My secondary plan was to write a post about exiting the Apple immediately following exiting the Apple.
There was a tertiary plan in which I would discuss exiting the Apple on our way across the country, the Apple growing smaller and smaller until it just disappeared behind vast midwestern nothingness and mountain ranges and desert-like swells but let's be real: There just wasn't enough time. Why?
Because the process of exiting the Apple is overwhelming.
It is an overwhelming process that eats up every single ounce of your time and then some, like, all of the time that you had on reserve, and it depletes you of all of your energy, hurling all of these stresses on top of you out of nowhere and in such a high volume that it feels fictional.
The only thing more overwhelming?
Settling into an entirely new city all the way across the country.
I'm nearly four weeks out and three weeks in. Let's discuss it. Let's discuss the whole damn thing. Yeah?
First of all, there are things that you should just kinda know when you're attempting to move out of New York. Things that no one would ever think to tell you but are, nonetheless, universal truths that would behoove you to have some pre-warning about.
For one thing, know that New York is going to attempt to persuade you to stay put. Now, for me, this
didn't feel like an entirely foreign shock to my system as pretty much
all of friends had experienced this in someway or another on their way
out of New York. Still.
What DID feel like a shock to my system were the roots of the persuasion, starting with (for A) our Apartment Hunt (and this is where I direct you to the title of my fourth memoir: "FUH-KING APARTMENTS and Our Complete and Total Inability to Find A Suitable Abode Over the Span of Six Bleeding Weeks UGH. ...An Angela Story.")
Have you ever tried your hand at apartment
hunting remotely? No? Cool. Well please, let me be the first to tell
you that it sucks a big fat D. It sucks a D regardless of the fact that we didn't have
1,000,007 different prerequisites for this apartment, even though we're two of the easiest people to please in the whole
universe. It sucks a big fat D even though we have some of the nicest
friends in the whole universe, friends who were willing to go out of
their way and drop what ever they had to drop to go and check out a space for us. It sucks the fattiest of fat D's because this researching
process was, as mentioned before, absolutely all-consuming. It was like having a second and third
job, combined, and yet we were not there to see these apartments for
ourselves, to smell if the hallway smelled funny or to assess how much
outdoor space we were actually getting or to shake the landlord's hand and say Yes, we actually do have a dog and yes, in fact, he is 60
pounds, but he's the most loafy and docile thing in the entire universe
I mean LOOK at this FACE, LOOK at this shmoopy puppy face and you trust us on this, yeah? Like, look into our pure and honest
tenants-who-like-to-have-fun-
You end up looking at
yourself after having gone through the motions like this for the better
part of three weeks, and then four weeks, and then SIX WEEKS and then, all of a sudden, it's the weekend before you move and you are still without an LA-address. That's when you look at your Brooklyn apartment which,
frankly, should probably be condemned, or something, and you end up
going Ugh. Really? I mean, is it really that bad? At least we have a
have a place to live here.
And for a moment, New York starts to win.
For B, there's the money-thing, and that thing is TERRifying. (We'll delve even further into this later.) You know how long we'd been saving
for the move? Eleven months. You know how long we'd been strategizing
every ounce of the move, what we needed instantaneously in New York versus what we'd need
as soon as we got to LA versus how much money we'd need for this that
and the other? Eleven months. You wanna know how much more time I wish
we'd had to be able to make this move comfortably?
ELEVEN MONTHS. And then, you look at your savings and, momentarily, feel in awe of the fact that you were even able to create a savings as a Starving Have-Not in the Apple. (HAHAHAAAA WHAT'S A 'SAVINGS' ?!?! I half-jokingly shrieked to my friends in NYC, too many times to count over 5 1/2 years there.) And then you think to yourself Man. I could finally finish up at UCB and take that class with that casting director that I've never been able to afford and, like, go out to a stupid nice romantical dinner and still have some stupid financial cushion with this. If we weren't using this to friggin move.
If we weren't. Using. All of it to move.
And New York officially takes the lead.
And then, for C, there's this part. This Professional-part. OK. At least three-quarters of my friends had told me stories about how "I got my first TV/commercial/film gig right before I left New York", "I finally met a manager who wanted to work with me a month before I moved out of the city", "I just got called in for a role on Blue Bloods. Tomorrow. Right after our moving truck pulls away." These are all real things. And this was how I spent my last month-and-a-half in the city.
I had been spending every week since January running around like a mad-woman auditioning my face off, call-backing like a pro, getting "first refusaled" and ultimately, as you know, booking absolutely nothing. I wanted it. I wanted all of it really really badly and, because of that, wasn't getting a thing. And so, once June rolled around and the end was officially in sight (and was, incidentally, terrifying), I decided that Life-things were more important to focus on for the time being and so, professionally, I became Captain No-Fucks.
The problem is that, unbeknownst to me, Captain No-Fucks is apparently an alluring alluring bitch. What happened right before I left New York was that I did a sketch show, got a commercial renewed, got called in for a feature film, got called in for Boardwalk Empire, went on an average of no less than two auditions a day, and booked a day-player role on an MTV-episodic and became a SAG Must-Join because of it. What happened was that I became a wanted woman. A wanted woman in New York.
And I started to look at what was ahead of me in Los Angeles, what was waiting for me: I saw friends, palm trees, and sunshine. And that was it. No representation, no apartment, no money, nothing known.
And New York started to look real good.
...
But, I left her anyway. Because there were things that I knew. (And we'll get to that.)
We signed our lease for our LA-apartment the night before we left New York (honest to god, it was almost midnight that Tuesday and our moving truck was scheduled to arrive in nine hours). We had a good cry after a shittily stressful day of packing, had one last bagel, and never looked back.
And a week later, we pulled into Los Angeles.
And we grabbed some In 'N Out and giddily ran to retrieve our housekeys for the luxury of being able to sit on the countertop in our empty happy kitchen in our empty happy apartment where we would grin like assholes at the top of the world. And we called our friends who brought hugs and love and beer over to our empty happy kitchen in our empty happy apartment, where we all grinned like assholes at the top of the world. We knew that we had so much shit to figure out, but we knew that it didn't matter because we were there, and we were there to stay and, ultimately, we knew that the shit would get dealt with, handled, and not just "figured out", but "perfected". The anxious worry that I had had when I moved to New York? It never even crossed my mind. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would all be fine.
And it was fine. For a week.
It got scary two weeks later.
You probably know by now that I only know how to throw myself head-first into new situations. And you probably know by now that that's a thing that I pride myself on. I'm not tentative, I don't take my time, I jump in and I jump in full-force and straightaway.
The problem with jumping in full-force and straightaway in a new city (new apartment, new professional environment, new lifestyle included), is that you need money to be able to do this. To do all of it, rather, and do it well.
We were so. good. about saving just enough to make the move and the cross-country drive happen. So conscientious, so good. My boyfriend was going to start work our first Monday in town (he works from home, and what a ridiculous god-send that is), and, obviously, I was going to have a day-job within milliseconds of getting to LA. I mean, pfft, please, I was too over-qualified to not be able to walk into any restaurant and go Hey. Hire me. Restaurant managers were going to be taking off their bras and flinging them at me Elvis-style. It was fine.
But. When you move to a new city and, specifically, a new city where everyone is an actor, the jobs that you're looking for are nearly impossible to come by. And, when you move to a new city in the middle of the summer (the dead dead summer), even more so. But, the only choice that you have (I have) is to keep applying. Relentlessly. To eat, sleep, breathe it until something gives.
And, there was nothing. And I was freaking out. And we needed groceries.
And we needed GAS. (Cars. Holy shit.)
And we needed just general Things, and bills weren't stopping, and there were friends to see, and bills still weren't stopping, and my commercial-renewal paycheck had gotten lost in the mail on its way from Canada and I don't necessarily know how rent is going to work this month and WHAT IS HAPPENING?! And I can't sign-up for workshops unless I have money to purchase them with and I can't meet anyone unless I take a workshop and I can't get my career started if I just sit here but I have to just sit here because I can't afford to do otherwise and I am wasting my time but I am so terrified that I am going to not be able to make it and I haven't even been able to really try yet and everyone else here is already in the throes of DOING it and I'm ready to just fucking do it but I feel trapped because I can't start living yet. And this has been my inner-monologue for about 15 days.
This shit is hard.
But, look, when you're here, when you find yourself in a similar territory, I mean, just listen to me and listen to me real good: don't. be. a wuss. Don't be a wuss, and step the fuck out of your own way. Do it. You'll thank me for it. Fact.
Unknown and Unchartered are surprisingly shottily paved avenues to travel along. But, you have to take them in an effort to get to where ultimately you want to be. Always. Fact.
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And you have to be patient. Fact. Because whatever that thing is that you need? It'll pop up when you need it most. (It's the dumbest. ALL of these points are the dumbest, I know they're the dumbest, and the dumbest part is that they're all remarkably true.) We signed our lease the night before we left New York. I've been offered seven jobs in the past three days, and the calls aren't stopping.
And we'll get bookcases eventually. And I'll get cuter sandals.
And I am (somehow) getting bills paid.
And I made us ridiculous breakfast sandwiches on store-bought garlic bread the other day, so living tight can't be all bad.
And regardless, regardless of the hurdles, there are things that are just working:
There's the beach.
There's hiking, in what's essentially our backyard.
There's friends that we've been able to run out and see at a moment's notice because it only takes ten minutes to get to them as opposed to an hour. Or more.
There's avocados.
There's suntans(burns).
There's the fact that I haven't seen my boyfriend this happy in years.
There's the fact that I'm signing with an agent tomorrow.
There's Adventure.
There's the fact that we drove 3150 miles to get here. From the Apple to my hometown, across the midwest to Kansas City, past a million and seven windfarms and over the Rockies, across prehistoric looking landscapes and the wide wide desert and into Vegas. We moved our life across the country. And we're here. And we earned it.
And somehow, despite the rocky journey behind us and the potentially rocky Unknown before us, we know that we're precisely where we need to be. That's the one thing that is Known. And for now, that's plenty.
And, for the record, New York? I can't thank you enough.
Onward.
