Gut check!

Argh dammit and all that. Yesterday I get a call from an infomercial company here in Austin (actually an L.A. company who have opened an Austin branch) wanting to know if I’d be interested in being an office production assistant for the next week for $100 a day. Of course I want to, since it’s actually something I want to do, and it’s decent money. However, there’s no way I could do it without quitting my current full time job. I felt like I was being tested, as if this was the moment where I symbolically choose to either follow my dreams or live a life of wage slavery. On the drive home I kept thinking “if only I had some kind of sign, or a potential interview at NCSoft (the gaming company I want to work for here), or any other potential job then maybe it wouldn’t be so crazy to just quit my job for this opportunity”.
I got home to find an email from NCSoft telling me that there were still some Level 1 Technical Support positions available and who to contact if I was interested. Exactly the sign I had asked for. I emailed my information to the contact, and then he emailed back asking for my resume, which
I then sent him. I called the infomercial company to get the details, and I explained to them my situation. I asked how quickly they needed an answer, and she said that I could get back to her the next day. She seemed impressed by my eagerness and told me that she had some calls out to some other people, but that she would wait until she heard back from me.
She also told me to send my resume on over either way, as they would probably have some on-set gigs coming up in the future and such.
So now it’s the next day, and I’m fairly sure I’m going to have to say no, and it just kills me. There’s no way work would let me take a week off (I’m currently still a temp technically, and they’re already short handed next week due to several people going on vacation), thus the reason I would have to quit to take this one week Production Assistant job. There are two equal parts inside me fighting for dominance. One is the part that says how stupid it would be to ditch a full time decent paying job (even if it is nothing more than a paycheck and gives you no job satisfaction) for a one week job that “may” open some doors and lead to new opportunities on one of my chosen paths. The other part thinks that these are the kinds of risks you have to be willing to take if you really want to make it, and that if I don’t then I’m just being a big coward and taking the easy, safe path which is steady but unfulfilling.
Well at least the NCSoft job may come through. There is some solace in that. Life is hard.