August 31, 2014

“You have to really like yourself in a place like this.” I remember when I wanted to live in a tent, and I sat at the oversized kitchen table covered in strange plants and a small TV with a robot antenna contraption in my uncle’s kitchen. He told me austerely, “You have to like yourself. You’ll know what I mean.” I know what he meant. Being alone and unfamiliar with this whirlwind, a person dialogues with herself. It’s like talking to your reflection in a mirror. The person you’re becoming might disagree with the person that you were and you talk about it inside. If you know how to be honest with yourself, the learning process goes a little faster but if you’re insecure or ashamed, and you hide from the true you inside that’s always trying­­­ to be let out, the process will be like the futile effort of a fly buzzing at the window towards what he sees to be freedom.

              I think I like myself. I wake up in the morning to the sun shining through the slatted window shade that won’t close. I check my phone; it’s growing more and more disappointing at the lack of correspondence I have with humanity. But then I’ll have one good conversation and be socially exhausted for the next four hours. So I put the phone down and get off the couch. I have no idea what I do after that. That’s just the way it is. I could no sooner tell you what I’m doing tomorrow as you could tell me what you’ll be doing six months from today. I’m not sure if I’ll go to work tomorrow, or if I’ll stay home. I don’t know if I’ll sleep at the apartment tomorrow, or on the boat. I don’t know. That’s my life. I’m not going to pretend it’s not exhausting and lonely as hell. It’s hard to grow roots when the wind blows you so much. I just have to find a place with the right soil and sunlight. I think I’ve found it. Now I just have to sit and watch the grass grow. It might not look like it’s growing, but it’s growing. Friends will come, work will come, the arbitrary passage of life will come.

              Right now, though, this is the way it is. I’m alone. I have four conversations in three days. That’s okay. Is it really okay, you ask? Yes, it is. I am here. I am alive. I am in the city of my dreams, and it’s more than simply thinking myself to be on track for success. I know I am. I feel it in my heart that where I am right now is exactly where I need to be right now. That means if I was somewhere else with friends and things to do, I wouldn’t be where I need to be. It’s like… you can go off the path so many times, but every time you cross it again, you get a fresh start. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been; what matters is that you’re here now and you can only move forward. You have a fresh start. It’s like getting yourself out of debt. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve owed before; you’ve broken even, and now you can start over. I’m here. I made it back onto this path. Maybe I lost it before; maybe I didn’t. But all that matters is I’m here now, and that makes the empty days worth it.

              To be honest, I don’t want to rush it either. Moments like these are beautiful. They’re so rare. Some people go through life without ever having an opportunity to start fresh and new. I had it in college, and the first semester of freshman year was the hardest, most beautiful time of my life, because I was so close to God and I learned and grew so much, despite feeling so alone. I’m facing the same challenge again, three years later. I know nobody, and this time I don’t have a set agenda of classes or work to do (thank God). And as much as I like to tell myself otherwise when I’m sulking, I know that this will pass very quickly. Like the leaves changing from summer to fall, so will pass these moments of hardship until one day, I will wake up in a bed in an apartment that I can call my own, with friends blowing up my phone to the point of annoyance, and a job portfolio worth a steady salary. It will happen like the way the sun rises. It’s dark until suddenly it is light. There’s never a point where the world goes from nighttime to daytime; it happens within you, at the moment you notice the world around you illuminated. Such will be the way life passes here. 

Friday, August 29, 2014

              My plane lands and I’m here. I’m a West Coaster. I have no return ticket. These bags and this guitar are literally the only things I have to call my own now. And for how long? Where am I going to sleep tonight? “We have an old intern, a guy named Jordan, he’s I think 22, and he has an apartment in the University District. It’s small, but right now it’s empty, because he’s out of state on business. He’s left you his key, so you can stay there until Tuesday.” My boss hands me an envelope. Inside is a key and a note:

              “Hello Stranger,

              Mi casa es su casa. Treat it as your own.

-          Sorry about the mess.

-          Eat/Drink any food, it will go bad otherwise.

  I’ll be back on the 3^rd, will see if we can get ya some work.

              Jordan”

(He’s a production assistant – aka PA – which is the job I’ll have once I know something relevant to this industry). But his pad is cool. It’s situated in an old brick building in the University District, so there are countless students milling about at any given moment. The apartment is cozy; unlock the antique wooden door and you walk in to a small living room with large windows at the back. On your immediate left is a bathroom and on the right is a small bedroom, and at the back on the left is a door leading to a tiny kitchen. It’s perfect, I tell my boss as we drop my stuff.

              I’m whisked away again to get a bicycle, and then again to the office. The bosses don’t expect me to work, but I want to work. I’m here to work. And honestly, what else would I do besides work? They give me my own office key, and then we unlock the door and walk up a long flight of stairs. At the top is this industrially decorated open space with large skylights letting in lots of light and a male’s rendition of interior decorating. They have a good thing going: unfinished plywood floors, neutral gray tones in various shades on the walls, some sick couches that were featured in a commercial they shot, and this incredible vintage video camera from the 60’s. In the back corner is a fully equipped, all-purpose espresso cart, one that you’d see on a street corner, and a little kitchen area in need of some organization. The other back corner is an office, the one I’ll be using. Then in another corner is Brad’s office. Brad is one of my bosses, the producer. He’s got a big leather couch in front of his desk, and a huge ping pong table beyond that. Then Matt’s office is in the last corner, walled off with a door. Matt is the guy who gave me the job; he’s the director.

              I like my bosses. Matt is the son of Tom Skerritt, an actor who was in Top Gun, Alien, and a few others. He’s from LA, and he’s in his forties now, married with two daughters. Brad’s even better connected in the industry: they say he’s one of the most connected producers in Seattle, and at this moment he’s enjoying a weekend trip with his wife and their family friend Dave Matthews (yes, from the Dave Matthews band). He’s married to a costume and makeup artist who works closely with Russell Wilson, Macklemore, and the list goes on. He has a daughter and a son. I asked them what time they want me at work; they said around 9, although since then I’ve been getting to work at 9 and sometimes they’re not there until noon. I don’t have any other coworkers; it’s just the three of us at the office, because anyone else they pay to help them is freelance. Technically I am too, but I can’t afford to not be at the office to gain that experience.

              My first project is a suicide awareness video. My client is the wife of a top marketing executive at Microsoft and she runs Forefront, a non-profit that aims to teach people how to deal with depressed or suicidal individuals. We shoot in four days, so I’m busy making preparations for that. It’s fun – I love my job.

A Mini Intro

            

             I would have signed my life away (or, at least the next 8 years of it) to the Army National Guard sitting right there in that small, stuffy, colorless office in the heart of Baltimore City if the paperwork hadn’t taken so long. I was ready for a direction. Three months of aimless tent-dwelling will do that to you. The Army’s benefits package and the promised opportunity for someone like me looked better than anything else I had going for me. That’s not to say I had no other options. No, I own the pumps and the suit that cost more than my plane ticket to Seattle, and I landed several job offers after college while wearing them. But I felt like a thirsty soul being forced to lap water like a dog. I had this strange feeling that opportunity was coming, and I needed to be available for it.

              So I moved into a tent on my aunt’s and uncle’s property to salvage some semblance of independence while not dropping an atomic bomb on my bank account. I loved it. In the woods, with a natural spring to bathe in (when I wasn’t using the shower at my aunt’s and uncle’s house), and a fire pit to cook over (when I wasn’t eating dinner with my aunt and uncle), and a constant challenge to find the most primitive conditions at which I could live and be okay with living. It ended up being easier than I thought because my aunt and uncle helped out so much, so I still haven’t found that limit yet. Knock on wood.

              But after three months, I needed a direction. I’m not sure when or how I decided on military, but on one hot summer afternoon, I found myself in this stuffy little office airing out all my dirty laundry to a recruiter who was truly convinced I was lying about wanting to join the military. “Do you seriously want to enlist?” the young recruiter asked me incredulously for the third time as he scoured my paperwork. For the third time I told him yes, and he said he was just waiting for his bosses to come in and tell him I’m just someone they paid to test his abilities as a recruiter. “They told me you worked on a farm so I was picturing some short, hefty, barrel-chested girl who could wrestle a wild pig. You’re so… tall.” He did not let up. “So you’re telling me you graduated college a year early, you have no tattoos, no college debts, no criminal record, you’re 5’9”, you could be a model, and you want to enlist in the military.” He stared at me when I said yes, for the fifth time. I was beginning to feel like I was in the wrong place.

              Then I went to Ecuador. Before I left, I called my recruiter in Toronto and scheduled enlistment ceremony for the day I returned. I had started a non-profit back in January, and Microsoft had selected me as one of the five grand prize winners of the Youthspark Challenge for Change. Part of the prize package was this two week trip to Ecuador to serve in a local Amazonian community. Microsoft also wanted to self-promote by sending a team of videographers to film us while there and create a short commercial for the Youthspark program. I felt like a celebrity. No moment was safe. You could get caught on film biting your nails, napping in the bus, taking a selfie. But I liked the videographers, and they liked me. Enough to give me a job.

              That’s how I ended up in Seattle. I was sitting in the back of a canoe on the Napo River in the Amazon rainforest with Matt Skerritt, the owner of the videography company, and I asked him for a job. He had advised me against military, seeing that I had a creative streak in me, and I told him if he gave me a job, I’d move to Seattle. It was a little ballsy of me to say, but right then and there we shook on it. Fifteen days later, only nine days after returning from Ecuador (and cancelling the enlistment), I was on a plane to Seattle with all of my belongings crammed into two vintage suitcases and a guitar case.

              So now, to all of ye who are interested, this is the account of my adventure out here on the Best, I mean West, Coast.