A Trip to the Playground

This is a draft I wrote here last fall and never finished: 

I went back to LA this weekend.

(I feel like I forgot to tell you all so much about LA. I moved there just about a year ago, and moved back to the Bay Area nine months later. It was not at all what I expected--so much better, mostly--


The most surprising thing about LA was, after nine months, how much I liked it there--I fully believe that moving north to my family, my friends, my cat, and a pitch-perfect writing job (with income!) was the obvious right choice, but I also think LA will always mean a little bit of fun and magic to me.


I've long thought that my ability to prioritize the fun of LA over the soul-sucking drudgery of LA was directly related to my loosey-goosey relationship with supporting myself through the industry. I was poor there, interning part-time for a production company and teaching SAT prep courses to pay the bills, but I had it pretty good. I worked on a major lot; my production company bosses were real, working producers and treated me like a person; I didn't become an overnight success, but I wasn't hating life in hopes of landing my dream job, either.  It wasn't sustainable--in fact, my job in San Francisco surfaced just as the "human happiness vs. professional sacrifice" conversation was coming to a head--but I was able to live there and work there without succumbing to my very worst fear: sacrificing my professional youth for a professional future that wouldn't happen.


Now, LA is like the Land of Zero Responsibility: I go there and I have friends, and memories, and places I love--but I have no obligation.


It was strange and exciting going back. I have the hardest time believing I was there for so long--I have far too many memories

Reading this now, even unfinished and with a nonsensical final phrase, I love it. It's all the things I always want to say about LA. It's the truth about a short, weird period in my life, and I'm glad I was able to get it down somewhere.

I visited LA again a couple of weekends ago and felt the same way about it. A lot of people have terrible, soul-deadening experiences there, and maybe it would have gotten to me eventually, but as it is, the LA of my memory is mostly a land of the golden hour, of fire pits on the beach, of sangria in mason jars, of late-night pie (or French toast sandwiches with chocolate, peanut butter, and bananas) with friends, of sleeping late and floating in the pool with a book. Especially now that my responsibilities lie elsewhere, LA is a playground. It's nice to have a playground, especially one where the other kids are nice and we sometimes watch Downton Abbey together in our jammies.

Again, I'm not sorry I left. My job here is about a thousand percent better--weirder and more fun--than ninety-nine percent of the jobs I could have gotten in Hollywood. That's what we call a lot percent better. Here, I have people. I have a cat. I have a church that loves me. I have an apartment of my very own, which I will someday decorate like an adult. Here is great. Here is now. Here is within a half-day's drive of the playground, which is also nice.

Let's do lunch, LA. I'll have my people call your people.

Thirty and flirty and thriving

I turned thirty a few weeks ago.

I went to Disneyland for my birthday, because of course nothing says "new horizons of maturity" like singing animals, hordes of children in polyester costumes, and unrealistic expectations about love.

Actually, it was because I have these friends, Maggie and Sue and Mandy—actual, honest-to-goodness lifelong friends. We're scattered all over the West now, and living a diversity of lives, but there was a time when we used to own coordinating Winnie-the-Pooh paraphernalia and talk along with the safety warnings on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and so we set aside the weekend between three of our birthdays to spend together. Specifically, Sue and Mandy and I spent two days revisiting our awkward glory days and then road-tripped to Scottsdale to visit Maggie and her new baby (newborns being un-conducive to the continuous riding of the Matterhorn, unless of course you are my parents and allegedly don't mind handing off your infant son to the ride attendant for a few minutes, which by the way I am absolutely not making up). In any case, I have to say: I don't actually talk to any of these girls all that often, but it doesn't seem to matter. Something about thirty years of shared history makes it easy. We're exactly who we always were, only more so—different-er than we ever have been, if that's even possible—and I think we fit together better than ever. I'm pretty sure our six-year-old selves would have approved (but also would have encouraged me to buy those sequined Minnie Mouse ears that I showed such discipline in leaving in the store. Ah, well).

Thirty didn't hit me hard. I didn't and don't feel especially contemplative about it; it's not like the weight of the universe is pressing on my lady parts. If anything, I'm feeling the opposite—the sense of confidence and self-acceptance they say comes with a new decade, but not in a hair-care-commercial kind of way. It's not an angsty age, thirty.

That said, my good friend Amanda wrote a great post for her birthday this spring: Thirty-Onederful Wishes for her thirty-first year. I loved what she had to say, and I decided to steal her idea (because that's another thing about being thirty: knowing when not to reinvent the wheel; also being able to make silly statements like "that's another thing about being thirty," like life is Marie Claire magazine). And so.

Thirty wishes for thirty years:

I want to be the salt of the earth. I don't want to settle. I want to know a good thing when I see it. I want to spend my days writing something I love: TV, or not. I want to control my tongue. I want to be a faithful friend. I want to visit all fifty states (current count: thirty-nine). I want to visit Africa, Cape Horn, and the Great Wall of China. I want to be better at conflict. I want to knit everything. I want to read everything. I want to give a home to a child who needs it. I want to look my reptilian nemeses in the eye and not run away screaming. I want to take my future family to Mount Hermon. I want my current family to be healthy and engaged and not afraid to have fun together. I want to live in an old house with hardwood floors and lots of windows and probably floral wallpaper. I want a teleportation device. I want a gentleman with selected characteristics of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zachary Levi, John Krasinski, Jon Stewart, and Jon Hamm to fall in love with me. Seriously, though, I want to meet a guy who makes me tingle but also makes me want to share a life with him. I want him to want the same thing. I want to make gluey potatoes and German pancakes like my mom's. I want a guest bedroom, so my friends don't have to sleep on the couch when they visit. I want to say "I want" less. I want to tell my friends how much I love them. I want to road trip. I want to find the elusive balance between interrupting with the answer, rudely, and not knowing the answer, vapidly. I want to run a race with my dad. I want to learn how to apologize. I want to try out for Jeopardy! I want a Roomba. And, of course, I sincerely and unequivocally want world peace.

Ask me again at thirty-one.

What I'm Doing; or, 0 of 12

February 12 was pretty much a normal day. I did stuff. I didn't think too much about it. That is, until I went over to Heather's to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and she said, "Let me take a picture of you for 12 of 12!" and I said, "Wait, today's the 12th?" and she said, "Smile!" and I said, "Aaaaargh."

So. I have no pictures, today, of myself 1) waking up, or 2) writing, or 3) walking to Trader Joe's (via the yarn store), or 4) eating sweet potato bisque, Dubliner cheese on crackers, and a mineola for lunch, or 5) making the maiden tweet on Austenacious's brand-new, steeped-in-emotional-ambiguity Twitter feed, or 6) driving to Heather and Erik's for the Olympics, or 7) getting verklempt over stand-up comics falling in love on NPR, or 8) eating heavenly gingered eggplant and chickpeas over basmati rice for dinner, or 9) realizing that I now get two weeks of hunky Brian Williams on my TV without having to watch the news, or 10) eating heavenly rose water-buttermilk sherbet and cornmeal-orange shortbread, still warm from the oven, for dessert, or 11) coveting that flying-harness dude's job in much the way that I have previously coveted Tinkerbelle's job in the Disneyland fireworks show, or 12) coming home, feeding cats, and crawling into bed.


Nevertheless, it occurs to me that, in quitting my job and moving cross-country and then completely failing to post here, I may not be doing an excellent job of explaining what exactly I'm doing right now.


Well.


Fair enough.


I'm writing. I'm keeping up with Austenacious and trying to post to P.S. BTW like a normal person. I'm eyeing this blog guiltily and promising to post more. I've just turned the Act IV corner on an original TV pilot script, which I hope to use as a calling card so that I can get somebody to pay me to write more scripts.


I'm doing a bit of freelance work—writing short celebrity bio blurbs for a website about celebrity net worth, should anybody out there be wondering about the financial situation of, say, Zac Efron and/or Donald Trump—and looking for more. This involves much stalking of Craigslist, much writing of cover letters, and much pondering of the distinction between a writing gig and a writing job.


I'm taking a screenwriting class at the local community college, as my eighteen-year-old self says, "I thought I worked hard in high school so I wouldn't have to go to DVC?"


I'm singing with my old choir, because I simply haven't had enough Latin in my life lately.


I'm house-sitting an apartment and two cats in Albany.


I'm running.


I'm flossing my teeth regularly, because seriously, people who don't have jobs are not too busy to floss.


And that's the gist of it: working, trying to make writing my work, alternately hoping for and obsessing over the future, and trying to make the present workable. I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing, because it's a chance at something awesome, and because not doing what I'm doing is a terrifying prospect, long-term. In any case, it's not a bad gig. Job. Whatever.

Observations

There was a nun on the bus this morning, in a full habit and everything. She was young. People kept talking to her. I bet she gets that a lot.

I have been lurking around Etsy in search of business cards--because I keep scrawling my information on the backs of receipts and handing them out, and also because handmade paper products are like catnip--and instead I keep running across "mommy cards." Mom's name, "Mom of _____" (ugh), contact info, kid's allergies/fears. Is this a thing now?

Right now, everybody should be watching Chuck and Friday Night Lights. Chuck (Mondays, 8 p.m., NBC) because it is forty-two minutes of spy-hijink hilarity, and because it continues to get better and better every week; Friday Night Lights (Fridays, 9 p.m., NBC) because it is just perfect, all the time, and because you will fall in love with every single resident of Dillon, TX, even the ones that aren't very nice. You can totally catch up on both of these shows before they end for the season; the entire series of FNL is even streamable (legally!) on Hulu, which means you are officially out of excuses.

Also, last week's episode of 30 Rock was a small miracle.

I am thinking about making a professional website for myself--something to put on the cards, with links to my various web presences--but I'm pretty sure I don't really know what that means.

The National Cathedral is the new Lake Merritt: I try to run around the grounds and gardens three days a week, and have scoped out a variety of benches and shady places to stretch out with a book once it's warm enough. I recently went inside for the first time, and learned that they have evensong every day at 5:30. I'm never home from work by then, but if I hurry and then get off the bus one stop early, I think I could catch the second half.

"Orientated" is not a word. "Oriented" is a word. World, please learn this.

Getting started

It's (pretending to be) spring here--I just walked to the store in flip-flops and I still have all my toes--and so I guess it's sort of right that I'm starting things all over the place.

I'm writing a lot these days, and by "writing" I mean "staring into space with occasional frenzied bursts of typing." I'm working on an original television pilot--original pilots being what get young writers in the door these days, plus the story just had to come out--and coming up with a new TV show is, wouldn't you just know, a tremendous amount of work in terms of creating a universe and then paring down and parsing out what fits into a 42-minute episode. This project is the kind of thing that makes writers write, and also the kind that stops them from writing: the world of my show just comes to me, floods into my brain at the most inopportune times (at work, at the grocery store, anytime actual typing is not possible), and then just looks at me, all coy, when I sit down to wrangle it into five acts and three storylines. "Don't you just want to tell me all at once?" it says, and I do. I love it, and I believe in it, and I can't wait to see it all grown up and heading out into the world. It could give me a little help in this all-important outlining phase, but hey. We're not going to talk about that. It'll come.

So in the midst of my writerly highs and lows, it's a good thing I decided to do something really straightforward, right? Riiiiiight. This purplish thing is my fetal Lace Ribbon Scarf, which is really just a jumble of stitches on US-4 needles. All knitting projects start this way, like working blind, with the future hope of something pretty and springy to wear while I wait for the bus (...which will likely be finished just in time for, say, Halloween, but purple alpaca is timeless and seasonless, right?). But it's like the script: you just have to keep going, believe that the pattern's going to be there (the difference being that somebody else made up the scarf design; I have to make up the script). But, you know. I'm glad I picked that activity to break up the uncertainty of writing.

Welcome to March. Time to make something, don't you think?

Grateful

You know, I'm discontented with a lot of areas of my life right now. My career isn't going where I want it to; I'm shy and flaky and frustrated about dating; I keep waiting for change, striving for it, and it doesn't happen.

But sometimes, like this weekend at Lake Tahoe, I can't help but look at my life and think, this is amazing. I couldn't have made this up: this place, these people, cruiser bikes and grilling on the beach at sunset and poker late into the night and having people around who care one way or the other about me. I can't complain about any of this, or about anything else. This is good.

Shelves of Glory

After looking at this and this, I've been thinking a lot about how I organize my books. Or, rather, how I don't organize my books.

You'd think that somebody as list-happy as I am would have an organized bookshelf, but for whatever reason, I'm pretty much about the Shelves of Anarchy. It kind of bothers me--list-happy, remember? Maybe I should decide on something and do it. There's alphabetical, which actually doesn't sound so bad, but it's kind of boring. Some people organize by color, which actually appeals to me, except that it makes me think of my Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, which are green, purple, orange, and yellow, respectively. I can't separate them; they're a series! And the by-color scheme seems pretty rigid. Anything mis-filed or granted an exception is going to be pretty obvious, and we can't have that! Some people put books together whose authors they believe should be friends, but that comes across as a whole lot of speculation (though potentially entertaining). I've also given some thought to the John-Cusack-in-High-Fidelity model, organizing autobiographically (starting, I suppose, with the copy of The Sneetches I got for my fourth birthday and ending with my new Portable Dorothy Parker?). I would love to be able to pull that off. I'm just not sure it would work. It certainly wouldn't be low-maintenance (which is actually kind of cool--an ever-shifting reflection of life, right there on my bookcase!).

I guess I do have some organizational guidelines. For as long as I can remember, the bottom shelf of my big bookcase has been reserved for the books that won't fit anywhere else: my (sizable) horse-book collection, my Calvin and Hobbes, anything by Dr. Seuss (The Sneetches, again), and the reference section. For awhile I had a "girly classics" shelf, where I kept my Jane Austen books, my Charlotte Brontes, my Louisa May Alcotts, and the like. (L.M. Montgomery would go there, but she has her own spot on top of the bookcase.) But those are all organizational whims more than systems, attempts at keeping things clean or making the books more sociable. In reality, I use the "I moved recently and might move again at any moment" scheme, which is not a scheme at all.

Coming soon: Photos of the shelves in all their freewheeling glory!

A change of mind

In reading Sarah Vowell this morning on my break, I came across a sentence that got me thinking. That happens a lot with her and me; some of her writing is about American history (and it's a fabulous, thoughtful, nerdily enthusiastic way to learn about that), but some of it's just about life, about being a young adult with friends and family and a brain. I was reading her essay about the time Ira Glass tried to teach her how to drive, and she said, "maybe rethinking driving was just part of the general mind-changing trend of adulthood, part of the same impulse that caused me to reverse my previously held opinions on cucumbers, lipstick, and Neil Young."

I've been thinking all day about the mind-changing trend of adulthood. As an opinionated person, I like knowing what I think about things. I'm a side-chooser. A friend once commented that I have a capsule answer to any question of preference--complete with full reasoning and acknowledgment of loopholes--ready at all times. I took it as a compliment: I know what I think and why I think it. I've never really understood people who don't know what they think.

But it's as an adult that I've realized that my opinions are actually not The Way Things Are, and they don't have to stay the same forever: my identity doesn't shift forever, and the world certainly isn't going to start spinning in the other direction, just because I've decided that, for example, not all pork products are gross. Just because I've chosen a side doesn't mean I can't look around and then sneak back over the line when nobody else is looking. And letting my preferences shift around doesn't mean I know myself any less, or that I'm a less thoughtful person; it just means I can recognize that things change, including myself. And I have changed--in recent memory, just off the top of my head, I've reversed my opinions on tofu, Justin Timberlake, bangs, Friends, contact lenses, Ben Stiller (and back again), Mac computers, vanilla things, sleeping in tents, and wearing pink. It's not even that hard. See?

There are, of course, some things about which I expect never to change my mind (green olives and most brown sodas taste bad; Five for Fighting should stop making records; "interrobang" is a really great word), and there are some things about which I hope never to change my mind (God loves me and is worth loving back; time is more important than money; voting is important and exciting). But I think Sarah Vowell is right: growing up is the act of realizing that the world isn't exactly like you thought it was, and maybe you're not exactly like you think you are, either. And that's okay; you can always change your mind again, anyway.