Category: Random

I think about you every time ‘Here Comes the Sun’ hits the airwaves.

One of my faults is protecting “nice” people that don’t deserve protection. I am not a vengeful person, and I tend to let destruction and chaos into my life because I have this irrational theory that I’m permeable and whatever is thrown at me moves through me without effect.

That theory can work for you in tandem with confidence but it can also overwhelm you if you’re not careful. Chaos and other people’s drama can gets to you and eat at you.

It’s important to know when to let go of what or who has wronged you and move on.

2018 is on my shit-list and I’m here to let it go.

In late 2017, I was experiencing what I can only explain as “reaching the top” of my frustrations with a living situation. It was hard to leave this situation because the city I chose to live in was not-so-subtly raising its rent every day (it felt like that anyway). If I left my living situation, I would pay for it, literally, by eviscerating my already tight budget just a little more…what’s a few less groceries, what’s a couple more dollars in loans from parents? Anything to find peace again.

I was so blinded by the need to get out of my situation, I found a partially finished, illegal garage conversion apartment in the foothills above Burbank. It had ugly mint green paint, NOTHING was even, not one piece of trim, not one mirror, not one light, everything was asymmetrical or on a tilt. As a former stage manager, I cannot tell you how infuriating that was.  It’s only saving grace was the double shower head (that I fixed).

My landlord was nice, and we got along really well. Which is the sad part about what came next. I like meeting new people, but as warm as they were, I still felt like an outsider but I was okay with that. I’m just a tenant, why should I expect any more. But they continued to rope me into family events that I willingly attended and enjoyed, so the line between tenant and friend became blurry on my side.

Then 2017 turned into 2018 and just barely out of the gate in February, I was asked to leave. I had signed a lease that would put me there until September of 2018 so I was quite in shock. I had survived 2 fires where we were almost evacuated, a subsequent street mudslide, and now I was about to be homeless. Why? Because the owner of the house, my landlord, wanted to move and rent out the house out for 4 THOUSAND DOLLARS PER MONTH.

But why do I have to move?  I was paying the actual mortgage on that house with my rent alone and I’m in the garage?

She owed money to a friend and that friend was in the house and that friend had to move too, and guess which room they would get?

Mine.

For about a day or two I fumed, cried, and wondered what my options were. I could fight it, that seemed like the right thing to do, but let’s rewind and repeat that I’m a nice person. I don’t usually fight things. I walk away from them to avoid fights. I think I can thank my parents for teaching me that. I don’t know if it’s all that good of a skill sometimes.

Who would want to fight to live in a horribly insulated, ugly apartment with stand offish neighbors, create havoc, create misgivings and THEN stay there. That just tasted sour to me, I couldn’t do that. So I turned to other options.

To add insult to injury, I was told I would get paid my deposit the day I moved out. I had to harass my landlord a bit to get that done, making me “the bad guy”. Their response was “they had two weeks to pay me”. So, now you’re shoving legal rent terminology in my face, after breaking my lease that I had every legal right to use against you but didn’t? That’s when I decided this person was not someone worth being connected to in any fashion, ever again. I couldn’t ever trust them. I ghosted them on all platforms (email, social media, etc) the second the deposit arrived in my account.

Back to my options:

There were none in LA. Rent was beyond expensive, I was getting too much help getting over the tiny hump each month paying the rent, and I decided that going home in defeat was probably the best choice. So I did.

I went back to Texas where half of my extended family lives. It’s great being near them again, and near my Texas friends, but I don’t like this town.  I still don’t know why, but I also don’t “love” Los Angeles but it’s the closest thing to home I have.

I’m using my time wisely, building a non profit, but every day I’m “stuck” here, is a nail in what feels like a box I have to escape. I want to be self-sufficient again. I want to bring amazing things to artists with my non profit this year, and I desperately want to get away from this disgusting weather.

2018 really knocked me on my ass, and every time a friend from LA tells me they miss me, I get angrier that I left, because it’s so hard to go back. I’ve done it twice, and it doesn’t get any easier.

This is me, venting about a year that punched me in the face.

I’ll get back on my feet, I always do, but it’s never without consequences.

Today, I had teeny tiny epiphany, one that helps enlighten people who don’t understand what mid-life is like and may perhaps make fun of it through stereotypical memes like “Over the hill” .

I’m not immune, I’ve secretly cackled at friends’ mid-life decisions, because they’re obvious choices, but I’ve since backed down on that point of view because it happened to me. I see their choices as absolutely sane and expected now.

There really is a mid-life crisis that every person seems to face, small or large but it’s there, waiting for you. And I can’t warn you about it either. It’s just a part of you, and it will happen in some form, just like puberty. So my best advice is to enjoy every minute of your life NOW because, as my  favorite cliche goes: “You are never promised tomorrow”.

I am 47, I look 47 (?), I don’t feel 47,  I feel 33. Why 33 and not 30? I knew who I was at 33,  30 was a still a bit of a mess, it took a couple years to get my bearings.

This mid-life crisis hits you when you look in the mirror that one time in your 40’s. Remember that moment?

That damn mirror, that’s always been gracious to you, along with genes that kept you looking younger than your peers, cracks into a million pieces because it cannot stand the sight of your weathered aging face.

Mid life is when your face truly falls.

Everything was okay up until that point. Your most precious asset, which the world relies on for communication, up and falls into this dried up, wrinkled version of what was once a youthful gaze and outlook.

Mid-life is when you can’t hide your age any longer. How crushing is that? Not just on a physical level, but philosophically as well.

Using the cliche “Over the Hill”, when you’re young, you see age and time as a hill upward. You climb it, you have a family, you work hard, you get higher up and then there it is, behold! The sparkling vista you were promised each day you had to climb and wipe sweat from your brow.

You can now see the entire valley before you in all its splendor. You puff up your chest from pride, but what’s that in the distance?

You can also see the fucking end of the god damn road.

THAT is why people freak the fuck out and buy sports cars, or quit jobs, get younger spouses, or go into depressions.  They see the end is now foreboding and clear as day.

My current mid-life crisis is as complicated as the next person’s. I can’t iron it out over one blog post.

I have so much positive energy in my life at the moment.  For instance, I’m working  right now, building an amazing non profit company, a slow and arduous process, but sometimes, everything I’m doing feels useless because that mirror keeps telling me I don’t matter any more to the world.

Call it depression, but I can consciously argue with that point of view my brain likes to throw at me, so I wouldn’t call it a classic depression. It’s more like I’m debating with the truth.

Society does level off the importance of people in their mid-life. For example: Advertisements for product A go from ‘buy this because you’ll have fun and be the life of the party’, to “buy Product B because you’ll need this to look like someone who wants Product A”.

The trick is to ignore that fucking twerp of a voice and keep trudging forward.

You have to remember that invisibility has two sides. You may be invisible to others, but that means YOU’RE INVISIBLE! Sneak in and make your mark. Keep plowing those fields, virtual or real, because life is about finding purpose and making the most of it.

Don’t stop planting ideas and passions because your eyes got crinkly and your hair can’t decide if it’s grey or brown today.

The universe needs you here to kick ass and take names.

The 3 ‘F’s.

I recently embarked on creating a non profit to improve diversity in the entertainment industry.

As a woman I’ve faced my own issues climbing up my own ladder in the film industry, but I know there are others that face a larger more complex battle than my own. And those are the people I’m trying to help.

Every step I take to decide HOW I will do this opens a very large door at a precipice that looks squarely down at a grey murky river of FAIL that will sweep me down to god knows where.

Each time I take that step through that particular doorway, however, a bridge appears because I conjured one up with education and knowledge.

But each doorway I have to step through brings the same fear, as if I never learned from the first one and the gut feelings that wrack my brain, to keep me from achieving my goals take root again.

I want my non-profit to make a difference in a very saturated world where so many have gone before me so the fear is real:

Fear that I will not accomplish my goals.

Fear that my attempts will be too small to make a difference.

Fear that my intended audience does not embrace my mission and fall in love with the services I’m developing FOR them.

And there’s nothing I can do except face it again and again. Because that’s what we do as artists. We jump and then discover we can fly.

 

The question was posed on reddit today, the link will take you to other people’s answers but here’s mine:

---

I would say that I never reached the end of the series because I felt duped at a point before the end.

Long story short, my father introduced me to the Left Behind series because I was in the middle of a spiritual quest at the time and he knew I also loved science fiction so he asked me to give them a chance.

I was fascinated by apocalyptic fiction as well so I gave the first one a read. It was average in expressing itself language wise, but I did grow to like/tolerate the characters.

Then I read the second book…didn’t think much of it, and then the third book arrived on my doorstep.

I realized that “Jesus” was never going to come to Earth in these books because it was just a fucking money machine. The authors weren’t interested in spreading the Word, they just wanted eyes on their books for as long as possible.

They dangled Jesus like a fucking carrot.

The third book went into the trash half read, and I never looked back.

Never tell someone to “calm down.”

That’s all you need to know to make the world keep revolving.

Everything else is secondary.

Is it possible to love someone you’ve had one conversation with, separated by thousands of miles?

A long time ago, I met a man on Twitter who held my attention with his sense of humor and outlook on life. Unlike most people you meet in strange ways, you don’t feel a connection to them but this guy was different.  Our conversation wasn’t intimate, and gathered dust with the most mundane back and forth chatter as most conversations go on a social media platform that only allows you to communicate 140 characters at a time.

Maybe it was his photo, his genuine smile lit up his avatar and he seemed present in the most honest way possible, I don’t know, but I instantly wanted to get to know him better.  But there was a problem.

He was sick. Very sick. He needed a heart transplant for a defect he had been born with and before I could continue any online conversation, one day in March he posted this tweet:

“Called for heart transplant @ 1:29am. In hospital getting prepped. Let’s hope it’s third time lucky!! #CHD #CHF #Heart #Transplant”

I was, and I’m sure many people who knew him,  very happy to read this news.

But then his twitter feed went quiet. I chalked up the silence to recovery. Who in their right mind would jump back on a computer after such an intensive operation, because this was before people posted every. little. action. on. their. accounts.

I sat back and waited a bit, but then a week or two went by and my life got busy as I focused on selling my first screenplay.

Every 6 months or so since then, I optimistically left his account untouched, as in I continued to follow it, hoping that maybe he lost his password or just gave up posting because he was too weak or too awesome too deal with it.  A software I used would remind me that he hadn’t posted in over 6 months, and would I like to unfollow him, and I always refused.

Today I used that software again, perusing the people who had stopped using their accounts, deleting them as they came up one by one, and there he was again, that face, those eyes.

I began to wonder, what was a man like that doing now, now that he had his new heart. Why did he leave me on social media to wonder about him like this every season?

Then it finally hit me. Like a ton of bricks.

I remembered the area where he was from and started searching obituaries.  I couldn’t find him and that lifted my spirits, if only for a few minutes until I placed his name and home town in Google.

He was gone. He died on the night he left what was his very last tweet. He never made it through his transplant operation. That kind face and those eyes left earth.

I’m grieving now for someone I never truly knew. Maybe it was the promise of getting to know someone you knew you would like is the source of sadness I feel. He had a lot to offer as a person, a writer, and I know his family probably misses him to this day.

If they ever come across this blog, know that people he didn’t really know still loved him.

In this digital age, I’ve learned it’s as important as ever to respect the loss you feel, or what another may feel, no matter what form it takes these days.

Virtual relationships are relationships in every sense of the word. Humans have huge hearts, there’s room for everyone, and if we acknowledge that, maybe we can be nicer to each other through the electricity that carries our thoughts and dreams.

---

 

For Euan Sharp. I hardly knew yah, but I loved yah.
1972 – 2010

@euansharp 

If you want to know more about Euan’s life, his blog that leads up to his transplant announcement is still online. 

 

This post goes out to my lady folk (and men folk because let’s face it, no one is immune to sexual assault).

This post isn’t about being a victim (rightfully or wrongfully).This post is about how even with the attachments of a completely boring mundane life, a woman cannot go without the intrusion of power control via sexual assault in her life.

Significant others, ask your girlfriends if they’ve ever been assaulted.  I’ll bet not ONE woman has survived thus far into adulthood without being pressed into an object of desire and been punished for it. “But wait, I haven’t!” — keep searching young lady, you’ll find an incident.

I had, what one might describe as an idyllic childhood, but guess what? Even nice paintings have defects.

I was molested in public, right in front of my father, at a store, by someone who thought grabbing an eleven year old’s ass was appropriate behavior for an adult male.

In college, I was basically date raped by my boyfriend. It’s too complicated and none of anyone’s business why I never reported it, but I now see the errors of my ways. Thinking: “it’s just what happens sometimes in relationships” is not normal.

As an adult I was assaulted on a film set by a makeup artist who pushed me against a wall and forced himself on me.  That asshole was easy to wrangle, all five foot three of him, but still, I was in a relaxed safe place, where you’d never expect to get assaulted.

Today I was, for all intents and purposes, groped by a crazy old short man (why are they always little?) while I was trying to send a text to a friend.  I guess he wanted good luck as he rushed me and then rubbed his mail over my nether regions before running away, but not before smiling maniacally and depositing his mail into a nearby mailbox.

Add all of those memories up and I still consider my life a lucky one. It seems normal, happy, average, and sometimes mundane. These incidents are minor when compared against harsher sexual assaults, and I would never make light of that.  I understand where my experiences stand in relation to and up against the tragedy of others, but for all that is holy, can you not see how impossible it is to feel safe ANYWHERE?

Women will never feel safe.

Women should not roll with it (like I have), and tiny incidents shouldn’t be lumped into some amalgam of “how it is”.

Get angry. Be unreasonable. Fight back**. 

And for the love all that is good in this world, don’t stand on a downtown corner in Los Angeles, and try to text someone.  Be aware of your surroundings all the time. It’s draining on your soul, but you’re worth it.

If I had not been so shocked that someone would try something so insane against me today, he’d be a little ball of crybaby and we’d  both be nursing black eyes.

 

---

 

**I know that a lot of people have been taught to “not fight back” when your life is at stake. Isn’t your life at stake anyway when a weapon is involved? Make peace with your maker and rip out a testicle. That’s my policy.

I’m just wondering because they seem to be all the rage. I haven’t seen any here in LA, but online they’re spoken about all day.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve been living under a genuine mountain rock on the edge of a cliff in Wyoming.

A few minutes on the internet and you’re inundated by references to this or that rufflecahflumpernutter and whether or not you have the one that comes in steel gray or iridescent rainbow with pressed titanium inscriptions devoted to your favorite rufflecahflumpernutter phrases.

I haven’t decided yet whether or not I want a rufflecahflumpernutter, it seems a little hipster, while at the same time scholastically challenged, and maybe a week from now it will be a lump of iridescent rainbow plastic at the bottom of the dustbin.  The market share of users are a fickle bunch, I don’t want to get caught out in that tide.

Maybe I’ll just stick with my clunky but hard to break perfunkdamesdimagdalex and hope it out-survives the tech revolution.

Seriously, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, walk away and save yourself.