November 23, 2014

              I’m telling you, growing up is no walk in the damn park.

              I’m going to share an excerpt from something I wrote in the minutes just after purchasing my plane ticket to Seattle. I had just hung up with the guy who owned the film crew I met in Ecuador. In the back of a canoe in the middle of the rainforest, he had offered me a paid internship to learn video production in Seattle. I’ve never had any real experience in production. I was about to sign 8 years of my life away to the Army Guard. I had no idea where I was going with my life. But I get this offer and I can’t say no. That offer was more than a job or a next step: it was someone who believed in what I am capable of, and was willing to make the effort and take the risk to push me to my potential. When you meet someone like that, don’t let them go. So we’re on the phone, home from Ecuador, and I’m asking him the logistics of moving out to Seattle. “We have an office with a microwave and a couch,” he explained. “We can try and get you a gym membership so you have a place to shower, and we’ll pay you for your first project so you have enough money to get started.” I’m smiling at the reality of this situation. “That’s all we can guarantee. It won’t be easy, but something tells me you can handle that.” Hell yes I can handle that.

“If I’m going to pack up everything I have and move 3,000 miles away, I only need guaranteed security and guaranteed money to get me started,” I tell him.

“I can guarantee those things,” he says firmly. And with that, he gives me his credit card information so I can book the ticket.

“Is this what trust is?” I ask, shocked that he freely gave me such sensitive information already.

He responded: “If not now, then when?”

So I booked the ticket. I’d been home from Ecuador for 3 days. I booked the ticket for the following week.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had in that moment.

“August 19, 2014

Remember this moment. Remember the moment where you took a chance. You saw a brilliant shining light on the horizon, and you gathered your things, said your good-byes, and you stepped out in pursuit of it. It shone vaguely and glimmered so dramatically there were times when it was all but gone. But it shone, and you followed.

You just booked your ticket. Tomorrow, you will clean out the bedroom at your parents’ house. Next week, you will pack all of your belongings into a suitcase, and in eight days, you will hop on a one-way flight to the west coast to pursue the shining light on the horizon. You will sleep in an office, shower at a gym, and eat at the tables of the people who care about you.

And you will shine. If you didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t be writing this right now.

And even if you don’t believe it, there’s no going back now.”

              I’m being all reflective because tomorrow I go home for Thanksgiving. It will be my first time home since moving here, and even though it’s only been 3 months, I’ve grown and learned and changed so much that it will feel like it has been much longer. And in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful. I’m grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to achieve my dreams, and to my bosses for seeing potential in me and making sacrifices on their end to help me attain it, and to my parents for their sacrifice and ceaseless support, and to my sister and my friends who have remained connected to me even though we are thousands of miles away. I couldn’t have done it without any of them.

              And yes, I’m listening to the Gladiator soundtrack, so please excuse all these sentiments. Got me in my Honey Nut Feelios. 

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 1

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 1

VIDEO: Mommy Diaries Part 2: Apartment Edition

November 3, 2014

            I have my own apartment now. It’s a terrible place with carpet stains, a view of barbed wire, kitchen cabinets off their hinges, and a faucet that drips a drip that is so constant it’s more like a stream of water, but the place is perfect in every way because it’s mine, and I love it. It’s quirky too. It has a one-butt kitchen so small that it should be in an RV. I like to think of it as adorable. And, we have a hallway. It sounds absurd, I know, but think about it. A house has hallways. A one-bedroom apartment, at least out here, doesn’t. It has a living room with doors off of it. When my new roomie Lauren and I opened the wooden door while touring the place and stepped onto the fluffy light blue 1960’s carpet, we stood in the hallway and mentally cancelled all of the other apartment tours that we had left on the agenda. We were home. We were standing in a hallway, and it felt like a home.

            Fast forward a week and I’m locked out of Jordan’s apartment, so I beg the landlord to let me move into my new apartment early. He complies, hallelujah. Lauren drives her beat-up Honda to Jordan’s apartment to pick me up. It’s loaded full with her stuff, and we make some space in the trunk for every single possession I have to call my own. It seems hopeless – I’ll admit my pessimism for the undertaking. This light blue Honda Accord that she got for $100 because the entire passenger side is T-boned in such a way that you can’t open the passenger door adds to the raw, uncut adventure that we’re having in the city of our dreams. I haven’t touched my clothes that are strewn across Jordan’s living room furniture, so I run in and throw them in some trash bags, grab my guitar, and we peace out. Can’t get a hold of the apartment manager, so there we are on the street corner with all of our possessions jammed in this piece of junk with wheels, sitting on her trunk smoking her E-cig, with nowhere to go. We grab some dude on the sidewalk and ask him to take a picture of us in this moment of uninhibited liberty and excessive idealism.

Can't you just smell the adolescent idealism?

            When we finally move in, it takes us about 10 minutes to unload our stuff. The apartment manager comes in and takes us through the place. His name’s Andrew. He strikes me as some washed-up ex-rock band guitarist who hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s pushing forty so he lives alone in an apartment building that he manages with his two senile pugs while binge-watching Seinfeld. “Call me anytime, day or night,” he reassures us, even though it’s become clear that it’d be easier to get a hold of Obama than to reach Andrew when we need him most. The three of us awkwardly sit in a circle on our stained light blue carpet and sign the lease. A whole year in one apartment. Cheapest rent in the area, though, that’s for sure. Probably because of the shitty carpet.

            We salvage some semblance of civilization by stacking up my vintage suitcases in the corner and then stacking my books on top of them next to a cool lamp. It’s the only thing remotely close to furniture we have in the whole place. Lauren and I sleep next to it on this paper thin matt that eats my vertebrae every night I sleep on it, but after 3 months in a tent and 2 months on a couch, I’m not complaining. And there’s no Wifi. It takes more self-discipline than I’m willing to admit to restrain myself from depleting my cell phone data plan streaming “Orange is the New Black” from my phone. Instead I just play a lot of guitar and read my latest author obsession, Kurt Vonnegut. Everyone should read Man Without A Country. Just read it.

            It’s an adventure. All of it. I just signed a one year lease, and I have no income at all right now. My internship ended and now I’m a free-lance video person. I’m meeting with the right people and I have some side jobs tutoring, so I’m not an entirely useless member of society, but it’s scary. Since starting this blog and posting on Facebook, I’ve gotten some messages from people that say what I’m doing is awesome, how life is so exciting, I’m living the dream or whatever, and I am. It’s awesome, and I love it. But don’t get me wrong – there’s a price to pay for this kind of life, and that price is security. I don’t know where my next paycheck will come from, but I know I’ll have a bill to pay in a month.

            I had a meeting the other day with a big name in the industry, a guy who introduced Bill Gates to Bono and inspired James Cameron to produce Avatar. We met over coffee to discuss where I could go from here in my career, and he gave me some really good advice that I’m taking with me: Jump, and then the net will come to catch you.

            So against all the logic I learned in college, I’m just… jumping.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

          Last night, I became an adult.

         I sat alone last night at my bar hangout and wrote a screenplay. I love this bar. It’s a micro-brewery with the best craft beer around. I’ve been on every Tinder date there, seated at the wooden counter under the dim lights. The bartenders probably think I’m a prostitute. I’m there so often that Rick, the owner, knows to simply surprise me with a drink. Don’t even have to order. I sound like an alcoholic. I’m not.

         Anyway, my mad scientist boss calls me into his office last week and melodramatically announces that he has a job for me that he thinks might be asking too much of me, but he feels that I may be competent enough as a writer to help him out. He needs me to write episode 2 of the web show we plan to produce. This show’s been in the works for weeks, and everyone here is on board. It’s a show about…marijuana. Of which I knew nothing until I came out here two months ago. For ten minutes he walks me through his vision for the show, which I’ve heard a million and one times having attended the meetings, then he walks me through a screenplay template, then he gives me a plot synopsis that he has in mind for the episode (a very basic plotline), and then he asks me to develop an ~18 scene, 25 minute screenplay for it. I still don’t know why he asked me, but he did. Fortunately all the dialogue will be developed later, so really I only have to write a simple breakdown of scenes and characters. Easy, right? No. The creative genius and the boss I have to live up to are two magnanimous shadows of nail-biting pressure.

         So I sit on the task for like two days writing absolutely nothing and glowering indignantly at a blank computer screen that glowers back with its cruel, blank stare that makes me feel like a completely incompetent human being. Boss wants it ASAP though. That means sitting on it for two days is not a good idea. But he says nothing of it when he sees me, although we both know neither one of us has forgotten the task that has been assigned and, so far, unfulfilled. Finally, yesterday morning I promise to have it to him that evening.

         Nine o’clock rolls around. I haven’t written anything. I get back from the gym and it’s dark out, the steady Seattle rain falling, bringing with it the cold autumn weather that has been held off for the past month. Pressure’s on. It feels like college again and the many all-nighters I pulled to finish a paper on time. I need to write. I need to drink. Choices. So many choices.

         And this is the moment where I reached adulthood, dear reader. This is when I became an adult.

         I take my notebook and the show’s Bible (the book of characters, plotlines, etc.), and I go to my bar hangout. And on a Friday night, I sit in the corner of said bar, and I work. In a bar. On a Friday night. I remember in college what a Friday night at a bar meant, and I laugh dryly in my mind. The owner of the bar gives me free beer and I bury myself in the task at hand, politely excusing myself from conversations with the men who curiously approach my corner table. The hours pass, and this motherf***ing screenplay gets written. And as I drink more I actually laugh a little bit at my comedic creative genius which probably isn’t that funny, but I wouldn’t know because I haven’t had the guts to read what I wrote since I sent it off to my boss at 1am last night.

         So that’s how I became an adult.

October 13, 2014

The terrain

              The roads are winding and winding and I’m sure that they will never end, and the changing red, orange, and brown leaves, still drenched with summer’s green, blur into a 1960’s burgundy tie-dye outside my window, and I want to close my eyes and sleep but our destination could be right around the next corner, so instead I settle into a conscious daze, rattled to alertness only by the chasmic potholes that shake the car like landmines. We don’t know where we are or where we’re going, but we’ve driven for miles along this mountain path, the sounds of gravel crunching under the tires our steady lullaby, and it’s four hours until the sun sets and we have an eight mile hike up to a 3,300 foot elevation ahead of us, and we need to hurry up and find the trail head or else we’ll be hiking most of it in the dark, because there’s no way we’re going to turn around. Erica will get us a map, says a jovial fellow beckoning to his female passenger and her stack of laminated maps. He’s driving his big white creeper van down the mountain, the first sign of humanity we’ve seen in over an hour, and we flag him down like desperate survivors. Nope, the map says we need to turn around, but we’ll get there.

The first view of
a snow-capped mountain

              And then the gravel road opens up to a parking lot and we begin our trek to a lake at the top of the mountain. It must be something of a magical lake to be up so high and sought by so many. I like to believe it is, but then I forget about all that because it. Is. So. Steep. Jordan the Energizer Bunny marches ahead, leaving Megan and me panting and weak-kneed to continue the journey alone. As we walk up the mountain, everyone is walking down it, most of them minding his or her own business, until we begin to get desperate and ask every single hiker how much further up the mountain is the lake. We’re nursing beer hangovers and have about half a water bottle each, and about two miles up we realize that’s a really stupid amount of water to bring. Hours pass and we sip the water like it’s expensive wine, and the air gets thinner so our breathing gets heavier, and there are less and less people, and damn it’s getting cold. The foliage is thinning, which is really a beautiful thing because we can look out beyond the tree line to the gigantic valleys and snow-capped mountains in the distance, but it's freezing and we can smell ice in the air, and our water bottles our empty and it's starting to rain. So this is how we go, then. The last moments of our life on a mountaintop dying of hangovers and dehydration. I see Megan holding moss over her mouth and I think we have hit the point of delirium you see in movies. She saw it on a nature show, she said, where you squeeze the moss and water runs out of it.

Where we stopped for the water

              And then we hear the trickling of water, and there’s a small hill of rocks with water running between them, like a little mountain spring. “It’s our youth spring!” Megan shouts with childlike elation. “Or what do you call them? Fountains of youth!” The taste of that ice cold water is life-giving. Oh man it tastes so good. We try not to think about the potential Ebola or some exotic disease like it that we could be contracting as we guzzle abundantly, and instead I notice the silence, and I wish I could bottle up the silence and take it with me to the city. The clouds are sneezing on us, and it’s getting dark, so we keep moving, walking through mountain meadows and past small bogs, our horizon painted by the snow-capped Cascades. After seeing no human being for a considerable time, Jordan takes the momentous opportunity to jump out from behind a tree where he had been waiting for us, and I do believe our screams are probably still echoing through the mountain canyons and valleys. We finally reach the lake, and we’re there just long enough to take a few pictures and eat a peanut butter sandwich, and then we hit the trail again, with four miles of straight downhill and long hours of silence and darkness ahead.

The lake... worth it.

              We make it about a mile before needing to break out the flashlights. In the darkness, time fades to nothingness and it strikes me that I’ve read about that happening in books, where an hour could be twenty minutes or twenty minutes could be an hour, but I never really experienced it until this moment, where the three of us form a line down the mountain and say nothing, alone to our own thoughts, focusing only on the roots and rocks at our feet, the only interruption the occasional slip down the muddy slope or a stumble on the spidery roots emerging from the wet soil.  Our minds drift with the rhythm of our marching to places only we alone can conceive of. And then we stop. Jordan’s in the lead, and we hear him emit a hushed, reserved whisper, “What the hell?” and we look to where

The candle

he is looking, and we see a single, solitary tea candle sitting in the center of the path, its flame flickering in the light breeze, casting a circular glow onto our hiking boots and creating eerie shadows on the trees around us. And then the air gets a little colder and I clutch my walking stick a little tighter to me, and murmur that we should watch our backs, because candles don’t light themselves.

              We finish the hike and our legs feel like they will break in half if we walk any further, or lock up and paralyze if we take any breaks. And right now I could talk about the cheesy life lessons I drew up in my mind on the walk back, about how life is like a night hike and all you can see is the step in front of you without knowing the challenges that will come or how much longer the trek will be, but that would be terrifically boring of me.


Other pics:

Jordan and me

Megan and me

October 11, 2014

There is no such thing as sanity. I truly believe that sanity is a comfortable figment of our collective imaginations, a title we place upon people that tend to act in the same general manners as one another. That, or it means sobriety. But no, I think that sanity is a ruse, a thin sheet of ice under sun rays that we like to skate over. I live in a world that is insane. I am probably insane myself.
              Take my train ride to the airport for example. I went to pick up my best friend who is visiting from Virginia. Hallelujah I have a friend in Seattle for four whole days. And within the first ten minutes I notice this short, chubby gentleman with beady eyes and a fine layer of perspiration covering his beige skin. He appeared to be of Indian descent. I felt those eyes lock onto my face the moment I entered the cab. It began as ceaseless staring, even when I looked back. That's okay, he's a few aisles away. Stare out the window, fiddle with the phone, put in headphones even though there's no service for Pandora. But then he moves. Oh god he's moving, releasing a putrid cloud of stale body odor into the very air I am cursed to breathe right now. He shuffles his way towards me, battling imbalance on the moving train, and with dedication and perseverance takes a strong hold of the pole right next to me. He must be getting off on the next stop; I can hold my breath until then and refuse eye contact. Breathe. Focus. No, he's moving inevitably closer. The train stops, the doors open, but he makes no move to exit. He's standing over me, staring down at me. He's inches away. Why. Why me. I look up and I'm met with those beady eyes boring into my soul, a leering smile on his face, his chest rising and falling with each heavy breath he takes. I look away quickly. I'd like to think if I ignore him, he'll leave, but clearly he is motivated by inattentiveness. There is an empty cab and four exit doors and he is standing four inches away from me. I look at him and the corners of his mouth rise even higher. Enough is enough. I raise my hands and motion for him to step back. He nods his head and waves at me. Okay I'm not ruling out mental illness, so I want to be kind, but a line needs to be drawn. "Excuse me, miss," he says, as if I wouldn't have his attention if he just started speaking; he might as well be sitting in my lap. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, I want to apologize, I'm sorry." Compassion, Sara, compassion. I grit my teeth and say, "It's okay, you're just very close and I don't know you. I think you should go sit back down over there." Then the train came to a stop and he exited.
              Headphones back in. Next comes a group of young men no doubt intoxicated by many different substances. They. Are. So. Loud. They rattle off Chubaka yodels as they pound out their pull ups on the train poles. Every rider is thoroughly disgruntled and as Seattle's skyline passes by my window I play this fantasy in my head where I boldly march up to the group and in a steady, fierce voice, declare to them that they are the most shameful display of adolescent testosterone that I have ever seen and that they should man up and learn to handle whatever it is they have used to intoxicate themselves. The fantasy doesn't satisfy my rigid anger but I suppose it staves off some of the frustration. Get me to this airport.
              Upon arriving, the maze of parking garages, train terminals, and airport gates throws me for a loop and it’s almost midnight and I just want to see my best friend and pretend to be sane for a little while. But you know what, the beauty that is unfolding before my eyes as I stand here at the exit for her gate lightens my heart and reminds me that insanity can be beautiful too. Two girls, who have clearly maintained a romantic relationship from some unknown distance, embrace and kiss passionately, and I can only imagine how long it's been since the two were together, and damn I feel as lonely as I feel moved by the scene. And then two friends run and meet in an extraordinary hug and I'm even more excited for my best friend to walk through the door. And a young guy stands with a huge bouquet of flowers and a sign I can't read, and my heart pounds harder for him as I see him pace anxiously, waiting for someone special to him to walk through that door. Because you know, we're all a little insane. We all love deeply, we all have insecurities and desires and fears, we all want to love and be loved. We want to be good enough, man enough, wild enough, accepted enough, and as hard as it is to admit sometimes, I think I like this insane world I live in and I doubt I’d have it any other way.