We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Watson Side And Viv Gould a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Watson Side with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
As a kid I always had a hard time sitting still. I loved working with my hands a lot. I don’t know if it was the ADHD or just my love for being busy. I’m sure it’s a mix of both. Skip to the future and it still rings true to this day. I think on a deeper level, I can now admit that a lot of my self worth comes from my work and keeping booked and busy. This is gonna sound so ridiculous, but I love working. It definitely helps that I love what I do, but that doesn’t mean there’s not insanely rough days. I’m a person under 40 living in LA which means I have two jobs. I am a performing Drag King and Show Producer as well as an Adoption Coordinator for an LA animal rescue. Both jobs keep me very busy, and besides the stress and occasional gray hair, I wouldn’t have it any other way. In many ways working, multi-tasking and having more responsibility focuses me. As you can probably tell, I’m not great at relaxing, it makes me anxious and feel useless. I should probably be telling this to a therapist. Friends say I’m like this because my sign is Capricorn, but I don’t want to give the stars all the credit. My mom is the hardest worker I know. She worked multiple jobs at the same time for a lot of her life. When I was six, she opened up her own cafe, something she had wanted her entire life. She worked from 5am to 6pm and after that she’d come home and take care of me and my two sisters. She did this everyday. I’d go in with her to the cafe and help on weekends usually. I was a server at eight years old, and the customers loved me. One year, during fourth grade my mom homeschooled me, while she ran the cafe! I would go to work with her at 6am and do school work in the back office while she ran the cafe by herself. She quite literally played all the parts. I may not have loved my mom in those moments, and especially not at 6am, but I respected the hell out of her, and I always will. Now my dad, he gave me the ADHD. He was always doing something my dad. A new idea, new hobby, a new business. I know I got my dad’s creativity and passion. Unfortunately it was always hard for my dad to focus and follow through on his ideas and businesses. He’d get so excited and dive deep into the honeymoon phase of a business that when it got too tough, he’d give up. Still he’s inspired me a lot and taught me to have fun and pride in what I do. Now I get to perform for a living and give others the opportunity to do so as well. I also get to help dogs find forever homes which is something I’ve wanted to do since childhood. On days when I’m stressed out beyond belief and truly want to rip out every hair, I have to breath and remember how proud I am to be doing what I doing and remember how bad I am at doing nothing.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I have two jobs that I work at equally. First I am freelance Drag King, Watson Side. I perform in shows, host shows and produced my own show Watson’s Willies and Sillies. I started doing drag over two years ago, and I never imagined it would get this far. I started slowly getting bookings and begging for any tip spot I could get. Over time I started making a name for myself in the community and suddenly, producers were reaching out to me. I know, I’m shocked too! Since then I’ve been steadily working and trying to help others get more performing opportunities as well. While I perform and produce all over CA (and travel on occasion) I produce a monthly show at Lawless Brewing Company in North Hollywood. I am very proud of that show, I truly thought having my own monthly show was a long shot. On August 11th we celebrated our one year anniversary of Watson’s Willies and Sillies. It was a really special show because I made it a fundraiser show for the animal rescue I work for. It was a really wonderful blend of my separate work lives coming together.
On that note, I’ll talk about my other life. I also work as an adoption coordinator for an animal rescue. I work mostly finding dogs in our rescue wonderful homes. We are a small rescue so I’m also actively rescuing, transporting and fostering our pups. We all work together to successfully get dogs adopted. The rescue is a foster network so we don’t have a brick and mortar location. Which means it’s imperative that we find good homes for these pups as soon as we can so we can take more in. It’s also why having fosters is so important to us. The more fosters we have, the more rescues we can take in. We are also a donation based rescue and are so grateful to our donors who help us be able to continuously rescue pups, especially those with medical needs that city shelters cannot take on. This job has been my favorite job that I’ve ever had, but has also been the most stressful and heartbreaking because of unfortunate situations we deal with every day. Dogs have been a part of my life since day one and they have saved my life more times than I can count, so regardless of the heartbreak, I’m so grateful to be doing all I can for this rescue and the dogs that come in.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I believe my ability to continuously learn, my willingness to try new things and put myself out there, regardless of the fear I feel are traits that have gotten me where I am. And lying! I know that sounds, not great, but do you ever hear those stories about celebrities lying on their resumes and saying they can do things when they can’t? Then they book the job in this huge movie and now they have to secretly learn that skill they were lying about? Yeah, I do that sometimes. I’ve never lied about something extreme, but I do feel as though it’s helped me navigate new experiences and opportunities by taking things on that I’ve never done before and believing that I can do it instead of saying no I can’t do that. Amazing and new opportunities always come when I say yes. That’s my advice, say yes sometimes even if you’re a little scared. I’m always a little scared.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
I feel overwhelmed a lot. My ADHD girlies know what I’m talking about. I throw myself into a lot, as you know I like to stay busy. With that being said, I bite off a lot more than I can chew constantly. Then comes the anxious sweats and the, “you’ve fucked up” feeling. Guess what, that feeling can alway go away. Yes, in the moment it can feel like there’s no recovery. So go have a freak out for thirty minutes, then pet your dog or any dog you can find, and dissect the issue piece by piece. What’s the core issue? Is there another fix? Maybe the fix isn’t as good, but it will work. Find friends, people in your community that can help and make compromises. Shit happens, make the best of it.
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