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Aaaand I'm in Los Angeles. I guess I had this mindset that "people are people" and that the culture shock wouldn't be too bad. Sitting at my gate in Charlotte alone showed me that clearly I was not going to be in North Carolina no mo'. However...I feel as though I need to get my bearings and get to work. If there is one thing that rings true about this place is that while cool, interesting, laid back, and breezy, everyone is indeed, an actor. I have to keep telling myself, "Well, what did you expect? It's time to get to work."
Thankfully I stumbled upon a little Sunday goody that made me feel much better. I am a huge fan of random blogs, Twitter-feeds, etc. I love the Daily Beast website and today I clicked on the "Horoscope" section. Normally I don't really pay too much attention to horoscopes--one of my best friends loves astrology so she fills me in on the pros and cons of my sign :) But this gave me some comfort on a quiet morning on the West Coast:
"Scorpio: This week isn’t short on excitement—labeling it drama is entirely up to you. With Mercury in the final throes of retrograde, your professional profile or public image may take a few hits, and you may worry that your glory days are behind you. They’re not. Still, it’s healthy for you to ponder this. By Wednesday, Pluto, Jupiter and Venus form a grand trine, eradicating fear, and freeing you to operate on faith—you recall a time when you lived on an exclusive diet of the stuff, which reignites a fire in your belly. After a retreat, you rise phoenix-like by Saturday, daring to excede expectations, even your own."
Reigniting a fire in my belly and rising like a Phoenix? I do love that Harry Potter reference, DB :)
Blogspot has betrayed me. It is saying that my Mer e-mail will not let me continue to blog on this anymore...something about "conflicting accounts" and a lot of big technical phrases that quite frankly I do not care to understand. Therefore:
1) I may have to get a new blog
2) This could be seen as appropriate because I am moving to LA and therefore need a new blog
3) Why the hell do I have to get a new blog?!?! I LOVE this blog!!!!
4) I could get a Tumblr...
5)...I don't want a Tumblr, they left out the "e" in the word.
6) Still, what am I going to do?!?!
7) I don't want a new g-mail account...that'll be 3 g-mail accounts.
8) Why doesn't the spare bedroom have curtains?
9) I shouldn't have watched Law and Order SVU, now I think there's someone on the roof trying to break in.
10) Oh, wait, it's just the light of the computer screen reflecting on said window.
11) Should I get a new blog???? Will people follow it?
12) Pfft, who cares if people follow it?
13) I do.
14) It's 3:21 a.m. I should go to sleep.
15) I have a craving for hush puppies from The Pit.
16) Ooooh, new Itunes music...
(Green Team) The Kennedy Center intensive was only for ten days, but I feel like it changed me so much. In such a short time I made a group of friends, ranging in age and personality, that I know I will continue talking to for probably the rest of my life. We all got to meet and work with so many fabulous people (among them Paula Vogel, Marsha Norman, David Ives, Mame Hunter, Amy Attaway, Kristoffer Diaz...the list goes on) and it really cemented my decisions to leave come August.
Before I left for DC (and good lawwwd, I love DC), I was stuck. I was debating taking the safe way out and giving myself a year or two in Raleigh to save more money and then go. Sheryl said it best: "Sometimes you just need to shake things up in your life and then it all becomes clear." How true, how true. I went into this intensive calling Hilary literally ready to walk right back out of my dorm room ("I'm not ready for this! I don't belong here!") to coming out an infinitely better writer with more confidence, and the fiercest love I've felt for my crafts.
I talked to Paula Vogel for a little bit when she came. No lie, I was literally about to pee on myself. How do you talk to one of the most influential female playwrights, someone who has paved the way for women everywhere, without your voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old boy? Still, I introduced myself to her and told her about how we did How I Learned to Drive at Meredith. I told her about how I was having trouble placing myself in the artistry world, probably because I didn't quite know where to put myself generally. She was so kind; she smiled and took my hand and said, "How wonderful and lovely it is that you have had a chance to do it all with such strong women. Don't box yourself. Just go." Just go. Those two words meant so much last week and still mean the world to me now.
I try and explain how amazing and beautiful this experience was for me, but can't find the words to do it justice. It was so hard to come back. North Carolina is, and always will be my home. But I feel like there is a bigger need and ache to go and see and show what I can do. And come mid-August, this new adventure shall begin.
I've been in DC for three days now. All I can really say is oh. My. God.
I feel like I could cry, I am so happy. I'm learning so much each day--my head is buzzing after nine hours in the beautiful building that is the Kennedy Center.
Gary Garrison, the man with many famous, fabulous, and intelligent hats said it best on day one: "Wake the fuck up and be the artist that you know you want to be. There is no time. You must be it now."
The people here are so accepting, sweet, cool, unique, and just...so different from the people I know at home. I feel like I've known them for my whole life. We have this thing in common, this need to write everything down and turn the everyday into something powerful. I have never felt so inspired.
JUNE.
In seven days, it will be precisely one month since I graduated. This is both delightful and vomit-a-trocious.
For Memorial Day weekend, one of my best friends (Hilary/Hil/YEE/Agnes) invited me to come take her sweet younger sister Karla to Camp Seafarer, and then hop a ferry to Beaufort and drive to Atlantic Beach. Before she even finished her sentence, I was packed.
I love the ocean. As in "love" cannot even encompass how much I adore the beach. I always feel the greatest sense of peace when I'm there, as if time just stops. And I've always sworn up and down that the day I have enough money, I will buy a place on the coast. And just as I expected, Beaufort was charming and just lovely. We ate lunch at Beaufort Grocery (sadly we had a really prissy waiter man named James, so I pretended to be a food critic and made him uneasy), visited the Sanitary Restaurant where I purchased a burnt orange shirt, and fiiinally drove to the beach. Atlantic Beach let me relax and check out for a couple of hours. It was absolutely gorgeous out...not a cloud in the sky, warm water, and a bright, tan-inducing sun. And hanging out with Hilary is always an adventure and conversation never runs dry. I am just plain old lucky.
One of my other sweet, sweet bests, Espanol teacher extraordinaire, Kellie, and another friend, Mandi were tweeting the other night and I caught a couple of their tweets. Kellie had the brilliant idea to turn June into "No Junk June" and clean house, mind, and body. Frankly, I am in love with said idea. While I am about to have an adventure with MK Cranny-Cran to Goodwill to get rid of a ton of clothing (Goodwill's about to hit the motherload...), it got me thinking. One of my biggest downfalls will be sweets. I mean, I love fruit. I will eat seriously any vegetable. But when it comes to chocolate, toffee, anything sweet, really, I cave. Can't help it. Summers have always been marked by a once-every-other-day trip to Henry's Gelato or late-night Goodberry's or Whole Foods to retrieve my ginger molasses cookie (always take the middle one in the glass case, they're the softest). Fine, Confessional Moment: I actually do have a royal title. I am Queen of Stress Eating. Proof: I sent my resume to a school in Los Angeles and promptly had cupcakes with Sheryl after. My grandmother asked why I didn't like the idea of nursing school (answer: I hate blood and bodily functions and will probably drop a bedpan on a patient), and I immediately went to Skinny Dip/broke out into hives. See? ISSUES. Why not make it a No Junk Food June? So thus begins my month of...substitution, so to speak. And, well, I just graduated and am still job hunting like a fiend, so why not toy with my BMI percentage? If anything, my Weight Watchers calendar will look like a freaking dream, points and all.
And so, June, I welcome you while I fight the good unemployment fight, continue taking hip hop classes, make an attempt to not bite my nails, and choose healthy over heart-attack-inducing items.
(And no, I am not counting coffee as junk food. I'm not that intense. And plus, we all know I would probably throw myself off of a bridge after ten minutes if this happened)
...I graduated eighteen days ago. As in, I walked across the stage, shook Dr. Hartford's hand, didn't trip, knocked over Peggy's hat, and then left Dorton Arena no longer a student of my beloved alma mater (I kind of hated typing that), and a newly motivated, unemployed, coral-dress-with-pockets citizen of the world. So, for the past two weeks and four days, this has been my routine:
8:45 a.m.: Wake up to my alarm and turn it off.
9:45 a.m.: Wake up to my alarm and turn it off.
10:45 a.m.: See the time, and literally roll out of bed because now it's just getting pathetic.
11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Job-search and start screaming at one point because my ring is pointed outward.
1:30 p.m-maybe 3:00 p.m..: Schelp my stuff from my apartment to either my dad's house in Cary or my mom's house in Garner. Really, whichever house has the best food/coffee supplies at the moment.
4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.: Go to the gym/maybe go walking with Hilary
6:30 p.m.: Attempt to socialize with Thathi, but quickly get aggravated when she asks for the millionth time why I am not enrolling in nursing school and why I am leaving for Los Angeles.
7:00 p.m.: Dinner. Usually a toss-up between hanging out with the fam or driving insanely fast to Raleigh where my friends are.
10:00 p.m.: A text from Dad, merely starting with "Hi," but meaning, "WhereareyouwhatareyoudoingwhoareyouwithIamafraidyouaredoingrebelliousthings." All said in a jumble.
11:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m.: Job searching, YouTube research, Facebook stalking, and contemplating my life on a too-small twin bed in my closet-sized room with a broken AC.
Hilary and I were so enthusiastic when school was about to end: "Our post grad lives are going to be THE BEST!" And they are. It's just, when it all comes down to it, we get down to one of my massive flaws: I lack patience. I see myself were I want to be, but frankly, it's exhausting looking up apartments, sending out resumes, panicking over my completely uprooting myself and frolicking in a land where everyone's an actor. I was completely validated when my MCG's voted me, "Most Likely to be the Next Tina Fey." I was insanely happy with that title, but really, it's a loooooong ways off. And I'm starting to become slightly (okay, well, DEEPLY) petrified of what lies ahead/stricken by the thought of being homeless on the coast of California. What if nothing happens at all? THEN what? Go back to the basics, I suppose. But what exactly were my basics?
I overanalyze a lot, in case you couldn't tell.
And then I remember the exciting things that are getting me through: I got into the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive Program, so I head up there in July, and will probably vomit with all of the amazing things I learn/fantastic people I meet. And I remember that most, if not all of the grad parties I've attended are full of people who are just like me. The ones who have gone to "Top Notch" schools like Duke, NYU, Stanford, etc. are done and home and are jobless just like everyone else. It's humbling. The playing field's equal, and (hopefully) everyone's ego is slightly deflated. For some reason it's comforting.
I see the playing field.
I just need to make the first big step.
I've been putting off this blog post for awhile. By not writing about IT, buying black shoes for IT, buying a brightly colored dress for IT, writing a Class Day speech before IT the next day, and not thinking about decorating my cap for IT, I'd say I have been living my life blissfully in denial, smiling widely when someone dare utters the "G" word, only to feel my eyes grow hot and start to tear.
But alas, denial can only take you so far.
IT...ugh, fine, GRADUATION is this weekend. The four years I've spent at my second home, sweet Meredith College, are coming to a close. It's a frightening, wonderful, exhilarating, and honestly, upsetting feeling, a jumble of emotions that I cannot quite track. I feel like this last week has been so busy, not with anything academic related, but just...stuff. I've planned a theatre banquet, written another skit, folded one pile (out of ten) of laundry, gone on a safari for overdue library books, Web MD'd possible foot ailments...you get the idea. I haven't had time to just...be in my college, and take in the little things that have always made MC that much more special. I passed by Joyner this afternoon and was suddenly struck with the thought that I walked those halls as a student for the last time this past Sunday. I'm getting my Oddball wig ready for tomorrow, and I can feel that lump returning to my throat again, and that painful pang in stomach gets tighter.
Thankfully, tonight I saw three of my very best friends, all Meredith alums, and all so special to me in so many ways. Kasey, blunt one that she is, said, "It sucks for awhile. You'll always miss it...but it gets better each day." Kellie merely asked, "What do you need Kiki? What do you need right now?" Meghan just scratched my back, which just about put me to sleep. And I can bet you when I see Amy tomorrow, she'll probably do what she always does, and say wise words to me that are true and will make me cry.
The one thing that all three reiterated was to enjoy each moment and to not be sad. Because, in retrospect, it really is going to be a phenomenal weekend. Alright. Deep breath...and....GO.
