How I Almost Ran into a US Senator

I’ve been here in LA a few months now and the adventures have begun in full earnest. Actually,the true adventures only began in the past few weeks. Before then, I merely wallowed in unemployment and abject poverty filling out job applications online by the dozen while watching X Files reruns. But recently (and by “recently” I mean a week ago) things started going places. First off, after a sudden uptick in interviews, I got a job working the register at a vegan/gluten free bakery in west Hollywood (which is perhaps the most Los Angelenian of statements ever made) as well as a freelance gig working lights at a conference on a resort in Palos Verdes.

Well, maybe “working lights” is too generous a term. My job was to control the house lights which meant basically flicking a household light switch whenever I heard the stage manager say “house lights up — go!” through my headset. Though however simplistic my job, the real perks of working the conference were getting to spend some time on a beautiful (and outrageously expensive) seaside resort and to listen to the speakers attending the conference. The majority of said speakers were tech company CEOs, but being someone who can only hear the term “market share” so many times before zoning out, I was more interested in a person seemingly added as an afterthought at the end of the first day: US Senator Elizabeth Warren.

After a grueling lighting rehearsal before the speakers began, the theater crew were given a quick bathroom break, which I hastily took and then promptly got lost in the sprawling, large, and utterly uniform hallways of the resort. After jogging down several vast deserted hallways, I came to a large black door that looked suspiciously like the door to backstage. As I was now late and due back to my post, I hurriedly pulled open the door to find myself in the greenroom. The room contained some soothing music, a pyramid of a Coke cans, and several people including Senator Warren and (as a later found out) the CEO of Snapchat all of whom were looking surprised and expectantly at me. “Sorry, wrong door!” I said nervously and quickly scurried out before anyone else could get a word off.

After a bit more wandering, I found where I needed to be and the rest of night went off without a hitch. Senator Warren’s interview was (in my opinion) the best of conference and I never missed a single cue on the house lights.

An Adventure Begins

First, I am writing this on new year’s day 2015 but probably won’t release it until February 1st as that is when I intend to give my current job notice of my coming resignation.

Over the past six or so months I’ve fallen silent partially because I lost the habit of blogging during a few hectic weeks in July  which involved a friend’s wedding and a visit from my girlfriend, and partially because I’d simply run out of things to write. My life became banal and routine. Without much new in my life I found it increasingly difficult to find subject matter for a blog.

Now, though, I am perched at the beginning of an adventure; perhaps even the defining adventure of my life. You see, in late March of this year I am moving from a small town in Colorado (the town in which I grew up) to Los Angeles.

The motives for my move are both amorous and professional. My girlfriend of three years, Bre, has spent the past year out there working as an actress (her video blog on her experiences can be found here). The lease on her current apartment is up at the end of March. Also, my expertise and joy  for working in the field of film and television production lends me no more fertile ground for finding work than in that of LA.

Over next few week, months, and perhaps years of this adventure, I intent to document my thoughts and experiences in some way. Primarily, I believe this blog will serve that purpose; however, I may feel the need to document parts of my experience via video or photo which will then also be shared on this blog as well as on YouTube.

As for now, at the beginning of 2015 (and my adventure), I am terrified and excited.

Have a Backup Plan

A huge part of being a millennial (specifically a late millennial i.e. person in their early 20s now) is to have a series of diverse marketable skills to fall back upon.  The majority of us will not see the financial security that our parents and grandparents did. Those of us seeking work of passion instead of convince certainly won’t see financial security. Thus, the backup plan is vital.

Be it copy writing, teaching music, or fixing cars having a plan B (or plan C) for when things don’t quite go the way you planned is vital. If we have a fallback occupation we are able to stay afloat for longer and continue working toward our dream jobs.

Therein lies the importance of having a diverse and multi-interest life and education. Not only does it save us from getting burned out; those interests later prove vital to living a life of passion in the post-capitalist world.

Bad Writing

All writers at some point must succumb to the concept that a healthy amount of what they write is rubbish. Some days there is a little magic in the air and brilliance pours onto the page (and those are the days for which we live) but most days are tough. Slogging through wordy drivel most of which is subsequently thrown out or, worse, published to public dismay. As writers we must accept the fact that, if not most then, much of our writing is bad writing and either give up, or move past it and work harder.

Volume is the key. Just like any other game of chance, by writing more often the luck of a good piece coming out is better. And like gambling the same thrill comes to us when we strike it lucky. We become addicts for that thrill and pursue longer and longer odds to try and find it. The good news is that we aren’t immediately impoverished by gambling with words in the way one is when gambling with coin for really the only thing we spend on our obsession is time.  If we have time to spare, there is no real loss.

So the message of this post is merely this: do not view writing as the sort of highbrow activity that countless magazines claim it to be. View it instead as an odd form of addictive gambling that occasionally produces beauty, then continue gambling, chasing that beauty.

The Autumn Wind

An eerie bone-chilling cold comes with the fall wind this year. This anxious spookiness howls at us. Maybe this wind has come in falls before. Maybe this is why so many ancient cultures celebrate the spirits at this time for there a breath of the dead in this wind. The frantic mumbling in the breeze is not a spiritual visitation, though. I think it’s a premonition of a hard winter. The wind seems to know something we don’t and, agonized, it moans to us through the dying leaves.  It is coming, it says.

Everyone feels it, even if they can’t put their finger on the cause. They pull their jackets closer and take extra care when crossing the street because something within them notices the warning in the fall wind and projects an uneasiness. The shops open a bit later than usual. Their owners peek from their doors fervently expecting something, they know not what. Only dead leaves travel the streets. No one drives out of respect for the eerie crispness allowing the leaves to rasp their message to us. It is coming. 

Winter will come. And with it a silence. The leaves will be muffled under the snow. But for now we clutch our warm drinks and listing the hollow whisper outside. It is coming.

What is Mist?

Darkness and Video Editing

I’ve Started Vlogging!

Spurred on by a desire to further connect with my long-distance girlfriend, we have begun video blogging. Barring any more setup, here it is:

Faith

I often hear the word “faith” thrown around in religious contexts. But faith is not in a deity. The deepest experience of a certain explicit trust that only be described as true faith has always been found in family and close friends. Those intense relationships with fallible people — that is true faith.

The Nature of Busy ( and Alternatively the Nature of Leisure)

To be busy, it seems, is both a good and bad thing in life. If a person is busy it means they are doing things, and doing seems largely importing to this “living” business everyone is caught up in; however, being busy implies one has no time to relax and, judging by how popular the idea of taking a vacation is, relaxing is also good. So which is it? is busyness good or bad?

Probably, as with most things in life, the goodness of being busy does not conform to a simple binary construct but instead is annoyingly complicated, filled with moral, ethical, and scientific grey areas. Good rule of thumb, though, is to find a kind of busy that feels like leisure. In other words, do work that restores the spirit rather than tapping it.