged individualist is sorely tempted to seek security in the nearest corporate headquarters--any corporate headquarters?
“I only have those thoughts about 23 times a week,” joked novelist Harriet Katz, a political activist and former public information director for the American Civil Liberties Union. Katz became a full-time novelist in 1982 and has written five novels since then. One of them, “Ambitions,” was published in 1986. “I have a fear of meaningless work,” she said.
It’s not necessarily an all-or-nothing proposition, however. For Katz, who is now ready to return to the work force, a steady job can have its own emotional rewards, not the least of which is the security that goes with a steady paycheck.
“There were times when I was definitely taking a financial risk, in terms of deciding to live on savings instead of working at a full-time job,” she said. “Of course, I hoped that the writing would have some financial results, which in one case it did.”
Even those who are already successful in a creative pursuit often come to a fork in the road where a choice must be made between commercial success and artistic fulfillment.
Dancer and choreographer Lula Washington was working steadily in film, television and in Las Vegas stage shows before she founded Lula Washington’s Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1980. Since then she and her husband, Irwin Washington, have mortgaged their house to pay for the studio. She regularly puts in 60-hour weeks.
“The money (in commercial dance) was good, no doubt, but it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I started the company as a way of providing opportunities for other black choreographers. Now I have a lot more control over my life and over the artistic end of what I want to do.”
To continue that pursuit, Washington recently passed on a full-time job at Cal State Los Angeles, where she teaches part time.
“I love teaching, but I felt that it would take away from my time as an artist,” she said. “I’ve always felt that my biggest contribution to the community is my creativity.”
