Another Excuse, and a Motivation

I feel I must apologize, and explain.
I have slacked off on my blog as a result of a a lack of time, a lack of gumption, and a lack of something to complain about. I started this blog when I was underemployed, frustrated, and afraid. And many times, the fun I had writing about my experiences was the best thing I ever got out of them.
I'm not done telling you, my friends, about the wacky jobs I had when I was scrounging my living. That's right, there's more! In fact, I only really got started in on the good stuff before I got a full time job, but then it just got sort of tough to keep going back to those strange days before. Not that my new job was great or anything, but still. As soon as someone else negotiates my health care, it takes the bitter wind out of my resentful sails. And I can really only pretend to be funny when I am bitter and resentful.
But now I am faced with such a profound professional disappointment that I am reminded of how empty a satisfaction my employment really is.
Behold. I posted this sign over the kitchen sink at work to remind my gracious coworkers to please wash their cups instead of leaving them in the sink for me to wash. No one laughed. Not One Chuckle.

It broke my heart. It broke my heart.

Playing Nooky

When I was a kid, my parents bought everything in pairs: one for me, and one for my sister. When my mother learned that Beanie Babies were going to be worth tons of money when we grew up, my mother returned to McDonald's again and again until she had two complete sets of Happy Meal Beanie Babies.

And when Disney opened The Vault and proclaimed that Sleeping Beauty would be released on VHS for a limited time only, Mom and Dad bought two. Fantasia, they bought two. Two Snow Whites. Two Cinderellas. Two sets of the music-playing Cinderella Christmas tree ornaments from McDonald's to go with the two Cinderella VHS's.

The thought was that if my parents bought two when they had the chance, then my sister and I could each have one for our children to enjoy. But here we are, both grown, still neither of us have children. And the VHS tapes have been rendered technologically obsolete twice since. Netflix will send Fantasia to you in the mail in a sleek red envelope. Or, you can just download it on iTunes. It's only a matter of time before we can stream Disney magic into our homes on the invisible threads of our interwebs! Want to know the reason you can't already? Because that would destroy the illusion of The Vault.

Now when Disney opens The Vault, Blu-ray disks issue forth. The advertisements for the rerelease of Beauty and the Beast urged, "limited time only! Get yours now before the Disney vault closes forever!"

"Liars!" I screeched at the television. "You can't fool me, you Disney bastards! You just want my money!" I felt it necessary to scream the truth of this for two reasons. 1. I was absolutely correct. 2. If I was a Disney Princess, I would be Maleficent, and screaming evilly at every opportunity is de rigueur for people like me.

Anyway, my point is that people who were buying the first generation of home video in the late eighties weren't used to the idea of obsolescence. My parents had no way of knowing that VHS would give way to DVD. Suffice it to say, however, that they don't buy two copies of each DVD every time Disney opens The Vault. In fact, I don't think they buy any. Once bitten, and once bought. Well, twice bought, I guess, but only one one platform.

So it is with great worry that I admit to a shocking truth. I have purchased a Nook. That's right! An e-reader! For the first time in my life, I am reading the next generation of book technology. This is terribly frightening! (And exhilarating. It's so tiny!) If I buy this e-reader, and I buy these e-books, will print books become as obsolete as my Disney VHS tapes? Am I turning my back on a technology that has lasted literally thousands of years and entertained, enlightened, or educated millions upon millions of people? (Did I mention that I bought a cute little case for it?) Do I dare to do this?

I remember the first word I ever read without the supervision of a teacher or a parent. The word was "deep," and it was the first word of a Bambi picture book. (The story continued, "in the forest," in case you're curious.) I might have been five. I still had all my baby teeth. This might be one of my earliest memories. And to some degree, the moment defined me. With that one word, I became a reader. I have been a reader ever since.

So am I different now because I am an e-reader? Is this a new moment for me now? I'm not sure how I am supposed to feel about myself and my relation to this little gadget.

Maybe it changes nothing. VHS tapes and DVD's are only viewable if you have the machine that reads them. But I'm the machine that reads the book. So how can the book ever be obsolete?

I will have to keep thinking about this, and keep you updated. Because I like to think about it. (And I like to read my Nook. The e-books download in seconds.)

Also, in case you're wondering, both sets of McDonald's Beanie Babies recently went to Goodwill. It turns out that they weren't that valuable after all. Figures.

Orchids in Winter

The seasons of my first two years here are often marked in my memory by the jobs I held or secured at the time, and my first winter in Los Angeles was no different. In January, I lost a job at an animation studio, which was the only good prospect The Agency ever managed to send my way. I was so excited by the temp assignment that I forgot to hedge my bets and told my parents that I'd landed a job. The company ran out of money two weeks later and decided not to hire me after all. Hours at The Store also ran out, as they often do in the post-holiday season of tardy returns. I was able to start an assignment at a rather bizarre infomercial production company, but I knew that this post would take me nowhere I wanted to go.
The tedium of the season and the work was lifted by only two things. The first was the sight of the distant snow-capped mountains after a cleansing rain. But much more enduring was the sight of my supermarket orchid sending up a new flower spike.
I brought my orchid with me from The University, even though it had shed not only its original blossoms but all its leaves. But new leaves sprouted, impossibly thick and green, and by February they were joined by a slender stalk bearing four green shiny bulbs of beautiful promise.
The unopened flowers smiled and bobbed at me like the faces of tiny green lion cubs with their infant eyes still sealed shut. For weeks I waited to see the insides of these tiny brilliant globes, but had to accept that waiting was all I could do. The orchid alone could know when the time came for the swollen green bulbs to split open and reveal the wide white fleshy flower with its wet red jungle mouth.
I decided that the orchid was trying to teach me a lesson. Flowers bloom only when they should, not when you want them to. They take time and the right environment to blossom. I would be the same. I had only to wait, to have faith in myself, like a plant that simply does what it was born to do.
After this intense interest in orchids took root, I read "The Orchid Thief." Early in Susan Orlean's journey to report on the overwhelming passions of orchid people, she asks a park ranger in Florida why people could become obsessed with orchids. He replied, "'Oh, mystery, beauty, unknowability, I suppose...Besides, I think the real reason is that life has no meaning.'"
This thought terrified me. Had I fallen in love with my orchid, seen a lesson in it's blossoms, because my life had no meaning? And I realized that the orchid's life was not in fact at all like mine, that it had not taught me anything. That it was just a beautiful thing, like the snow on the distant mountains. It didn't mean anything at all.
But I continued to read the book. I followed Susan Orlean as she slogged through a swamp trying still to understand what made people obsessed with orchids. She claimed that she had never been so passionate about anything. I laughed at her every time she said this. How could she be so foolish? Did she really not know? Or was she playing it coy for the sake of her story? Slogging around in a swamp for years because you want to write a book about it is as passionate as it gets. Passionate not for orchids, but for story, for writing. And for meaning.
If writing is anything (other than an ass in a chair every day) it is a search for meaning. So I have forgiven myself for seeing hope in a potted flower, and accepted that I can find meaning in my orchid if I want to. A story is perhaps a falsehood. A mere fiction, a craftily woven fabrication. But I find my life's meaning in it, and in writing it, I find it true.

Excuses Excuses

Yes I know I haven't updated the blog in forever! What? So what? Get off my case.

I know I said I'd write every day, but there are some days when one cannot write. Simply CANNOT write. Such as:

Superbowl Sunday
My Birthday
Fridays
Any day in New Orleans (Yes, yes, I know that Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and Anne Rice were able to do so. That's probably because they in fact tried to write, whereas I simply ordered another Sazerac.)
Days when the smog lifts and I can see the mountains
Days when I can't see the mountains for the smog
Days when the Red Sox are playing at home
Days when the Red Sox are playing on the road

See? You see? This is really damn hard people!

The Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You

I started out at my shiny clean office job as an assistant. I have lots of thoughts on being an assistant. None of them are nice. Almost all of them are going to be in a different blog post. I will tell you that I am no longer an assistant, and not because my bosses recognized the pearl that I am and elevated me to a more appropriate station. I am now merely a Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You. Or probably would if you worked in her office and had “Vice President” on your business card. But I digress. Today, I will not tell you all about my current job, but only a small portion of it. About forty square feet of it, actually. Because that's about how big our office kitchen is.

I am that necessary person in my office who is both lacking in any special skill particular to my industry and capable of adult-level life skills. I am the woman who answers the phone, cleans the kitchen, orders the coffee, stocks the snacks, and rolls her eyes at all the VP's who are either too important or too incompetent to wipe up their own bagel crumbs. In short, The Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You. There’s probably one in your office.

When I was a kid, my mom hated it when I left my dishes in the sink. When I say hated, I mean loathed. A cereal bowl left in the sink after breakfast instantly stoked an ire that struck fear into the hearts of me and the home-schooled teenagers three houses down. It was that scary. And what killed me, what I really didn't understand, was that Mom's cereal bowl could sit in the sink all it wanted. No big deal. It's Mom's cereal bowl, so it's okay.

I get it now. When it's your cereal bowl, it doesn't matter if you wash it now or later, because you clean up after yourself either way. But when it's anyone else's bowl, Mom is the one who cleans it. Not the jackhole VP who left it there. Oh, whoops. I'm not talking about my mother getting angry about my cereal bowl anymore. We're talking about me getting angry at my coworkers for leaving their coffee cups in the sink. Because my job has turned me into MY MOTHER.

That's right. I've even started saying things like, "Do I have to do everything for you?" and "use your brain," and "google is a tool that is available to everyone. It’s all nice and democratic that way. So if you don’t like the snacks that the Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You has purchased through Costco business delivery, google the nearest Ralph’s and go buy your own bananas. No really, they let people who aren’t Bitter Ex-Assistants Who Resent You into every Ralph’s location. And the club card? It’s optional. That’s right. They’ll even accept your company card, which the Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You is not important enough to have, even though she’s expected to do the shopping. Lucky you. No really, the Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You assures you, even a complete FUCKING IDIOT can do his own damn grocery shopping.” Okay, I lied. My mom never said anything like that.

Understand that The Bitter Ex-Assistant Who Resents You is probably a creative person forced into a job that offers nary an ounce of creative opportunities. If you give this woman free reign over the kitchen, expect unusual ice trays and artistic napkin holders. Handle it. And look up your own directions to the post office.
That is all the wisdom this Bitter Ex-Assistant has to impart for now. But stay tuned. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Soft Drinks are Pernicious Poison

I am having a Pepsi can aimed at me. Anyone know the range of the particular potato gun that Pepsico will be using for this? I need to know whether to run or take cover.

Sham!

It wasn't until this November that I learned the secret to writing every day.

I should have figured it out before. It was the secret to rowing every day in college, to making dissatisfied people work out every day when I worked in infomercials, to completing an elaborate window display at The Store, and to trading on the NYSE when one is a hedger in California. There's a pattern here, friends. While early to bed and early to rise may not make a man healthy, wealthy, or wise (particularly not the wealthy part), I have a history of getting up early in the morning to go to work.

So of course, of course! dear friends, I started getting up early to write before work. It's the perfect time to write. The house is quiet, the phone doesn't ring, there's nothing interesting on tv, it's not happy hour anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. No distractions, besides tea and cereal.

But rising before the sun is not easy if you are younger than sixty. So I have a series of tricks to haul me out of the bed and over to the writing desk. The first, do not count on a cell phone alarm clock. They are too polite. Your alarm clock should make your heart pound and your hair stand on end. Get one of those mechanical jobs with the little hammer that beats on the bells so hard and fast that your first reaction upon hearing it is to fly to the other side of the bed to make it stop.

Second, have a roommate. If you can use the bathroom whenever the hell you want, you won't be inspired to get up earlier and get to the bathroom first. Start putting out your craigslist ad for someone who to share your bathroom with you, even if they come over from a different apartment.

Have a source of Caffeine in your house at all times. Tea, coffee, energy drink, yerba mate, whatever you need, just have it on hand. If this means you have to spend $2500 on an espresso machine that whips up a cup of bitter sludge Starbuck's style, then do it.

And the last, the most crucial step of all, make your bed immediately upon vacating it. Immediately! While you're still in it, if possible! This is what I do, in fact. When my heart has stopped pounding and my ears have stopped ringing, and when I decide that further delay may cause me to lose my chance at the bathroom, I rearrange my pillows, pull the sheets and comforter taught up to the pillows, then roll sideways out of the bed. Once on my feet, I pick up my pillow shams. Only then, do I turn back to the bed. I toss the shams on, and flee to the bathroom.

After a few blurry minutes in front of the mirror, during which I pretend not to see my hair and brush my teeth like a zombie, I have to return to my room. The frantic alarm clock and the rush to the bathroom behind me, I am now ready to go back to bed. And Woe! Wailing and Gnashing of teeth! The pillow sham is in the way and I can't see the sheets because the duvet is all nice and smooth! Curses, shammed again!

It's to the kitchen, then, and to the kettle. It's time for tea, and writing.

More on Shoes

My mother bought me a shoe calendar for Christmas last year, a daily calendar featuring a different shoe for each day. Some shoes were vintage. Some were even antique, bordering on artifact. Others were sold as recently as 2008. And some were made as objects of art, never to be worn. My desk at home is way too small for a calendar, so the shoe calendar came with me to my new office job.

My job, being a job, was largely unpleasant, and my shoe calendar was my only comfort. I looked forward to the moment each morning when I saw the day's shoe for the first time, and when I turned to a new shoe each day I instantly forgot about the shoe from the day before. I never peeked at the next day, either. Each shoe was separate from all the others, as though only that shoe and that day had ever existed. And a whole year of shoes marched by without me knowing.

It’s as though the empty shoes, immobile and isolated on a white background, mesmerized me into forgetting that another day was draining away. And time's winged chariot didn't hurry near, but rumbled away in the distance, as soothing and unsettling a murmur as the traffic on the nearby 101.

This past Christmas my mother gave me another shoe calendar. Every day, I turn to the new shoe, still eager to see what colors and shapes will be revealed. But I now have the 2010 calendar sitting next to it, to remind me that each day stacks up to a whole year.

This year, friends, will be different. This year, I will not forget that a day is a part of a year going by. And I won't forget that a marathon is just a series of steps. In 2011, my shoe calendar will not mark time's journey, but mine.

So here's my plan for 2011, along with special instructions and tips for myself.

1. WRITE EVERY DAY! It is possible. Or very nearly.

2. WORKOUT ON MANY DAYS. You'll feel better if you do.

3. MEDITATE ON THE DAYS YOU CAN'T WORK OUT. It's the same thing, really, and doesn't involve sweating. Until July, when breathing in the valley makes your eyeballs sweat.

4. NO BOURBON ON WEEKDAYS. If step one is successful, this is a foregone conclusion, but I include it for you anyway.

How about you, friends? How do you plan to spend your year, in a day by day sort of way?

The Careerist 2.0

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my first full-time job in Los Angeles. Why didn't you know that the Careerist got a full time job? Because I'm terribly behind on my blog, of course. Obviously.

Do I pretend to have good excuses for this? Of course I do. I'm going to pretend I have excuses for this all morning. The first is the aforementioned full time job. The second is the never-before-mentioned first novel.

I have never mentioned what I write on my blog, as The Careerist is supposed to be about work, and I don't get paid to write. That's the joke, see. But I feel that it is now time to mention what it is that I have been writing. Since I haven't been writing blog posts.

About two years ago, I started my first novel. I know that it doesn't make any sense to get a film degree, move to LA, and immerse myself in fiction. But getting a film degree doesn't make sense in the first place, so you can kiss my grits if you think I'm being foolish. Anyway, I read On Writing, and if Stephen King has no reason to convince me that I couldn't do it, neither do you. I finished it about eleven months after beginning it, and I have revised it several times since.

The next step involves getting it published. Am I foolish to think that it's easier to get a book printed than it is to get a movie made? Maybe. But one thing is clear, and that's the path to getting published. I need to have an agent to send it to the editors, but all I need to do to get an agent is get in contact with one and impress him or her with my book. Is that easy? No, but it's clear. And get this--literary agents have a process for contacting them, which they publish on their websites. It's as if they actually want to hear from you! You can send a letter or email and tell all about you and your book. It's called a query, and it's how you get an agent. That simple.

That's not to say that Querying is easy. It's difficult, and it involves a lot of rejection. But to a screenwriter, even an honest rejection is a gift. I still can't quite believe that someone stops what they're doing and reads my query letter. Every time I get a rejection letter, I have to face the fact that it's true. I'm really doing this. They're really reading it. The first time I got a rejection letter, I printed it out in color and showed it to everyone in the office. I was so proud.

One of the bloggers that I follow, a chap who used to be an agent himself, recently stated that there are more than 15,000 other people querying agents every year.

This appears to be terrifying news for fiction writers, but I relaxed quite a bit when I read it. Only 15,000? There are easily 15,000 film students graduating this spring, and every one of those fresh-faced little fucks has a feature screenplay. Luckily, I am a better writer than a lot of the other 15,000 people looking for a book agent. I'm also better than every one of the film students graduating this spring. Am I arrogant? Absolutely. But I need to be if I'm going to drag my ass into this chair every day for no immediate reward.

While I've been figuring out this querying process, I've been reading lots of blogs by people working in the publishing world. And not only have I learned a lot about publishing, I've learned a lot about blogs. When I set out to write this blog, I conceived of each post as a chapter in a longer story. But that's not really the best way to create a successful blog. Blogs are about interactivity. They are networking tools, really. And inviting people to look, but not touch, is going to result in a blog with no readers. Only posting once every three months also results in a lack of readership, I have discovered. Mom, you're the only one still reading this. I love you.

Also, blogs are supposed to help writers build a platform. A platform is a fancy publishing word for risk mitigation. A writer with a platform is a writer with a market presence, just like a film based on a book has a market presence. Platforms are more important for nonfiction writers, but they certainly won’t hurt fiction writers. For example, Snooki has a platform. I don’t have to tell you what it is, because you know what (but not who) Snooki is.

Now, since I am Italian-American, but not a loathsome idiot bimbo, I have to create a difference platform for myself. Now we get to the point I am trying to make to myself (and to my mother). It’s time to revamp The Careerist.

The Careerist might be more about writing from here on out. Scratch that. It’s always been about writing, hasn’t it. I just might be more explicit, that’s all. I might even get all honest about my identity. Since I’m trying to build a platform, an indication of who I am may in fact be critical. Maybe I’ll also start inviting some input. Get some dialogue going here.

So…stay tuned. I haven’t been posting, but I have been working. And I have a lot to share. I hope you’re looking forward to it, Mom.

WWJD?

There’s No Such Thing As Free Parking

Remember when The Careerist got free parking at Dodger Stadium ? Well, that was the last time The Careerist ever got free parking at work.

Actually, that’s not quite true. On weekends while working at The Store, it was possible to sneak into the parking garage of a nearby office building. Sometimes, this included lying to the parking attendants about my parking pass being somewhere upstairs. But often as not, I could smile and wave and drive right in like I owned the place. On weekends.

On weekdays, Associates of The Store had to park in the mall garage. In addition to being unbearably crowded, the mall garage was absurdly expensive. As you entered the garage, you took a ticket that was stamped with the time. You had three hours from that time to exit the garage without having to pay. If you stayed in the garage more than three hours, the charge to exit quickly became $7, then $11, then finally the maximum $21. If you worked an eight-hour shift, you would pay $21, or more than two hours' wages. So basically, the last two hours of your shift you worked for free.

Dodger Stadium also gave The Careerist a free meal, if you will recall. While there was no such thing as a free lunch at The Store, there was such a thing as a regular lunch break. And while there was no such thing as free parking, once again California laws eased the burden. Every Associate at the mall was entitled to a fifteen-minute break after every few hours on the job. With a little luck, careful planning, and watchful anxiety, a Store Associate could time her breaks to occur just as her three hours of free parking expired, allowing her to rush to her car and drive it out of the garage and then right back into the garage before having to pay anything.

The Moving of the Car was a regular activity for each Associate, and each Manager had to help time the breaks so that everyone got a chance to not spend money on their job. (Since we were not interns, we rightly supposed that we should not be required to purchase our employment.) It became a very tricky Game, but before long, I had learned all the Ins and Outs of Parking, even if In and Out Parking was technically not allowed. Should you ever find yourself working at the mall and in need of parking advice, here are some Game Cheats.

Cheat #1

If you are scheduled for an eight-hour shift, you get an hour for lunch and two fifteens. Your car will need to be parked for a total of nine hours, counting the lunch break. So if you are really smart about it, you will only have to move your car twice—during your first fifteen and at the very end of your lunch break, leaving you free to (gasp!) actually take a break during your last fifteen. This only works if your lunch break takes place exactly five hours after your shift begins, which the managers rarely allow since they are terrified of giving you a paid lunch.

Cheat #2

There are kiosks in the parking garage where you can pay for your parking before you go to your car. This system encourages people to avoid paying at the exits, and therefore keeps the traffic flowing. If you are on the verge of going over your three hours, you can put your parking ticket in the kiosk, where it will be marked as paid. Then you have an extra ten minutes or so to get to your car and exit the garage! If you hustle, you could whirl through the mall supermarket and pick up some string cheese and a Gatorade in that amount of time. Just hope that the supermarket express checkout is clear of people with more than ten items.

Cheat #3

I still can’t believe how this could be, but it’s true. Even though the sign says that only your first three hours are free, they don’t immediately start charging you after three hours. I am such a tightfisted maniac that I never risked going over three hours until months into my employment at The Store. The first time I was a minute late and didn’t get charged, I thought I had been lucky. But I did not press my luck, and never imagined that I could have had even more time if I wanted it. I had probably worked there for nine months before someone told me that I could go as much as ten minutes over without getting charged. This was astonishing. But The Associates had to wonder…how far would the kiosk machine let us go? Minute by minute, we tested our limits. The parking system at The Mall allowed us to go up to eighteen minutes over before charging us. Combine Cheat #3 and Cheat #2 and you have just bought yourself almost half an hour of extra parking time, which is extremely helpful in accomplishing Cheat #1.

Cheat #4

Sometimes other, more foolish people will leave their parking tickets lying about in a fitting room or on the ground. Check every singe one of them! If the time on the found parking ticket is sufficiently later than yours, you might even buy yourself a full hour-long lunch break by not having to move your car until your final fifteen. Bonus!

Cheat #5

If you are one of the foolish people who dropped her parking ticket, woe unto you. A lack of a parking ticket means you have to pay the maximum $21. However, it is possible to sneak out of the parking lot behind another car as it exits, while the arm is still up. Note--this maneuver must be timed perfectly and is generally only to be attempted by ballsy types.

Cheat #6

There are alternatives, of course. A couple Associates biked to work. There’s also the bus. But this is only an option if you don’t live on the other side of a mountain, in a place so far away that it is called “The Valley.” And there’s free street parking about half a mile away on Blessed, Blessed Beverly Glen Boulevard. This option requires extra time to make it to work, and extra time to get home. But that extra time in fact buys you two full fifteen minute breaks during which you may eat a snack and use the bathroom (glory!), a full hour of lunch, and an entire shift sans parking concerns. Just be careful about where you park on street-sweeping days. Parking tickets cost far more than $21.

Cheat #7

Don’t get in fistfights over parking spaces during the holiday season, no matter how infuriated you are by the Beverly Hills housewife in the Audi SUV. Remember, as an Associate of The Store, you are a professional, and the shoppers are just amateurs. Remain aloof.

Riple

Riple

A brief note on the importance of proofreading your ninth grade creative writing "visual poem" assignment well in advance of the due date.

No Paid Lunches Means Always Getting Lunch

When I pulled into the mall parking garage on Black Friday, I knew that my doom was at hand. And I didn’t mind. Because after the doom, there could be sleep.

I congratulated myself for keeping the job at the Store even when the Hedge-Fund Job seemed in the bag. I had been quite wise, I thought, to hedge my bets. But jiminy crickets, was it tough going when I had to work both jobs at once.

The Store, as I previously mentioned, did not have a lot of work hours to dole out to a poor little noob like me, regardless of how snazzy my footwear was. So they had no problem adjusting my availability and keeping me completely off the schedule until late afternoons. However, this meant that when they did feel compelled to put me to work, they did so until the store closed at 10pm. So I would head down to Santa Monica at 5:30am and work in the cold with no lunch break until 3pm. Then I would go to the mall. On very lucky days, I could sleep in my car in the parking garage for an hour or so before beginning my shift at The Store. Then, I would work until 10pm. Of course, that was only on weekdays. On weekends, I worked longer shifts until 10pm. In this way, I worked something like 20 days straight, often with double shifts, until I went to my friend’s wedding in St. Louis.

But don’t worry, there’s good news too. There was much less traffic at 10pm than there was at 3pm. And because of the mall’s location, I could take Beverly Glen Boulevard instead of the 405 North. Beverly Glen smells like ivy, juniper, jasmine, and rich people, especially at 10pm when the air is cool. It is a delicious drive. Slightly less delicious when you are delirious with exhaustion, but still delicious. So those evening shifts weren’t completely joyless.

There’s also the fact that no retail job will ever let you skip lunch. In fact, nothing made the managers of The Store madder than people who tried to go without a lunch break. The laws in California require workers to clock out within five hours on the job, and if you fail to clock out before five hours have passed, you get a paid lunch break. So if you clock out for lunch even one minute late, The Store had to pay you for an extra hour of work. The Store did not like to pay for extra hours, so lunch was always a sure thing.

And of course, working two jobs means you get paid for two jobs, which was quite a help to me. Especially because I had suffered a Great Mishap.

A week or two previous to my employ at the hedge fund, I went to the DMV to get my California drivers license. Naturally, I got a perfect score on the test. Then, on the way home from the DMV, I ran a stoplight in West Hollywood at an intersection that is monitored by a camera. Because that’s what book smarts will do for you. The ticket that I received in the mail, accompanied by a photograph of me blasting through the intersection in my subcompact, was in the amount of $390.

The total sum of all my earnings at Dodger Stadium that season was $388.

The Great Mishap caused Great Woe. But Great Woe is what credit cards are for, so I survived.

And that’s all I had to do, really. And what better time to go into survival mode than at holiday time? So I went to work on Black Friday and faced doom for five hours. Then I clocked out for lunch.

Jumping Ship

The day before my last day at the assignment, I called the Recruiter from the coffee shop across the street to tell her that I didn’t want to take the job. I was informed by the agency Gatekeeper, i.e. the receptionist, that my Recruiter was out for the day. I agreed to call back the next day and scuttled back across the street to endure another day of chilly tedium.

The next day, which was the last day of my two-week temporary assignment, I visited the coffee shop just as soon as Business Hours for Normal People began and called the agency again. The Gatekeeper told me that my recruiter was, again, unavailable. I explained that I needed to talk to her rather urgently, because I did not want to accept permanent employment at my assignment and expected them to offer. “I need some guidance here!” I cried.

“What’s the job?” asked the Gatekeeper. I told her who I had been working for over the past two weeks. “Oh, no one wants that job,” said the Gatekeeper.

“Oh great,” I said. “So you have done this before.” She put me on hold and came back with another recruiter, who is also the president of the company.

“You don’t want the job? Why not,” he barked.

“Because it’s not related to entertainment,” I replied.

“They do film financing, don’t they?”

“NO!” I snapped.

I was instructed to demure as much as possible and tell the hedge fund that I would need to think about any offers, and that they would also need to talk to my Recruiter before I could give any answer. But as the day wore on, I started to realize how dumb this plan was.

So when the Junior Hedger in Charge of Administrative Hires brought me up into the lofty conference room to talk to me about how the job was going, I made bold to tell him I didn’t think it was for me. He didn’t seem surprised. I guess someone had also told him that no one wanted that job. Probably all the dozens of temps from the agency that came before me. So I gave him my parking pass, and headed home on the 405 North.

I didn’t know how I was going to stay afloat, but I was buoyed up by the thought that the very next day would be Thanksgiving. And the day after that, the holiday season at the Store would begin. I tightened my belt, slipped on the Sperrys, and hoped that those extra holiday hours would pull me through at least until January.

If There’s a Bustle in Your Hedgerow

I know I said it was the ferns that made me get cold feet about the job, and not the commute, early mornings or lack of interest. But that’s not really true. I think I may still have been coaxed into taking a full time position at the hedge fund if I hadn’t gone to Missouri.

A very old friend, and a very good friend (the best and rarest type of friend) got married that fall, and it was very important that I went. My acceptance of the temp assignment was, in fact, contingent on my ability to skip work for a couple days towards the end of my two-week temporary assignment. So, with maybe eight of my required ten days of the job under my belt, I left Los Angeles for the first time since I have arrived and flew to St. Louis.

Missouri was cold, not at all to be confused with cool. It was a midwestern fall, grey and plain, but it was lovely. I visited the Anheuser-Busch Brewery on a rainy day and spent the free evenings watching football in the TGI Fridays adjacent to the hotel with people that I have known for more than half my life. As a military brat, such friends are luxuries beyond price, and to be frank I have no idea what I have done to deserve them.

I was so broke that I had no way of paying for my own hotel room, and the bride is such a kick-ass gal that she let me stay with her. Until the night of the wedding itself, when I crashed with some other friends. Obviously. I hadn’t even been able to send a gift, and I promised to if and when I got a job at this finance company. In any case, my friend was aware of my lack of funds, and at one point during the weekend crossed her fingers for me while I checked my balance at an ATM. I had enough to withdraw, luckily. I guess those hours of lunchless overtime paid out after all.

While we stood at the ATM, I confessed to being embarrassed that, at my age, I didn’t have my shit together. I promised my friend that I wasn’t really the hapless flake I appeared to be, and confessed that I was so in awe of her stability and happiness. I shouldn’t have been so worried about looking like a wreck, though. She was an old friend, after all. And she told me that she was proud of me. She told me that she knew I was going after my dreams.

But this didn’t allay my fears. Instead, I felt more ashamed. Even guilty. Because I wasn’t, not really. I felt like I had already given up, been used up. I felt like I had spent all my luck, as well as my money, on those stupid internships. I wanted to tell my friend that my dreams were a mistake, that she shouldn’t be proud of me for wasting my time. But I held my tongue. And by the time I got back to balmy Los Angeles, I had made up my mind.

I had moved far away from any family, halted a steady career just as it was getting started, left all my friends, and put up with hours and hours of brutal workshop at the hands of professionally disappointed professors. And for what? So that after four months in Los Angeles I could sign up for a job that made me miserable tired, hungry, and cold?

If my oldest friends believed that I was skipping out on their wedding presents and bunking in their hotel rooms because I was following my dreams, then damn it, that had better be what I was doing.

By the time I made it back to Los Angeles, I had made up my mind to stop hedging. I decided that if I was going to take a job that would make me unhappy, it should at least be related to entertainment. Even if it was in the mailroom at some agency.

My second day back at work, which was my last day as a temp, I called the Recruiter from the coffee shop across the street.

Fern Coolly

It wasn’t so much the fact that the job made me feel stupid, or that the phone calls were tedious, or that the only thing worse than the Southbound 405 is the return trip on the Northbound 405, which made me doubt that I belonged at the hedge fund. Really, it all came down to the dead ferns.

People think that Southern California is always balmy. But during the winter months, it can be quite cool. Not cold, I won’t go that far. I did live in Boston for a while, after all. But Los Angeles is a desert climate, and desert climates can get very cool when the sun goes down. It’s even cooler on the coast. And really quite cool at 6am when you’re standing on a downtown Santa Monica street, waiting for someone to unlock the door of the hedge fund.

The office was in an old and pretty building on a pretty street. And the building was very quiet. And though I didn’t ever really feel cold when I was there, I always felt rather cool. I think maybe my toes were actually cold. But it was hard to tell. In the winter months, even a mere two blocks from the beach, tedium can have quite a cooling effect. In any case, there was little to warm the place.

The office consisted of one Big Room with three big glass tables, each of which boasted several big computer monitors. The walls of the Big Room were exposed antique brick, and the high ceiling far above boasted huge wooden beams. Everyone who worked for the hedge fund sat in the Big Room. The Head Hedger usually did not arrive in the office until after the sun rose, while the rest of us were there, warming up our computers in the dark before dawn. But when he arrived, the Head Hedger worked in the Big Room with us.

There was a kitchen, of sorts, tucked into the corner of the big room. It was only a kitchen of sorts, because it lacked most of the things that make a kitchen a kitchen. Namely, food, and the things used to prepare it. There was a sink, but bathrooms have sinks. There was a fridge, but there was nothing to keep cool in it. There was no coffee pot, no microwave, no stove or oven. My first day on the job, I brought a microwaveable lunch. Halfway through the day I realized that I had no way of heating it up, and, furthermore, that no one else stopped working to eat. Occasionally, one of the traders would step out to buy a cup of coffee. But no one ever took a lunch break, and no one ever told me I could have one. While I’m not sad to collect an hour of overtime, I am generally a sad not to eat.

There was only one other room in the office, which served as a conference room. It was only a normal-sized room, reachable by a staircase, but it overlooked the big room the way a screened in porch would sit above a big back yard. From our glass tables below, we could look up at the blank windows of the dark conference room and see a row of potted ferns on a shelf below the windows.

The woman training me told me that the Plant Guy was an entertaining weekly event. He was far from entertaining, but he still drew the gaze of everyone in the Big Room every time he came as he clattered in with his tall ladder. He was everything the hedgers were not. While they sat sober, peaked and pale over their computers, the Plant Guy was tanned and jovial, and perhaps a little stoned. But he was stymied by the ferns, which were dead and drying in the cool afternoon light that shone through the opposite window high in the brick wall of the Big Room.

The Head Hedger asked the Plant Guy the first week of my employ to do something about the dead ferns. But when he came back the next week, nothing had changed. The Plant Guy had not talked to his boss about getting new plants, and had no remedy for the dead ones that sat looking over our heads. So the Head Hedger asked him to take the dead plants away. Better to have a blank space, he said, than to have dead plants in a place of business. And then he said it again, as if the dead ferns intended to do his hedge fund harm, “it’s a bad idea to have dead plants where you do business.”

We were all quiet after this, even the Plant Guy. And while work never stopped for lunch, it stopped long enough for everyone to watch the Plant Guy take down the dead ferns. He climbed his tall ladder and took them down from the shelf, one by one. They were so dead and dry that their brittle leaves broke and crumbled at his touch, and the pitiful dead fronds drifted through the watery winter light from the window to the settle on the concrete floor.

The Head Hedger, I knew, could teach me a couple things, if I wanted to learn. About music, about money, and about the dangers of allowing a living thing to wither in a place of business.

Futures, Phones, Finance, and Philistines

My job at the hedge fund consisted of two things: data entry and answering the phone. I had done both of these before, but this was by far the worst way to experience either one.

I used to like data entry. In the fall of 2003, when I was fresh out of college, I had a temp job at a title insurance company. They needed extra help because everyone and their mother was taking advantage of the reduced interest rates and refinancing their homes, and all the lawyers in Massachusetts were sending them brand new title insurance policies that had to be processed. My job was to look at the check that the lawyers had sent to the insurance company, look at total amount of the policy attached to that check, and derive what kind of policy it was from the way the two numbers related. Then I would enter the policy into their software system and endorse the check with a stamp. I did the same thing all day, every day, and I didn’t mind it. Each check and policy was like a little puzzle, and I liked figuring it out.

Not surprisingly, data entry is a lot less interesting when you don’t understand the data you are entering. I entered some very complex stuff into spreadsheets at the hedge fund, and I had no idea what any of it meant. The woman training me told me to look at a website called investopedia.com to help me figure out what was going on. This was enormously disappointing. I read the definition of a future and an option over and over again and I still had no idea what they were. This was the first time I had ever really come up against a concept that my brain simply did not get. It was as though the synapses refused to fire, refused to communicate such abhorrent and base concepts. I admit it; I found the whole thing a little distasteful. Even in the face of certain unemployment (or at least certain underemployment in a retail setting) I regarded the world of finance like a sophomore English major regards econ classes: strictly for philistines.

In short, no job has ever before made me realize that I am, in fact, a creative person. This was, in many ways, a positive thing. It buoyed me up. Justified to some degree all the choices I had made in my life so far. And, I thought, justified those disdainful thoughts I had towards econ classes when I was a sophomore English major.

Worse than the data entry were the phone calls, and not just because they were phone calls and I don’t like phones. It always started with Bloomberg TV. Someone would interview the hedge fund’s famous stock Savant, also a famous author of texts that would, presumably, make my brain hemorrhage if I ever attempted to read them, and this Someone would go on and on about how clever the Savant was and how his hedge fund was the best. What this Someone on Bloomberg TV didn’t mention was that the Savant’s hedge fund only invested for “institutions,” and rarely for individuals. (Although, when I did get a look at one of the funds, it looked like a whole bunch of individuals to me. But what did I know. I was above it all, anyway.)

That’s when the phone would start to ring. Always an individual, never an institution on the line. Always someone claiming to be a Qualified Investor. Always someone wanting to know the minimum investment. My job was simply to take down the contact information of the person calling and forward it on to the person who worked in investor relations. I was never to tell them anything about the company, so I couldn’t tell them that they were not nearly as qualified as they thought, since they weren’t an institution, and I also couldn’t tell them that no one would ever call them back, because they weren’t an institution. This was an incredibly tedious process. Because just about everyone who left their name and number with me expected a phone call, and when they didn’t get one, they would call a second time. The second round phone calls were generally less polite than the first round calls. And I had to answer those, as well, and take down the contact info a second time. And lie, again, and tell them someone would call back eventually.

At some point, people would give up and stop calling. And then, Someone Else would interview the Savant on Bloomberg TV and start the whole process over again.

When I asked why we couldn’t just tell people up front that they weren’t going to hear from us, I was told that they wanted to make sure they got contact info from everyone who called in case an actual billionaire called one day. Evidently, individuals become institutions as soon as they have a billion dollars.

While I hated the work, I didn’t mind my coworkers. In fact, I liked a couple of them. The Head Hedger, for example, was quite a likeable fellow. And he made me reconsider my secret conviction that finance was for philistines. When we weren’t watching our Savant on Bloomberg TV, he often played classical music in the office, and once pointed out to me that we were listening to a famous aria from Tristan and Isolde. He asked me if I knew anything about opera. I admitted that I didn’t.

We'll Hedge Them Off at the Pass

I prepared for the interview at the hedge fund the same way I would for any interview. I went to their website, and I read all the press on the company. But after I did all this, I felt even less prepared than before, and a good deal more intimidated.

The Recruiter told me that the company did some film financing, but I could find no evidence of this on the website. However, the verbiage on the website was so impenetrable to me that perhaps, I thought, they could be talking about film financing.

I did understand a few things. For example, that these people appeared to know what they were doing. The press made clear that this was a very successful company, and they had at least one famous guy working for them. Some kind of stock savant. And they were one of very few hedge funds which had managed to make tons of money in the recent and ongoing economic meltdown.

I also got that a hedge fund is sort of like a back-up plan. It’s the investment you make in case all your other investments go belly up. Which seems to me sort of like placing two opposing bets at the same time, and therefore somewhat unfair. Or at least gutless.

But if I’ve learned anything as a Careerist, I’ve learned that you’ve got to take some risks. Take a risk on an odd job, and you might get free parking at the ballpark and all the Dodger dogs you ever wanted to eat. If you’re skeptical and decide not to show up, you can be certain of only one thing; that you won’t make any money and your life won’t change.

So I braved the 405 and went to the interview. And if I wasn’t devastatingly beautiful, I definitely looked as gorgeous as the Recruiter could have asked from a writer on a budget. It didn’t hurt that by this time I had a serious discount at the store and wore a new black wool dress that was both professional and uniquely alluring at the same time.

Somehow or other, I managed to convince these finance types that a woman with an MFA in Screenwriting was capable of gaining an interest in finance where there currently was none, and they hired me on a temporary basis for two weeks. I sincerely believe that I nailed the interview when I mentioned that I wasn’t afraid to try anything when it came to my career and even sold concessions at Dodger Stadium when I needed to. No joke. I think they were impressed.

The only snafu occurred when I mentioned that I was interested to hear about their film financing. I was told quickly and without any equivocation that there was no film financing whatsoever taking place at this company. In this moment, I was grateful for the professional and uniquely alluring black dress, which was the only thing making me feel like something other than an ass.

Driving home, Northbound on the 405, I wondered why the Recruiter told me that they did film financing. Had she been misinformed? Was she confused? Or had she lied to me in order to create a link, however tenuous, between my ambitions and the functioning of this company? But it occurred to me how stupid it was to think that a hedge fund could have anything to do with film financing, because no one whose primary function is to lessen risk for investors wants anything to do with something as risky as film. In any case, I was happy that they forgave me for my misinformation and happy to have the opportunity.

And yet, I hedged. An opportunity is one thing, and a sure thing another. I decided to keep working at the store while I worked at the hedge fund, knowing that nothing was in the bag yet. And I also balked at telling my parents that I’d had the interview, that I even had the temporary work. I told myself at the time that I kept the good news from them in case I didn’t get the permanent job, so that I could limit the disappointment they might feel. But I knew, and wouldn’t admit, that I wanted the ability to call off all my bets without having to explain myself.

Southbound on the 405

I grew up in Oklahoma, where it is possible to have sixty miles of highway between two buildings, without any other buildings in between. You could assume that this would be a beautiful landscape. I might adjust your perception by mentioning that the same stretch of highway is completely straight and completely flat, and then you would have to admit that this landscape is incredibly boring. Unless you are driving down the highway during a huge tornado. Which does happen, and is not boring.

Another thing you might ponder, after some more thought, is that such a lonely highway does not support the need of public transportation. And then you might surmise that the towns, which are sixty miles apart, are probably not densely populated, but are in fact rather spread out. In short, you might deduce that there are plenty of open spaces and only one way to traverse them: by car. You would be correct. The good news is, when there are plenty of open spaces, there’s lots of parking.

So while I grew up with cars as a part of my life and feel comfortable driving one, driving in Los Angeles is not the same as driving in Oklahoma. This has to do with a general lack of open spaces. So, in addition to feeling anxious about parking, which (horrors!) sometimes must be done in parallel, I am generally anxious when other cars are present. Which is, in fact, all the time.

Highways are not called highways in California. They are called Freeways. This is, presumably, because they are always gridlocked. Because that makes sense. And the worst of the worst, the most abysmal Freeway in existence, is the 405.

I experienced Interstate 405 for the first time when I drove to the Store for my interview. I had unintentionally managed to avoid this odious stretch of Freeway for the first four months of my residence in Los Angeles, but google maps finally betrayed me when I searched for directions to the mall. I spent forty minutes crawling along between the bare hills in the baking sun, and forever afterwards have hated that freeway. I have spent the year or so since devising ways to avoid this freeway, and I wasted no time finding out how to cut it completely out of my LA life. In fact, when the hiring manager at the store asked me if I had any questions about the job, I asked her how to get to work without setting a tire on that blasted free way. She told me to take Beverly Glen Boulevard. Best advice EVER.

Unfortunately, there’s really no way to get all the way to Santa Monica without using the 405. And that’s exactly where the Recruiter wanted me to go (looking gorgeous, of course.) The Hedge Fund, while located in Santa Monica, was operational during the hours that the New York Stock Exchange is open, which is from 6am Pacific to 2pm Pacific. One would suppose that driving from the Valley to Santa Monica at 5:30 am would be simple and easy. There are a couple reasons this was not true. One, driving on the 405 is never easy. Two, 5:30am is never easy.

I’m not used to hurtling along at 70 mph on a dark freeway before dawn, tailgating the guy in front of me and being tailgated by the guy behind me. I’m an Okie, and when I learned to drive, if I felt like pushing the speedometer up to 80 and continuing at such a speed for 60 miles, I only did so when I couldn’t see any cars in front of me, nor any behind. And this was on a straight, flat road. Sans tornado.

But Southbound on the 405 I went, in the dark and half asleep, hoping I looked gorgeous for the Hedge Fund.

Tinseltown

The hiring manager at The Store had promised that hours were always available and that speedy advancement was practically guaranteed. She told me that acting was her passion, but that her retail job had allowed her to survive while she pursued the acting career, and she said that The Store could be the same sort of salvation for me. But when I arrived on my first day of the job, she handed me the paperwork to be filled out and announced that it was her last day on the job. She was gong to go work for some other company in the same mall. This was not a good sign, but I tried to ignore this fact.

Then I got my schedule for my second week with The Store, and the signs got a little harder to ignore. It indicated that I would only have eight hours in the coming week during which I might prove to the bosses that I was their next personal shopper or outstanding key-holder to be. I discovered that eight hours was, in fact, just enough time to convince the store managers that I was really not good at sales. The outlook was dim.

Luckily, my extensive craigslisting from the previous weeks was about to pay off a second time. One afternoon, I received a voice message from a staffing firm that specialized in entertainment. They wanted to see me for an interview.

I was overjoyed. I have had previous success with staffing firms for only one reason; they test their applicants.

Most people hate tests. Some people even go as far as to say, “I am not a good test taker.” It stands to reason that an equal number of people would be able to say the opposite, but I suspect that this is not the case, since each time I say that I am an outstanding test taker I get dirty looks. While this deters me from bringing my own bubble sheets to cocktail parties so that I may astound my friends with my standardized test-taking prowess, it has not stopped me from admitting without shame that I am a truly terrific test-taker. For example, each time I go to a staffing firm and take their little typing test and Microsoft Office test, I impress the recruiters. Some people are just lucky, I guess.

You, dear reader, may wish to suggest that my luck is rather limited. You might think that I would want to trade in my test-taking capabilities for some other qualities, like being born at the top or being devastatingly beautiful. You might suggest that I would be a more cheerful individual since such charms would take me much further in the realm of social interaction. You may be right. Especially since networking is everything. Nevertheless, I cling to the few footholds that I have.

So, I eagerly returned the call to the staffing firm, and, woe! There was one unforeseen obstacle in my way. The woman who answered the phone when I called to schedule my appointment was quite rude. Unhelpful even.

She refused to schedule an appointment when I called. “I schedule appointments from 1pm to 3pm. Call back,” she said. It’s one thing to covet a sorority girl’s ability to drive a stick shift. It’s another thing to realize that the Gatekeeper of All The Real Jobs has a job that you could do better but that you will never get the chance to prove this. My patience was bolstered only by remembering that there were tests to be taken here, and I imagined what kind of horrors were revealed when, during the fall of her senior year, the Gatekeeper opened the envelope from the College Board and saw her woefully unamazing SAT scores. I agreed, though scornfully, to call back when it was most convenient for the receptionist at the other end of the line, and finally scored an interview.

This employment agency, being a super special entertainment industry agency, has its office on Sunset Boulevard. But nothing on Sunset Boulevard is ever clean, pleasant, or hopeful. Hollywood is, in general, a nasty place. No, I’m not referring to the American film industry. I’m talking the part of the City of Los Angeles that is actually called Hollywood on the map. It’s not a nice place for a number of reasons. It’s dirty and crowded, the parking is sparse and expensive, all the single men are pick-up artists without an ounce of sincerity in their bodies, and so forth.

Furthermore, it’s crawling with tourists, and while we’ve all been tourists at some time or another, we all hate tourists when we’re being normal people in our own town. My abhorrence of fanny-packed, sock and sandal wearing men who feel it necessary to take pictures of the sidewalk is hardly unique. But, then again, I have to feel sorry for the tourists who come to Hollywood. Some of them are clearly from foreign countries, and even the American ones look like they might have traveled a very long way to see Tinseltown. And when they get there, they don’t find anything worth taking pictures of except for the sidewalk. Because the names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are just about the only thing in Hollywood that has anything to do with the film industry. That, and the adult bookstores that look from the outside like they haven’t been dusted since the advent of VHS.

No one actually makes movies in Hollywood, and there’s actually nothing to see there except a couple of famous theatres and some seedy-looking movie museums. Though “Hollywood” is a word synonymous with entertainment, there’s nothing there to entertain, and the physical place itself has become irrelevant to the entertainment industry.

So it stands to reason that the reception area of this entertainment staffing firm located in Hollywood would be less than appealing. It was, in a word, wretched. The California sunshine filtered through one large window that had been coated with something to keep the heat out, but the heat came through anyway, and the sunshine was dull and illuminated only the dust filtering through the air. While the other half a dozen or so applicants and I sat and waited for their interview, we entertained ourselves by avoiding the sight or touch of a dirty, shaggy, smelly dog which weaved his way around the legs of our cheap chairs.

After a long, claustrophobic wait in the dingy waiting room, I took a long, but blessedly easy test in a dingy room full of computers and another half dozen applicants.

Finally, I was ushered by someone into a crowded, cluttered office, where a Recruiter huffed about the way I’d written my resume while she scratched the head of the mangy cur that had, unfortunately, shuffled into the office while I sat there and waited for the Recruiter to say something helpful. I told her I was a writer, she asked me if I wanted work at the agencies. I told her no, that I wanted time to keep writing. Then she sat up in her chair as if her addled brain had suddenly been shocked into competency for the first time in years.

“I have just the thing! Just the perfect job for you!”

The Recruiter at the entertainment staffing firm had a hedge fund client who needed a receptionist. It was the perfect job for me, she said, because the hours were from 6 am to 3pm. I would be able to write for the rest of the day! And there would be no traffic at those hours, so the commute to Santa Monica would be no trouble at all!

I agreed to go to the hedge fund for an interview, and the Recruiter called them that instant and set the appointment for the next morning. The Recruiter scooted me out the door and reminded me to “look gorgeous,” as though she were sending me to a casting call.

I successfully escaped the dreary reception area and fled to the dreary street where I’d parked my car. I was caught between two thoughts; I was thrilled to have an interview so fast, but chagrined that the job was not even related to entertainment.

But I got in my car, shut the door and looked around at the bland, sun-baked buildings in Hollywood and wondered. Did I really want a job in entertainment? Maybe it would make more sense if I worked outside of the industry while I wrote. Maybe finance was actually a good place for me. Still, I couldn’t understand how I’d managed to sign on with an entertainment staffing agency in Hollywood and walk out with an interview with a hedge fund. Except for the fact that Hollywood really doesn’t have a lot of entertainment to offer these days.