It's official

This has been a difficult blog post to write. After three weeks of deliberation and two weeks of drafts on this post, I've decided to leave to San Francisco. There are so many things about this city that I love, I am very sad to leave it. It's a culturally vibrant, cosmopolitan city with liberal sensibilities, incredible food and a kick-ass public transit system. Masses of people commute by bicycle. On every doorstep there are plants in pots: exotic flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and even grapevines!


I remember a friend of mine who bought a house in Silverlake, Los Angeles, and within a few days, the potted plants she put on her porch were stolen. In San Francisco, the streets are clean, Europeans love to visit it, the air is fresh and it's surrounded by the ocean, a bay, mountains and redwood forests. Yes, I will miss it. I will miss my local farmer's market, walking to visit my friend Sharon in Hayes Valley, eating amazing food in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants like the vegetarian Japanese place Cha-Ya, getting to museums downtown in twenty minutes on the BART, picking up my freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee at Ritual Coffee and the cute boys who ride by on bicycles. The only things I won't miss are the fire trucks that scream by my apartment five times a day and freezing year-round.


A year ago, when I left L.A., I was contemplating the same decision I'm making now. I was unemployed and looking for a job. I didn't want any of the jobs I was qualified for and didn't even want most the ones I wasn't qualified for. I wondered what was wrong with me. Was I afraid? Lazy? Unambitious? The fact is, I had stopped pursuing acting, something I spent five years on, but didn't really have the opportunity to figure out what was next. What was next? Now, a year later, I'm fighting the same problem. I've been out of work for over three months. I've applied for jobs, I've worked my contacts, I've finessed the resume, I've gone to interviews and prepared presentations but still at the end of the day, I know that I'm not working very hard for it. I don't REALLY want these jobs and more and more I feel my life slipping away.

If I have a job, it's not that difficult to keep on keepin' on and just do the job. In fact, I care about my work, I enjoy work and I don't have a problem getting up and going but being out of work suddenly challenges me. Devoting a day to pursuing a job I don't want is ten times more difficult than just doing the job I don't want. Instead my interests have taken over and I've found the bulk of my time being spent planting a garden, taking photos, making a music video with a collaborator, making a video for Amnesty International, writing copy and developing strategy for a non-profit, volunteering for Taproot, uploading my video clips to YouTube and watching documentaries on Netflix. It turns out, I enjoy marketing much more when I'm volunteering my time. Why? Because it's my time to give, no one owns me.

I know that I am one of the privileged of the world, a person who has choices. Even when I've felt myself under stress, confused and sometimes depressed, I still know that I am happier, more optimistic and more capable than so many other people. At times, I have let the guilt of wanting more keep me from being what I want, from doing what I want. It has always been easy for me to say what I don't want. Maybe it's a because my father was controlling but I could always say "no": quit, leave, break up and take off, anytime. Embarking on a path towards doing something though, saying "yes" has always been extremely difficult. So that's where I am now. It's not the leaving that I'm afraid of, it's what comes after.

The truth is, I'm afraid. Afraid of not knowing what I want, afraid of failing to achieve what I want, afraid of disappointing the people I love, afraid of wasting my life. It's taken me several years to come to this decision, a decision to figure out what's next. What can I put my heart towards that will sustain me, financially and emotionally? That is the question I am embarking on a journey to answer. For the time being, I will move in with my mom. I'll stay with her as long as I need to find my path, launch a business, make a film, write a script or whatever it is I'm meant to do. I will reconcile myself to the fact that I'll be living at home with mom when I got to my 20th high school reunion later this year. I have to let go of my pride, banish fear and embrace my own potential. That journey begins now.

I just finished watching the first season of Mad Men and there's a great quote by Peggy, the secretary who finds herself taking on a career as a copywriter, something unheard for a woman in the ad world. She's on a date with a boy from "back home" and when he snips that "those people" in Manhattan aren't better than us she says: “Those people in Manhattan? “They are better than us. They want things they haven’t seen.”

Too much potential

I'm sorry about the weak posts lately. I've got so many good ideas floating around, ten written on a notepad to write about, but I've really been thrown by this layoff. I'm having a hard time motivating myself to get another similar job even though I am running out of money and know I can't go on like this. I'm at a crossroads and now I have to quickly figure out my next move.

I've been out of work a full THREE WEEKS now. I interviewed for one job, met with a recruiter and have been contacted about some freelance work but nothing has materialized so far. I applied for some interesting jobs but they're long shots - moving into new territory. Everything points to the fact that it's time I start my own business.

An old boss of mine said once that I had too much potential. He was comparing me to himself; he said he envied people who could only do one thing. He used to work with Jim Carrey and he said that guy would have starved if he didn't make it. The only thing he could do was be funny. There was no plan B, no other interests, no diversions from the goal. People like that, he said, succeed because they have no choice. People like us, however, who are capable of so much, can get lost in possibility.

It's true that I am good at a lot of things. And I have recently come to realize that I don't have to do everything I am good at. I need to find out what I love to do, what makes me happy and then UTILIZE what I'm good at to do it. The recruiter I met this week said "at some point, people like you have to make their own job." If I don't, I will keep allowing other people to define what I should do.

So I'm going to try it. I'm working on a business plan this weekend for a marketing company with a friend of mine in a similar place. By putting it on this blog, I make it a reality. Wish me luck.