Marysia Trembecka was a bond trader, one of just 5 women out of 800 men on the trading floor in London. After the adrenalin wore off as she learned her way around the big boys, she experienced a sense of boredom that even her expensive shopping habit couldn’t nix.
“I would go to the Manolo Blahnik sale, queue and pick up 12 pairs a time,” Marysia says. “My long-term partner who I met the first day at university had a one million pound bonus in his first year out. I was doing very well and he was doing crazy well.”
Even still, Marysia remembers that her heart was heavy. “I needed to create,” she says. “I did a 3 night a week performance/acting course after long days at work. I had become bored with the expensive ‘uniform’, all my life. I had a crazy fashion sense and the ‘City’ look especially as I went in as a tall, slim 21-year-old blonde. I had to grow up fast and dress appropriately. I felt that if this was all life was, despite the money, it was very depressing.”
Soon after her successes on the trading floor, American banks came to headhunt her, but longer hours and even more money made her ask herself how much did she really need? She found a summer course at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, semi-retired from trading at 26, left London, her boyfriend, her flat and her convertible Porsche behind.
“My Dad thought, and still thinks, I was mad,” Marysia remembers. “He came to England from Poland at 17 so he has a sensibility about him that won’t allow him to agree with my choice. My boyfriend didn’t get it and my friends thought I was crazy. My sister said about a year later that I was me again, the person I had to be in the City was not me. “
She stood on Southwark Bridge one evening, feeling giddy and free. She boarded a plane headed for Los Angeles and did all the things she had pushed aside due to her academic brilliance. “I may be very mathematical but I am also hugely musical and lateral in thinking,” she says. “I get bored easily and I need a challenge constantly. I trained at the actors studio and then I came home to London and started doing my own cabaret shows when I couldn’t get lots of acting work.”
I have realized that the reason I have been given creative gifts and the chutzpah to just do it, always failing forward, is because I am here to get us all to love our lives and our creativity.” ~Marysia
Many people shook their heads at the lack of stability in her life. Some people would like the money in the bank and the security that it implies. Many carried an idea that Marysia “had it all.” She admits to watching her friends with sympathy- those who were are all desperate to be in relationships and settle down and have kids. Marysia says she loves kids, but loves cultivating her creative passions even more.
Marysia Trembecka of LoveYourCreativity.Com, falling in love with her creativity all over again.
Although she is now only 38, a few of her fondest memories are nestled in between her creative yearnings and explosions. “I remember sitting around the pool at the Sunset Marquis listening to the mix of my jazz album, making notes on trumpet and sax levels as Gabriel Byrne and Lucy Liu sat a few feet away. I remember taking my show to the Montreal Festival, Canada and cycling late at night home from a show with false eyelashes and a helmet on with poutine (chips with gravy) on the handlebars. There are so many moments where I have absolutely lived.”
A few months ago she began podcasting and blogging about creativity because she needed a new outlet. Marysia confesses to distracting herself with boys, parties and dramatic affairs if she doesn’t channel her creative energy. “In this way I am trying to impact the world actually, one creative person at a time,” Marysia says. “Talking to other creative people about how they keep going in a world that doesn’t really get it until you ‘make it’ is a thrill for me.”
These days you can find Marysia filming, running to auditions, singing, writing a web series, developing her next touring cabaret show or picking up her next instrument; she plays eight.
During this creative journey Marysia has endured very difficult times. She was involved in two car accidents that left her with permanent neck damage and she lost a boyfriend to liver cancer. Despite her misfortune and failed auditions, bad reviews and multiple interests, Marysia believes it is important to forgive yourself for mistakes, forgive others who have hurt you too and throw yourself into your dreams whether they make sense or not.
To celebrate your creativity with Marysia please visit her website LoveYourCreativity.Com.
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