Are there any actual professionals here?

I consider myself professional. I do very little that doesn't have something to do with the arts. I started working in theatre at 14 on Saturdays sweeping up etc and trying to learn from the resident pro's. By 15 I was operating followspot professionally and working as pro crew. I diverted to music for a while a bass player in various bands reached my level of incompetence as a musician and turned to sound operation. Self taught. I worked in the public service for 15 years or so because of the neccesity to ensure regular pay for a young family but continued to work on evenings and weekends on crew and as followspotter or FOH sound operator in various venues. I returned to the theatre fulltime in my thirties and somewhere in there picked up a degree. I've worked as a professional production manager in a receiving house in the UK and I've worked as a lighting designer for shows in the UK up to and including number one tours. I don't operate live sound anymore, I don't have the hearing and I'm getting a bit old and fat to keep climbing ladders, but I keeo myself amused doing lighting designs and writing and directing plays as well as producing them. I don't make a great living but I make a living. Oh and by the way, I put on the big red suit every year in November/December and I have discovered a new talent as a puppeteer in my old age. I think I count as a pro. Oh and by the way, I taught on a Cert 3/4 Live production course for a while and was RPL/RCC'd into a Cert 4 in Live Production, Theatre and Events. So I guess I'm qualified. I do amateur theatre from time to time because the project is interesting or challenging or a mate has called in a favour. I don't see any problem with that and a great many of the most professional people I have worked with from a point of view of attitude and skills work in community theatre. Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. www.tonymoore.id.au