Sunday, March 23, 2014

A Starving Artist Vacates


I’m extraordinarily specific about how I like to fly:

-Take JetBlue, if at all possible.   Which, strangely, has kinda become the domestic flight-equivalent of bougie flying (without taking first class and, you know, actually being bougie).  Take it.

-Get a window seat, if at all possible, but a window seat situated just behind the wing of the plane.   It helps you to focus on the horizon even better.

-My departing flight will always be, if at all possible, at the crack of dawn.  This way, yeah, you’re up like an asshole at an entirely stupid hour of the day, but then, you will still have the entire day ahead of you by the time you reach your destination.  Common sensie stuff, really.

I’ve had years of perfecting my personal method of flight, it is simply how I prefer things. 

And so, Tuesday morning at 6:45, I’m lifting off from the runway.  I am tired, I am freezing, and I am giddy, and my face is pressed up against this window that’s gotten all steamy from the wing exhaust.  Queens is disappearing beneath me under a blanket of early morning winter shadows, all dark grays and blacks and blueish shades of black, all cold.  Sterile. 

When I look up, the sun is rising into the tip of the wing.  This big yolk of a thing, that’s a million different colors at once, casting out a million different colors at its side.  All bright, all invigorating, all spread before me as far I could see. 

I am a permagrinning, goosepimpled, elated-beyond-all-possible-comprehension sonofabitch.

It is easy and simultaneously cheesy and wonderful to look at a horizon like this and think “So, I guess that’s what possibility is. “  And we flew further into it as I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes over a series of desert canyons.

I woke up when I saw the first palm tree.  And I practically ran off of the plane and into Los Angeles.

I’d tell you that I came here for the week to take a vacation, and that would only partially be true.  If you want the whole of it, I came here to hug a series of friends, soak in a stupid amount of Vitamin D, and attempt to get comfy with the neighborhoods.

What’s the sense of apartment hunting unless you know where you want to live?

The Dirty Truth is that I have just less than four months left in New York, and less than four months before we’re starting a new life here.  That’s what I’ve been sitting on for the past 7 months.  

I suppose it deserves a little backstory:

This past summer, I went on vacation with my boyfriend’s family to Souuuth Texas right on the Gulf of Mexico.  I was psyched for a countless number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was my first vacation (of length and without any kind of agenda) in 8. Years.  That’s not an exaggeration:  8 years, actually, eversoslightly longer than.  So, I felt like I was potentially overdue.  …In truth, I was pretty sure that I’d just forgotten how to do it, and these sweet Texans were set to get me drunk on Shiner and give me a week-long reminder.  It worked.  All of it.

I had not realized how much I had needed one.  I had not realized just how stressed and wound-up and tense and out-of-my-brain run-down I’d been until I was sitting on the beach with my boyfriend in absolute silence and realized that I just wasn’t anymore. 

How long did this transition out of Crazy take?  24 hours.  Let that sink in for a moment, if you will.

So, there we are, sitting on the beach in absolute silence, sun-baked, blissed-out, actually feeling our muscles snap and release and like slime their way down into the sand, and chugging Coke Zeros at a trashily impressive rate.  We just sat.

I could get used to this, says I.

“Right?” says He.

Riiight?  Seriously, what would happen if we could have this every day?, says I, staring out at the water, probably looking for jellyfish.  I can’t imagine.

“Well.  We actually could have this every day.” 

My boyfriend has been dangling the idea of us moving here pretty much since we started dating 7 years ago.  (… … …7 years.)  His “Man, it’d be cool to move to LA someday,” became, “Yeah, camera-stuff is pretty cool. What if we moved to LA someday?” became, “You’re reeeal good at this camera-stuff, it’s where you belong, when do you think we should move to LA?”  It has essentially always been talked about as if it were a Queen-sized mattress, you get older and it inches its way from a far-fetched wouldntitbenice and onto your potential-priority list.

And, for the past 7 years my response has remained the same:  Yeah, yeahhhh, I’m sure that you’re right.  But, I really don’t feel like I should be going to LA unless I have a gig that pulls me there.  Unless an agent or someone tells me to go.

Point is, I knew what the guy was getting at as we sat on this beach being the happiest of slugs, and I had my response on the ready.   I was on auto-pilot for it.

(Blah blah blah blah blahhhhh) Unless someone tells me to go.

And for the first time, he smirked at me in reply.  He smirked like something was up.  I was alarmed.

“Angela?”

 WHAT?

“How old are you?”

(… … …) 30. …?

“How long before you’re of age for your type do you think?”

I didn’t even have to think about it.  Some stuff is starting now, everything else should start in the next 2-3 years.  I’ll probably look age-appropriate in the next 5.

“Great.”

What?

“You know all of that?”

Yeah…?

(drum rollll)  “So why are you waiting for someone to give you permission to go?” 

(And then all of the cymbals crashed and the gong in my brain went crazy.)

I had no.  Response.  None.  Because I knew that he was right. 

Vacation-brain offers you a unique kind of clarity, right?  And, here we were, sitting all sandy-assed and BS-free and, for once, able to actually very clearly assess what were doing with ourselves.  I suddenly saw that this hadn’t come down to a question of “Should we quit New York?”, rather “Do we deserve something better?”  I knew that I was just sitting on a great opportunity when I should be running with it. 

The possibility of Los Angeles instantaneously became very real and very likely.

But.  I made us sit on it a bit longer, waiting to actually make any real decisions until we got back to the city.  Real life might change things, says I.

Wanna know how real life changed things?  It amplified the need for us to go.

Conversation A:
Man, the quality of life out there is so much nicer.

“Yeah.  Like, I could deal with The Grind so much better if I were dealing with it in my car and could just escape to a beach or a canyon if I felt like it.”

Instead of just staring at a ton of concrete buildings?

“Instead of just staring at a ton of concrete buildings.”

Conversation B:
This agent just freaked-out over me and said that I have “30-minute sitcom written all over my face”.

“Awesome!”

Yeah!  But, none of those shoot here.

“…None of those shoot here.”

Conversation C:
“Wouldn’t a yard be nice?”

Conversation D:
I have spent my whole fucking life with fucking Winter, I am so.  OVER it.

Conversation E:
“How far south are your brother and sister-in-law from LA?”

Two hours.

“Can we hang-out?”

 A LOT?! YUP.

Conversation F:
So-and-so seems sooooo happy.

“I knowww.”

Before I knew it, I was on Craigslist searching for apartments and avocado trees.  A year in advance.  (Overkill, I get it, but I was excited.) I established a firm and amazing To Do-list for myself of things that I needed to accomplish professionally before the move (which all kinda came to a head in February, as you know, and depleted me completely…it’s fine).  But the more time that passed and the more that we attempted to plan things and not quite tell EVeryone about the fact that we were peacing out, the more anxious we became to just PEACE-THE-FUCK-OUT.

But, we couldn’t.  We needed to be methodical, ready, and strategize a bit.

And all of this leads me to here, to this week.

I stepped off of the plane and into my insanely expensive rental car that I didn’t even think twice about price-wise because I was IN it, and needed it, and was gaining points for it (thanks, JetBluuuue!), and was perched in the driver’s seat with my North Face off and windows down and sun in my face in the middle of March.

I spent the next hour driving up and down a million hills.

I spent the next week getting lost in a million different places.

I ran a mountain and had a stare-down with a coyote, ate more pastries than I have in years, drank more wine than I have in…weeks… , did morning yoga in a canyon, hugged a million friends,  went to a book club, saw my family, saw the best Transformers-musical ever, asked a million benign and boring questions and was jazzed about all of them.

I took a week to vacation.  And realized that life here actually looks a lot like New York.  Just sunnier.  With more breathing room.  More palm trees.  More Happy. 

I feel like I’ve earned these things.

And now, I finally have the permission to make it mine.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A Starving Artist Looks Into Adulthood

I can see it now:

Hi.  My name is Angela, and I'm a jerk.

"Hiiiii, Angelaaaa."

I'm 31 years-old, and every morning, I wake up to put hot chocolate mix in my coffee.  That's a real thing, and I do it every.  single.  day.  But, in my defense, I put coconut milk in it, too, which is both soy and dairy free, so, I guess, in a way, I'm still aiming to be nutritionally sound?  And also, at least it's coffee.  Which I could drink black and just choose not to, but my point is that I'm not, like, chugging a thing of Nesquik through a twisty straw as my morning ritual.  Although that sounds delicious.  ...I'm an adult.

"Let's pause on that for a moment.  When you say 'I'm an adult', are you saying that because you believe it to be true, or because you're trying to convince yourself of that much and, essentially, force it?  Are you forcing the idea of Adulthood?"

... ...I'm an adult?


I war with this thing in myself pretty much all the goddamn time.  And I have been.  I'm sure that's a thing, like a symptom of "I'm in my late 20s/early 30s", assessing how to find that balance and all that jazz.  Still.  It's unacceptable and I don't like it.

HOWEVER.  Over the past... (....1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7nope) like 6 1/2 months...? (Which, if you'll notice, is how long it's been since I last wrote which, admittedly, is disappointing to me however, I swear, there's a reason for it, and I've been avoiding it, and I still can't get into it quite yet, but I will...JESUS CHRIST WITH THESE PARENTHETICALS AND THE EXTENSIVE COMMA-USAGE!).  Over the past 6 1/2 months, I've been upping my Adulty-game at hyperspeed.

Professionally.  Strictly professionally.

And therein lies the rub.

I feel like I literally woke up one morning sometime at the beginning of September and went "Fuck.  I'm not doing anything!"   And I decided to start doing EVerything in an attempt to get ANYwhere.  Which, sure, everyone goes through bouts of this.

My particular bout was 6 1/2 months-long.  And my 6 1/2 months looked like this:
-Let's take this workshop.
-Let's take THAT workshop.
-Let's do a reading.
-Let's pimp myself through a mailing.
-Let's run to four auditions.
-Let's work 6 shifts.
-Let's close this week, and hit Repeat.
-Let's film this awesome month-long project.
-Let's work 24 more shifts when I'm not shooting.
-Let's immediately run from this project to another one where I direct.  For two months.
-Let's immediately run from rehearsal to work almost every day.  For two months.
-Let's start pimping that project.
-Let's figure out how to fit a double in this week.
-Let's record a voice-over.
-Let's pimp myself again.
-Let's take 3 workshops.
-Let's question my day job.
-Let's start working 7 shifts a week.
-Let's run a fundraiser.
-Let's open a play.
-Let's do a sketch show.
-Let's do a reading.
-Let's take 3 more workshops in 2 days.
-Let's punish ourselves for not having done a mailing in a bit, and pimp EVen harder.
-Let's start another improv class.
-Let's audition for a big huge role on a big huge show and then still wonder why I haven't: booked anything like that yet/shot a short film/finished writing a webseries/gotten into class with Bob Krakower/started making more money/landed an agent/found a way to not have a day job/finished improv classes by now/started sketch/made my website cuter/handed out more business cards/written a pilot/done something of worth with myself.

Even though I had.

I was running myself ragged and exhausting myself through exhausting all of my options in how to get myself professionally Awesomer.  Because, that's the Adult-thing, right?  If you're not kicking ass professionally, if you're not 100% succeeding, you're not living and you are, otherwise, a waste of space and this big crazy succubus to the grown up-potential of the people around you.  Right?

Not right, though.

And meanwhile, I began to realize that I was doing absolutely nothing else.

I couldn't remember the last time my boyfriend and I had been on a date.  I couldn't remember the last time I'd found a chance to go running.  I couldn't remember the last time that I'd adequately cleaned my house, dropped off a load of laundry that hadn't been accumulating for 4-5 weeks, took a day to read, go to a museum, hang out at a bar with friends just to do it and get stupid drunk just because OR not, or just meander and I live in NEW YORK FUCKING CITY AND I SHOULD PROBABLY BE DOING THIS ALL OF THE TIIIIIIME.  I was putting so much extraordinary effort into being an "Adult" that I was doing nothing in the way of being just a fucking "Person".

I was slowly, and without even realizing it, becoming that chick that I never wanted to be:  The Actor.  (Horror, Gasps, and Shock and Awe.)  I knew that if I let it go on much longer, I would slowly evolve into the girl who doesn't ask "Ohmygod, how ARE you?", rather "Ohmygod, soooo, what are you working on these days?"

These people are not necessarily asking this question for a competitive purpose (...ok, fine, some definitely are, but), they're asking this question because they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT.   Because "What're you working on?" is all that they know.

And that's the saddest.

So, with the official entrance of "New York Winter Dead" at the beginning of February, I just decided to stop.  I was going to take the month off from Professional-Me and do, I mean, pretty much everything else.

And I did.

All of a sudden, friend-dates were happening, boyfriend-dates were happening, exercising was happening, reading was happening, tax-organizing was happening, SLEEP was happening, the cleanest house in the universe was happening, a whole lot of Nothing was happening, it was All.  HAPPening.

And I felt complete.  I'm not kidding, shit felt glorious.

And my world didn't end, and my professional world didn't stop.  It just, I suppose, relaxed.  And man, it was a welcome change.

There are, however, two problems with this approach:

For A ) This Relaxation/Let's-Just-Be-A-Fucking-Normal-Person-thing is JUST as addicting as the former.  And, therefore...

For A2 ) You have to determine how to find this stupid Balance-thing.  Rather, I have to determine that.  Which, naturally, I'm assuming is just going to be a fancy work-in-progress for a good long while.  It's a funny little struggle when you sit back and really think about it:
      -Wound-up/Professionally On Fiii-yuh -Me   -versus-   Just CALM THE EFF DOWN AND SIT THE HELL DOWN AND GO GET YOURSELF A GAH-DAMN MARGARITA -Me.
      -& You're 31 Be a Fucking Adult Already -Me    -versus-   Nooooooooooooooooooooooope!  Nope -Me. 

Truthfully?  This lil warring-thing could, actually, get kind of hilarious.

For B ) UNhilariously, there are lots and lots of people who will just never be ok with your taking this approach.  And they will let you know.
      -"So!  What're you working on right now?"
      -Nothing!
      -"Wait.  ...What?"
      -No!  It's great. I'm actually just kind of taking some time to just kind of slow down and, I guess, be better to myself.  For lack of a better non-cheesy-sounding term.
      -"Huh."
      -What?
      -"NO, just.  You'll be ok, things will pick back up."
      -No no no, TRUST me, I'm fine!
      -"OK.  ...I just took class with someone from Bowling/Miscia, by the way, she was SO great."
      -That's awesome!  
      -"You should totally look into it."
      -Sure.  I will.   But, I'm fine.
      -"Huh."

Look.  Just know that this happens, and know that this happens from more people than you'd expect.  And know that it's happening just because they're even more lost in their own shit than you are.

(PS, These are also the same people who will warm up the loudest in the lobby of the Equity-building, and freak out on YOU when they shatter their compact of blush before a commercial audition.  Nutshell:  they're the last people in the world that you should actually worry about.)

(PPS, WHAT'S! UP!  PARENTHETICALS!!!)  (For real.)

But.  In my humble opinion, you owe it to yourself to try it.  In my 31 years of garnering life experience and wisdom beyond all possible comprehension (dusts shoulders off)(FUCK!), I feel like the best Actors, nope, the best Artists, Starving and otherwise, are the people who take the initiative to live beyond their craft.  In other words, the best Artists are the people who take the opportunity to actually live.

(You should totally look into it.)