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The story of my guest appearance on the Suze Orman show

August 13, 2010

How to buy my first car

August 13, 2010

It’s time to tell the blog.

August 13, 2010


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“So when are you going to tell the blog?!” Mike asked after I confirmed that the news was official.

I laughed because of the way he said it – to “tell the blog” – like I have to sit the Internet down for a we-need-to-talk.

My news isn’t really what this blog is about, I told him.

But when I thought about it – about the whole, long story that precedes the whole longer story I’m about to begin, I realized it all did come back to this blog. All of it. And for once, I’m not over-exaggerating.

The whole, long story begins with Pierson-made-me-start-this-blog-against-my-will and ends with I’m-moving-to-Los-Angeles-on-September-1st-to-pursue-my-creative-pursuits.

I realize that reads like whip-lash, but the plot points between that start and this “finish” do puzzle piece together into an actual picture. It’s essentially a picture of a Candy Land board, but at least there’s a path.
Separately the events that lead to my decision are random, coincidental, ridiculous, and unbelievable. They guest star a combo of the most likely players (my parents) and unlikely characters (Suze Orman?!). And they feature way less OCD planning than most random Tuesdays of my life.
But as I sat down to figure out how exactly I got from there to here – from starting a blog just to have a reason to write to moving clear across the country to pursue a career in writing and production – I can with absolute certainty pick out those moments that were the “sure signs”- or if you’re my Mother, “God winks” – that I knew I had to follow even though I didn’t know where they were going.
This is not a “look what I did!” story – it’s a look what can be done…

An early wink (slash punch) came from David – who is as critical as they come and 3 x that when it comes to me. He told me I had something good going with this blog but I was wasting it by only writing every so often. “You need to commit to three days a week,” he said, “or don’t do it at all.”

I listen to David (unless it has anything to do with relationships) – so I did it from that day on, and he was right; it took my writing from a dabbling to a body of work.

Then Nora started reading and, like the born producer she is, saw television material in my 500-word rambles. I told her I had no idea what it took to develop a television show. She ignored me, and for the next six months we worked on a treatment that ended up in the hands of a production company who optioned this idea – 20-Nothings – for television development.

It was around that same time that a name I hadn’t seen in 10+ years dropped back into my life.

“Kimberly Kaye has sent you a message on Facebook”

Forward. Revise subject line: LOOK MOM! Remember Kim Kaye!

Kim Kaye was my colleague (?) in Brownie Troope 180 who was randomly re-introducing herself as a fan of this blog and (God wink) the new co-founder of a Manhattan-based theater company, Effable Arts. “We want you to write a one-act play for us,” she told me over dirt-cheap Thai in the Theater District. “I don’t know how to write a one-act play,” I said. “It’s not hard,” she told me. Kim has a B.A. in creative writing with a concentration in theater. I Googled “how to write a one-act play.”

Four months later my first one-act play was staged at an off-off (off?) Broadway theater, and I knew my life would never be the same. Dramatic, I know, but my friend Paul told me that, “some things require some drama, girl.”

If you asked me when I was 10 years old if I loved to write I would have said yes. If you asked me if it was my passion – the thing I want to make a life out of – I would have asked what that means.

If you told me at 18, hey, you should pursue writing for film and television, I would have said, “um, thank you,” but thought, “um, you’re crazy.” At 18 I still loved to write, but the idea of turning that enjoyment into that specific dream just wasn’t in my frame of reference. Same goes for my college years when writing became even more a part of my life (the website friends and I launched, the college TV show we produced) – but even then I felt like a girl who wrote, not a writer. There’s a difference, and that difference is entirely mental.

Which is why I remember so distinctly the first time someone told me I was “a real writer.” It was Blair Singer (a playwright who also spend some time writing on Weeds), and we were sitting down over beers at a bar in Brooklyn that looked just like a bar in Brooklyn would (Blair’s line). I’d been set up with Blair to discuss him writing for the potential 20-Nothings TV show. Blair was far more interested in mentoring me to the point of being able to write it all myself. “I read your stuff,” he told me, “and this is what you should be doing with your life.”

That was the first time I thought, I can do this. I want to do this or, it would be incredible to be able to do this had come months before. I’d transitioned from developing-and-writing-content-is-a-dream to developing-and-writing-content-is-my-dream through the Effable experience and my work with Nora, but I was stuck in that place so many people get stuck. “I can’t do that. Come on. That’s crazy.”

But as if answering the in-my-head-objections with in-my-face interruptions you’d have to be an idiot to ignore, the universe said, “Yeah, it’s crazy. Deal with it.”

A middle school friend who’d landed at an LA talent agency came back into my life and helped me navigate that world, another friend put me in touch with an editor at The Daily Beast and then an editor at Marie Claire who assigned me articles that drew bigger attention, my Effable circle became a source of game-changing inspiration and lead to my writing The Hook-up Conversations. And then one incredible woman at one well-respected management and production company sent me an unsolicited e-mail that changed my life.

How’s that for dramatic?

For the past 11 months I’ve been working with Lucinda and the team at that management company to develop my writing portfolio to the point of pitching my own material for sale. I have also been working to develop my understanding of the previous sentence. And Lucinda, with tireless patience and fairy-godmother-like skill has been working on convincing me that this is real, I can do it, and making the move West is the best next step.

Which is where I’m-moving-to-Los-Angeles-on-September-1st comes in. Though, if you ask my mother, I’m not moving – I’m just, “going to live somewhere else for a little while.” (apparently we’re all writers)

There comes a time in the exploration of any desire, dream or passion where you have to ask yourself, how bad do I want it?

Bad enough to leave my current, great job? Bad enough to move away from the city I love more than any other place I’ve ever been? Bad enough to leave my family and some of my closest friends? Bad enough to risk failing?

Some of those answers are yes, but some of them are still I don’t know, which explains why this decision comes 11 and not 2 months after that e-mail from Lucinda.
But as I stepped slowly toward this final decision (and away from my attachment to 24-hour Bodegas) I realized the more important question is, are you willing to never have it? Are you willing for it to never happen?
Yes, going for it means a whole list of things that make my stomach turn could happen, all of which are completely unknown. But not going for it leads to something I can absolutely guarantee – it won’t happen.
There’s an Anais Nin quote that I’ve always loved: “And day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
And so I’m going (in 3 weeks, gulp), and I’m absolutely certain it’s the right thing for me to do.
I have much more to say about this decision, about what it means to be a 27-year-old woman making this change, about the lessons in this story that we can all stand to play on repeat, and – most importantly – about the people who have made this possible for me, but for right now I’ll leave it at the story of how it came to be.

In one sentence: I’m a very lucky girl blessed with very loving mentors who pushed me through all the open doors so I could make the decision to walk through this big one.

I can’t promise that I’m fully ready for what’s next or sure of what I even want in the end, but I will promise you this – the blog is going no where.

See you Monday.

14 comments

  1. Good for you! I’m 27 now and left LA at 25 to work on my writing in Austin.
    Your writing is fab and it sounds like things are on the up for you. I wish you all the best and can’t wait to see your name more and more.
    P.S. I love Kimberly though I’ve never met her. If it’s the same Kimberly we’re talking about. How many Kim Kayes are there? Tell us Kim!

  2. 24-hour bodegas are something that I really, really miss about loving in Philadelphia. They don’t exist on the West coast 🙁

    Congrats, and good luck to you!

  3. It’s ME, Hipstercrite. It’s ME! I am the one and only Kim Kaye.

    Except for Kimberly Kaye Terry, the ethnic erotic fiction writer. No, I am not making that up. Google “Big Spankable Asses” if you don’t believe me. That woman is the bane of my existence.

    You, and Jessie, make my writing world more bearable. You inspire me.

  4. Jessie, I just realized that I’ve learned two important things from you.

    1) It’s OK to write a blog that doesn’t have pretty picutres- if it’s GOOD.

    2) It’s OK to write a show that consists of monologs (Yes, I spell it without the ue on purpose. The English language needs to get its shit together.) about common subjects- if it’s GOOD.

    So thanks!

  5. Good luck!!! I can’t wait to read about it here. I’m going in the opposite direction (TO New York) in a few months for much the same reasons, and it’s terrifying. I love how you’ve articulated your thoughts about pursuing dreams – it’s just what I needed to read at the moment.

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