Year 2: Week 4

High school love.......Yup, we're going waaaaaaaay back this week.

     Do you guys remember high school love? What it felt like? How it made everything seem a little brighter (and then horrible)? Because I do. I can remember everything about high school love. Just thinking about the sheer simplicity of the whole thing makes me long for those good old days...for about 7.2 seconds. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I kind of wish that all love had the same feeling as high school love. But then again, I've been drinking.

     I can remember my first love like it was yesterday (and most of my friends probably can too since I've talked about it at length over the last 8 years). We both were swept up in it so fast that we were saying I Love You before we had celebrated our 1 month anniversary. Days just seemed brighter when we were around each other. Songs sounded sweeter. It was like life had become a raw nerve; every feeling and experience was intensified tenfold. But as we all know, that is a double edged sword. When the breakup finally does come, it sends a shockwave through your entire life. No matter how young and naive we may have been when it happened, that heartbreak still leaves it's mark. The best way I can describe it is to think about your life in reference to September 11th, 2001. When we think of that they, we see the split in lives. We see that moment as how life was before it, and how life has been forever changed afterward. Yes, high school love is like a terrorist attack. 

     I could speak to any single one of my friends and they would tell me about how they cringe when they think back to that time. The shit that we put ourselves through in the name of what we believed to be our true love. The things that we said or did, feeling that they were just as poetic and romantic as all of those movies we watched while curled up on the couch in our parents basement. The pain we felt. The pain we caused. All of the regret. Most of them/us can look back and picture exactly how our lives would've unfolded had we stuck with our high school loves. And when we do, most of us don't like what we see. I take that to mean something. I think it means that going through all of that, being fools in love, believing that the world was ending because a relationship built off of hand holding and seeing movies ended, "reinventing" ourselves once we finally stopped crying into our pillows, we became better people (in the long run. Plenty of us were still little shits years after). All of that innocent, uncomplicated love, and devastating heartbreak molded us into the people we are today. And isn't that a great thing? Does anyone here really wish that they were the same person they were in high school? If the me of today had ever met the me of my high school years, I'd have kicked my ass, told myself to love some weight, and stop being such a little bitch. But since I don't have a TARDIS that show down will never actually happen. So the way I see it, we should all take a second to think back on this simpler times and be nothing but thankful. 

But like I said, I've been drinking....

After Thought: Under Pressure

There always seems to come this time where I'm convinced that I cannot possibly handle all of the shit that has currently been piled on top of me. Every time I've been convinced that this was it. That failure at this point would set off a cataclysmic chain of events that would lead life altering events of which there is no return. Every time I wonder how is it I ended up her, and how I could ever possibly hope to overcome. Every time I'm sure that it's over. And every time I've been wrong.

So far...

I know I should focus more on the positive, as I said I would in my last post, but that's extremely difficult to do when the pressure of life is literally making it hard to breathe. I'm trying to keep myself calm, hence me writing this instead of working on the mountain of work in front of me. I just had to take a minute and lay out my thoughts. I need to figure out how to proceed. None of my teammates seem to be stressing as much as me. Maybe they're more experienced. Maybe they're just better at internalizing it than I am. Either way, I feel like smashing my laptop, walking into the center of the room and screaming. After which I was drive away and just keep driving until my car refused to go anymore. And then what?

I don't feel like I have anything to complain about. I know that I don't. I'm living in one of the best cities in the country and working as an integral part of a team producing a television show. This is what I've suffered for. What I've ached for. What I stayed awake at night longing for. And now I'm here, and I don't know if I can handle it. Is this how everyone feels? Or am I just weak? Am I just ungrateful? Do I just not get it?

I don't know. Just a thought.

Year 2: Week 3

Positive vibes....Positive vibes......Can someone please pass me some vibes???

     One thing I've always heard is that if you put positive energy out into the universe, positive energy will be returned to you. To be honest, I've never believed it. Mostly for the fact that, speaking from personal experience, bad shit is always going to happen and the universe doesn't give a shit about your attitude. That's just a fact of life.
     But, in the spirit of growing up and keeping an open mind, I figured what harm could come from TRYING to be more positive in my life? After all, 26 years of being a realist (read: cynic pretending to be a realist) has led me to being fat and alone, so how much worse could it be? <Insert nervous laugh>

     I mean, how exactly do you change your mindset? It's not like flipping a switch, no matter how easy people try to make it seem. I know it's going to take a conscious effort each day, but that's just it. Conscious. I have to knowingly change the way I've thought for so long everyday, and I'm just not really sure how to do that. And even if I do succeed, who's to say that this will actually work? If I don't get positive energy back, do I get to say I told you so? Who do I even say it to? Do I even know what I'm talking about right now? What is life?

Year 2: Week 2

DISCLAIMER: This time around will be a lot more....dull? I'm not longer working the field so there will no doubt be fewer pictures and fewer adventure stories. But I promise to give you just as much crazy as I always have. I'm sorry, and you're welcome.

     You know, at this point, I'm not sure if it's a crippling fear of failure, or crippling fear of success that is...crippling me. Let me explain.

     Before I ever even left L.A. I was plagued with the thought that I had gotten in over my head. It's true that I don't have a contingency plan in place if all of this falls through. And even though this show is scheduled to run for the next year and a half, I'm ALREADY thinking about what next. What happens if this doesn't last? What happens if I get fired? Why am I so terrified at work everyday?

Ok ok, I know. There's a lot to unpack here. First of all, I know I have no control over the future so there's not much point in "worrying" about it. I just have to take it each day at a time. I KNOW THIS. But that doesn't make it any easier on my severely demented mind. Unfortunately, I'm just not built that way.

     As for the daily terror I internally deal with at work most days. I think it stems from a fear of failure. I hate having to do new things because I view them as opportunities for me to fail. It always seems like everyone else takes on new challenges in stride, while I just squirm in my chair and try not to look as uncomfortable as I feel. I hate it. Why has it never been easy for me? Being so afraid of failure makes me feel like a failure. It's a horribly ironic circle.

Wow this entry went south quick, huh? Sorry about that. Actually, no I'm not. I WRITE WHAT I WANT! <Rachel Shante Shante voice>

Year 2: Week 1

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm back!!!

Well I never really left. Well I did, but not really. Ok wait. I'm already confused. Let's start this again...

     I made it to New Orleans! Believe me, there were many times where it did not seem like this was ever going to happen. I'm still not completely convinced that it did. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up on my futon in my tiny studio back in Van Nuys any second now. I better enjoy this while it last. If this is a dream, that means I can do what I want. Quick, send me Scarlett Johansson!

....Dammit. It didn't work.......I mean....Yay! It didn't work!

Quick recap. For those who don't already know, and I can't imagine that there's anyone who doesn't at this point, back in July I accepted an Associate Producer position at Bellum Entertainment for their brand new show, It Takes A Killer. The catch was that accepting the position required me to relocate to New Orleans. So here I am! 

     The move was a bitch. Made my move to LA seem like shooting fish in a barrel with a rocket launcher. 4 weeks of moving prep, 1 week of packing, 41 hour drive from LA to STL, 3 more days of packing, 12 drive from STL to NOLA, and countless trips to Walmart just to finally be able to say I'm a NOLA resident. 

And I'm fucking tired.

In case anyone was wondering, I stopped posting a couple months ago because I no longer had anything to say. There was nothing left in my head. All I could do was go through the motions everyday and hope that things would start looking up soon. Then one day during a power outage, an email came through on my phone from the website Staff Me Up. This site is notorious for sending junk mail on a weekly basis, so I almost deleted it. For whatever reason, I opened the email, and saw that a job I had applied for months earlier still hadn't been filled. I was asked if I was still interested, even though it would mean having to relocate. Needless to say, I was still interested, and after several more emails, phone calls, and a writing audition, I found myself accepting the biggest job of my life. 

     I'm still not sure any of this is real, and I'm terrified of the idea that this might all fall through. But I guess, until it does, I will just have to enjoy it while it lasts, and wait for Scarlett Johansson to arrive.