The last three days have been hard. A stomach flu or food poisoning or something else entirely different and horrible ravaged my digestive system. For two days, B has cared for me, going to Ralph’s before 7AM on a Saturday morning to get my Gatorade and Pepto Bismol, refilling my glass of water, making sure I was comfortable. Late last night, as my stomach was finally settling, we switched roles. Now he lays beside me, occasionally stirring and groaning about the pain in his stomach (which I can vouch for). He’ll wake up, I’ll get him more Gatorade, and he will drift back to sleep, and I’ll feel bad that I’ve given him this, that he took such good care of me that his stomach is now churning endlessly.

After two solid years of being in a cross-continental relationship, I really can’t help but to feel lucky to have this moment. To care and be cared for.

Looks like I should just start at the top of my year’s list of goals and work my way down.

Hey E’s Potential New Boss -

My friend E gave me a call because she is interviewing with you tomorrow and she wanted to know if I knew who you were. I of course said yes and that it would be a great opportunity for her.

I worked with E when I was at A Poorly Managed Management Company (I worked there 6 months as the office manager) I have to say that she is absolutely one of the best people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. E was Boss Lady’s assistant (The head of the literary department) but she also did help out with the talent department whenever possible. While I didn’t supervise E directly, I did share a desk with her and I don’t know if you are familiar with Boss Lady, but she’s quite tough. E was nothing but professional and handled her high volume desk with ease. She’s incredibly thoughtful, smart, responsible, detail oriented and she’s also a joyful personality. Boss Lady’s clients were so comfortable with E and they often sought her advice and input personally. She also always made sure Boss Lady was ten steps ahead of the game. And as an added bonus, she will never fail to make the office laugh even when things get stressful.

I know we’ve never met personally, but I just wanted to put in my two cents and say without a doubt, you should hire her.

Thanks!
–
A Really Great Friend

Career/Finance
-Find a new job.
-Become completely financially independent.
-Save money.

Health/Well Being
-Maintain a exercise routine.
-Limit eating out to once a week.
-Eat more fresh produce.
-Preventative hair appointments (to prevent my hair turning into the rat’s nest that sat on my head this summer).

Miscellaneous
-Read more books, read more scripts.
-Keep my home clean.
-Be a better blogger.
-Hold tight to the reigns of my own life; acknowledge that while I am not in control of everything around me, it’s ultimately up to me how I react.

I am so lucky. Blessed, even.

A little background:

1. I have a part time job in the non-profit world.
2. I live in one of the more expensive cities in the nation. It also happens to be one of the most stressful cities in America as well, according to Portfolio.com.
3. the city I live in has a municipal utilities department that may or may not be one of the worst in the country, and my room mates and I were slammed with a bill for almost $900.
4. Sometimes I kinda freak out.

So anyway, this bill combined with rent and making barely enough money to scrape by, sent me into a frenzy. I cried. I dry heaved. I called my mother. Long story (somewhat) short, things have been taken care of. Now, onto yesterday.

The aforementioned non-proffy has a storage unit. It’s a creepy place. It looks like a jail and is inhabited during operating hours by a cast of bizarre characters, mostly emotionally unstable hoarders and homeless people who scrape up enough cash to pay the monthly charge for a unit. One of the residents yesterday came to the unit to commiserate with some of his friends, wearing only flip flops. Now, I understand that Southern California, to outsiders, seems like it’s all palm trees and sunglasses, but the reality is, it can get pretty cold around here.

He was talking to his friends about how he can’t handle this anymore. He is sick of sleeping on benches. That his feet were turning colors. That he couldn’t go to the hospital because he couldn’t pay a bill. He was going to try to move back into a motel. From conversations I’ve over heard from him in the past, he is new to being homeless. He’s been on the streets for about six months. Things haven’t been too bad for him, and he has made some good friends. But now as the cold creeps into this City of Angels, he has made a plan, and is getting out of his situation.

It really hit me, I am blessed. I really am. My rock bottom is a lot higher than a lot of peoples’. While I don’t revel in that, because that would kind of make me a monster, I do have to take that knowledge (and, frankly, privilege) and make things better for myself, and those close to me. Life isn’t fair, I understand that. I don’t expect it to be. With my luck lately, I’ve felt I’ve been owed a break, owed a good job, owed to get lucky on something. That’s not the case at all. I am lucky. I have a job, I’m really owed nothing. I have been given many gifts, and it’s time for me to make the most of them.

Now, it’s really easy to count our blessings when we compare them to other people’s curses. To see what we have when looking at the have-nots of others. That’s not really fair. Sure, I don’t like my job, but at least I have a place to live. We do all handle different hardships, and relativity isn’t really how to process what we are thankful for. To be truly thankful, we should take into consideration our own blessings, but not in comparison to anything. Blessings are current; they are not relative.

So, these are my post-Thanksgiving giving thanks thoughts.

Give thanks.

• Vietnam War Bracelets Come Full Circle, via LA Times
• Suddenly, Corn Costs More. Why Not Corn Flakes, via NPR
• Sex Journalism and True Work, via Rabbit White
• First Listen: Bruce Springsteen’s The Promise, via NPR Tumblr
• No, You Do Not Want Your Receipt, via Hairpin

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in the past two days watching the most fascinating documentary films, the Up Series. It’s a series of films set seven years apart. They follow the lives of children of different walks of life in England from age seven, starting in 1964.

Some of the children at 7

While admittedly, the series has some flaws, so far I have loved seeing these children at 7, watching them come into their awkward phase at 14, and on to a more adult–yet still young and fairly idealistic– at 21. It’s amazing to juxtapose the children of wealthy parents who have been groomed to attend the finest schools with the illegitimate child living in a charity home. Even at age seven, you can see the cruel side of class.

But what I think I like best about the series is watching the subjects find their own relative happiness. At 21, Symon, a mixed race child who at seven was living in an orphanage, holds a job working in food service. He likes it. When the interviewer hints that he may be better than this, he shrugs it off, saying that he just must enjoy hard labor, and that he does not give much thought to those kinds of thing. John, on the other hand, has grown up in boarding schools with wealthy parents. His parents resources have made him into a person far different than Symon. He is studying law at 21, and has a bit of a chip on his shoulder (although, the way he speaks about his situation almost makes you feel as if he is the victim.)

The group at 21

The subjects who I find to be the most interesting are the girls. Jackie, Lynn, and Sue grew up together in a working class neighborhood, and from there have each made their own paths into adulthood. Lynn shyly tells us that she wants to work at Woolworth’s, and at 21 is married and working as a librarian. She seems to enjoy her work. For some reason I find it really empowering to watch these girls grow into young women. While married at 19 and working for a bank doesn’t seem to be today’s version of an independent woman, it’s clear that Jackie has made choices in her life that have gotten her to where she is. Lynn remains unmarried until age 24, and works for a travel agency, doing something she truly loves. Looking back using such a small lens (the lives of these three girls) rather than looking at an entire movement, is really interesting. Feminism is at work here, but the angry women we associate with the second wave movement are not in the forefront of this story.

Suzy, on the other hand, was raised by very wealthy parents, and groomed to attend the best schools money can buy. By 16, Suzy drops out of school to travel. In a weird way, I have a bizarre respect for Suzy’s choices to leave school. I wonder if her wealth makes me feel like this is okay for her, where as if I had heard that Jackie, Lynn, or Sue had dropped out at 16, I’d have assumed that they were knocked up, settling, had gotten into trouble. While Suzy is doing well financially (appears to be bankrolled by her parents) she lacks a career as the other, working class, girls do. I don’t know if this is saying anything in particular, but I think it’s fascinating.

Jackie, Lynn, and Sue, age 7

I’m currently watching AMC’s Mad Men, and have realized that these women are the same generation as Sally Draper. What I particularly like about the first film in the series is that it focuses on these girls as main characters. We see what these girls think about things, not what they are told to think, how they are told to behave, how adults react to their actions. All of the subjects are incredibly candid. I’m unsure of the coaxing that they received from the film makers, but the opinions stated by the children seem incredibly honest.

My favorite subject is Neil, from Liverpool (pictured below). He is hilarious, bright. At 7, he wants to be an astronaut or a coach driver. At 14, he is unsure of what he wants to be, but knows that he wants to travel. I’ve done some light reading and learn that Neil at the time of 21 Up is homeless. You have to wonder what went “wrong” between age 14 and 21. Why Neil, a boy from the suburbs, is squatting in London, while Tony, a boy from a poor family in the East End, is doing fine for himself, taking yearly vacations to Spain. Neil, who is the social mean of the group, seems to have made the most drastic jump. I was saddened to hear about Neil’s hard times, but reading further, things do look up for Neil.

Neil, 14

Anyway, this is an amazing series so far. Three films in, I felt moved to write about it. I highly, highly suggest checking this out. I believe that it’s consumable in a long weekend. All episodes are streaming on Netflix.

I’m becoming increasingly irritable, shy, unwilling to leave the house. These seem like tell-tale signs of depression (but according to a WebMD.com quiz, I’m at “Lower Risk” for depression) and I don’t feel down all the time–I just feel like being alone. Going to a restaurant or to the movies with some friends seems fun, but going out for a drink does not. Being in by eleven is ideal, whereas staying out until last call makes me want to call off plans all together. This is starting to make me feel that I’m just done with the whole “have fun in your twenties” thing. The Fun Me might be dead. (I’m writing this on a Friday night.)

Sometimes flashes of the old Fun Me come out. Occasionally I’ll be chipper and excited to go to a party, I’ll be candid and have a good time, I won’t sit in the corner and only talk to whatever friend brought me. Sometimes Fun Me remembers party tricks learned in college, or claims to a group a ridiculous profession. But most of the time, I sit and I half-sulk, and I think about how comfortable my bed will be, and how badly my shoes hurt. I’m over the whole networking thing, and getting me to do drinks with people in my industry is like pulling teeth. I don’t really want to go out and meet new people, because I like the people I already know. It’s not that I think that I am saturated as far as my social life goes, it’s just that… I’m not feeling it right now.

There are a few factors that contribute to this, but there are two main ones: 1. loosing my job in May, and 2. my LDR.

While I talk about the lay off as one of the better things that’s happened to me, truth is, it really took a lot out of me. At the time, my hours had been diminished to part time, and I was living in this city on only 30 hours of week, making a measly $11/hour. I didn’t have much time to save, and I didn’t want to have too much unemployment time, because that looks bad on resumes, so I took the first job that came to me. I was lucky, I was unemployed for a full two days before I was taken on by My Worst Nightmare Productions (my name for this company). I won’t go into gory details, but after quitting, I continued to work there on and off for three months. I finally put my foot down, said I wasn’t coming back, and I’ve been out of work since.

While I can’t really look around and see all of the people who are out of work and really feel THAT BAD for myself, there has been set backs. I feel terribly guilty going out and spending money on anything but rent, food, and bills. Drinking $6-8 beers doesn’t drown the sorrows, it makes things worse, and by the end of the night, I am a mental mess, thinking about how I will never make it in showbiz. (Did you know I am one of those people who have spiraling thought patterns?!) And perhaps it wasn’t the lay off that broke me, but the job with Worst Nightmare Productions that really kicked me when I was down, but my self esteem in the career department is pretty much broken. It’s really hard to send out literally dozens of resumes a week and get a response from maybe 1/50.

Factor numbero dos: My boyfriend lives in Cleveland. While I’ve gotten pretty used to the whole long distance thing, there are (understandably?) still periods of time when it gets me down. I don’t feel like I need him to make me happy, or that without him I can’t go anywhere, or that I’d be feeling bad if I went and had fun without him. It’s just that I miss him. I don’t think that’s so wrong. We have to deal with time tables, so when he is ready to go to bed at 2AM on a Friday night, it’s only 11 here in SoCal. Not that I’m sitting up all night waiting for phone calls, but it’s nice to talk to your boyfriend who you get to see, like, every two months, okay?! Get off my back.

So, I don’t really know where this leaves me. I guess I might just be done going to bars and clubs and big parties. Fun Me’s appearances will probably just end up being few and far between, but right now I need to focus on the regular version of myself that I have to face every morning.

Now, when I started my quest to join a gym (Quest? Sure.) I had orginially ruled Curves out. It just seemed a little too… well, for old ladies. Don’t get me wrong–it kind of is. I mean, one of the women I work out with is recovering from a massive stroke. She always wears great outfits, usually accessorized with her leopard print fanny pack. What really sold me on Curves was a friend living in Pittsburgh who had joined and in the last six months has lost forty-something pounds and feels that she is in the best shape of her life. She looks great and feels great, and she attributes it to Curves. It’s low pressure, and very nurturing.

For me, joining was not just about loosing weight, (although, I’m sure that will come as an added bonus) but as a means to become more healthy. I don’t think I’ll shed half my body weight to start to buy pants with a shockingly small number on the tag. Chances are, I’ll never get those teeny perky boobs that I so covet, the ability to wear slinky shirts with no bra. And that’s okay.

Women! Different ethnicities! Different shapes!

I’ve completed my first week with my old broads, and even at this point, I feel significantly better than last week. I’ve already found myself having more energy and not feeling as blah all day. It also gives me a destination and a reason to leave the house, which is something I need.

But, please someone punch me in the mouth if I ever list “working out” as an interest on my Facebook profile. Anyway, I feel good, so, booyah.

So, was it the worst job in the world? Well, no. I could name a slew of jobs that would make me more unhappy than what I just finished, but that wouldn’t really get me anywhere. It might end up making me feel guilty about today’s decision. To list my grievances would also feel satisfying, but again, where would that get me? Onto some sort of “these people complain too much” blacklist.

Honestly, this has been one of the worst experiences of my life. Aside from some issues I had about moving to California, I have never felt anxiety like I felt in this position. I’d have dreams about work. I’d think about work when I got home, silently replay my day in my head, finding mistakes I had made, and mentally noting to fix them as soon as I got in the next morning. In the first two weeks I worked there, I lost a solid ten pounds; I lost my appetite, was exhausted. Working in this position drained me mentally and physically.

In the end, where would this position get me? I really can’t say, but this is something that I cannot dwell on. Some really great opportunity may have come from this position, but I do believe that leaving–and now finally leaving for good–is the best option for me at this point. Leaving is the best option.

Now, where does this leave me? In a scary, naked, vulnerable place. While it’s a bit terrifying to not know where my next paycheck is coming from, I do feel as if I have been freed. At the same time, my next “career move” is not so easily laid out in front of me like a freshly ironed garment.

I’m really re-evaluating things, and honestly rethinking this whole showbiz thing. It feels a little bit like digging into a pile of laundry to find a warm, comfortable and worn sweater, but I am going back to past ideas, career-wise. Peg and I discuss this whole thing a lot. We are both going through newly-coined “quarter life crises.” I am rethinking teaching. I’m rethinking corporate video. I’m rethinking the culinary arts. I’m rethinking non-profit. I’m going back to a past dream job: Girl Scout Something-or-other. As B reassured me today (a little harshly): “You are 24 years old. You have a little bit of time at least to figure it out. You have not had a job you liked in almost a year. You are just stressed out that you are going in the wrong direction but you are not. You will find your calling. Just relax and be a 24 year old for God sakes.”

So this Saturday afternoon, I think I’m going to just work on being 24.