27

Dec

Sunrise.

“There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. ‘Put yourself in the way of beauty.”

– From the book “Wild,” by Cheryl Strayed

I couldn’t believe how quickly the nine days passed. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised: time always moves differently at the beach. I arrived on a Tuesday evening after a long travel day. There was the pre-dawn taxi ride to Newark airport, the two-hour flight delay, the six-hour cross country flight, and finally the hour and a half drive over freeways and winding rural highways to get to the beach.

The day after I arrived, the rain rolled in. Rain that lasted for three days. So much rain, the low-lying plot of land next to my grandfather’s house filled with water and formed a large pond, playing host to a flock of Canada geese that glided serenely across its surface.

I tried to stay on east coast time, going to bed early and rising before the dawn. For the first few days it worked, my internal clock naturally nudging me awake before sunrise. But as the crash and clamor of New York City faded into the tranquil quietude of the fog-wrapped inlet, I couldn’t help it: my body naturally slipped back into what could only be described as “beach time.” Just in time for my return to New York.

I almost didn’t make the trip west. The days before I came here were consumed with sorting through and purging my belongings, checking items off an ever-growing to-do list, and preparing to leave New York. It’s nearly impossible for me to believe that by this time next week, I will be settling into a new life in Savannah, Georgia. At the end of next week, I will move into a new apartment, attend graduate school orientation, and be on the precipice of starting a master’s program.

Aaah. Just writing those words gives me a stab of anxiety. I know I’ll be fine; I’ve navigated big scary life changes before (and documented them on this blog). But this feels different. This feels like taking a purposeful step into the future, one that’s full of intention. With this program, I’m committing my time and resources to developing my voice as a writer. And I’m committing myself to finishing the memoir I’ve been trying to write for years.

When I arrive back in New York, I’ll have a mere five days to finish packing and discarding my belongings, saying my goodbyes, and getting ready to move. Five days. The thought of it sends my brain swirling into overdrive. There’s so much to do that my mind can’t contain it all, so instead, I choose to push those thoughts aside and simply enjoy the view.

As I write this, I’m sitting at my grandfather’s dining room table, drinking coffee, watching the sunrise valiantly break through cracks in the thick white fog that hangs over Case Inlet. A small stack of photographs rests nearby. After days of poring over old photo albums, these snapshots are the last handful of images I have left to record on my iPhone camera. Mostly, they’re photos of my mother and I, dating back to my early childhood and teen years, many of them taken right here on this beach.

My mother is everywhere in this place. It’s why I wanted to come here, busy as I was before my impending move to Georgia. In this little corner of the Pacific Northwest, I hear her laughter reverberating off the rocks of the beach and dancing along the shore of the inlet. I feel her in the wind that rustles through the evergreen trees; see her in the snowy apex of Mount Rainier that every so often breaks through the thick layers of grey clouds to say hello.

I wonder what she’d think of me now, as I prepare to embark on this new adventure. I can’t know for sure, but I do know I’m glad I came here. I didn’t know until I arrived how much I needed this time. Time to breathe. Time to reconnect with the place that raised me. Time to honor those who’ve gone before me and whose spirits still reside in this place.

And this morning, I needed to see that sunrise valiantly break through those clouds. Like a beacon of hope. One that said, “Hey kid, you’ve got this. You’re going to be OK.”

And now, here I go.

Until next time, friends.

3 years ago Short URL 17 Comments

Career/Change/The Beach/Writing

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23

Dec

Magic.

Listen to the Mustn’ts, child.

Listen to the Don’ts.

Listen to the Shouldn’ts, the Impossibles, the Won’ts.

Listen to the Never Haves, then listen close to me.

Anything can happen, child.

Anything can be.

– Shel Silverstein

On the eighteenth day of December, I took a walk along Riverside Drive in Manhattan. The air was crisp, the trees barren, the late afternoon sun slipping low on the horizon, spreading its golden glow across the Hudson River and backlighting the New Jersey skyline. In just over twelve hours, I’d be getting in a cab bound for Newark Airport, then boarding a cross country flight back to the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t have time for a walk. I had dinner plans. I hadn’t finished packing. My alarm was set for 3:30 the following morning.

I didn’t have time for a walk, but I needed it. Walking was always when I did my best thinking, and my thoughts were, at that moment, a tangled jumble. I tossed my laundry into a dryer in the basement of my apartment building and set the timer on my phone. I had an hour. Out into the cold December day I went.

From Riverside, I took a left on 116th street and crossed Broadway, onto the campus of Columbia University. It was twilight now, and I entered a tree-lined promenade, aglow in the sparkle of white Christmas lights. The quad was largely quiet, evidence of the impending holiday. Despite my haste, I felt a measure of calm settle over me. I loved school. I had always loved school. Lately, I’d been entertaining the idea of going back for a master’s degree, but I wasn’t sure if that was something I really wanted or just a stalling technique, a costly way of putting off the inevitable reality of making big life decisions.

I had much to do, but I was in no hurry to return to my apartment. Two days earlier, the daughter of the woman I’d been subletting from had filled the living room with boxes and bags of what can best be described as “stuff.” She’d had a crisis in her living situation in Brooklyn and had to move out suddenly, and the result was now sitting in my once clean and orderly living room. My landlord apologized profusely for the disruption and promised she would deal with the mess while I was away over Christmas, but I couldn’t help feeling unsettled by the chaos. It was also a reminder of a truth that was becoming more and more apparent: my landlord’s daughter wanted to return to her old apartment. Soon, I would have to move.

I’d had a good run in New York, and I knew it. For what I’d been paying in rent, I should have been living in a shoebox in the Bronx with at least one roommate. Instead, I had a seven hundred fifty square foot, eighth-floor apartment with a balcony perched over Broadway all to myself. The space was beautiful and tranquil and safe. My cheap rent had enabled me to take writing classes and write a new play and work on my memoir without the urgency of having to look for a real job. The co-op even had a theater company in the basement of my building, a theater company that would be producing a reading of my new play in January. I’d arrived in New York with no plan, and somehow, landed exactly where I needed to be.

But now what? The question nagged at me as I trudged north along Amsterdam Avenue. I had some ideas about temporary living situations but anything even semi-permanent would require paying real rent and a renewed urgency to find a real job. Did I want to look for work in New York and try to root myself there? Or did I want to call time on the Big Apple experiment and return to the west coast? I didn’t know. I missed California and my friends something fierce, but after fifteen months in Manhattan, I wasn’t sure I belonged in L.A. any more.

I have a bad habit of assuming the worst-case scenario. When something good happens, I can’t enjoy it, because I’m already preparing myself for when it goes away. The concept of “living in the moment” is something I struggle mightily with.

I wasn’t always like this. At least, I don’t think I was. I’ve been so altered by the events of the last six years, I don’t remember the person I was before all the bad stuff happened. I don’t remember who I was before my mom’s alcoholism, my dad’s cancer, my grandmother’s dementia, my grandfather’s hospice, my divorce, and all the deaths and devastation that ensued. I know I used to feel young and carefree and that the world was open and full of possibility, but that all seems vague and ephemeral now, like a dream I woke up from after sleeping too long.

Worst-Case Scenario Sarah is not only annoying, she has profoundly affected my ability to enjoy New York. She has left me fists clenched, steeling myself through winter, sweating through summer, unable to allow myself to indulge in the most basic, touristy activities like walking the Brooklyn Bridge or taking in the city from atop the Empire State Building or marveling at the Manhattan skyline from the deck of a ferry boat.

This is a revelation about myself I’ve only come to recently. It began a few months ago, when I first learned my landlord’s daughter was applying for jobs in New York. Bemoaning my fate over whiskey on a patio in Williamsburg, my friend Kirsten waxed poetic about the New York apartment shuffle and proposed a question I couldn’t wrap my head around: “OK, so you have to move. But how do you know you won’t find something even better?”

I didn’t say it out loud, but my brain immediately spat out the following: Impossible! How could it possibly get better than what I have now? I knew this good thing would go away. It was only a matter of time.

The day after my walk, I arrived in Seattle, and some dear friends picked me up at the airport and took me out to lunch. As we caught up over Pacific Northwest seafood and pints of dark beer, I told them about the latest: I had a play reading in January, I’d signed up for a new memoir class, and soon I’d have to move and didn’t know where to go or what to do.

I may be Worst-Case Scenario Sarah, but fortunately I have the good sense to surround myself with Glass is Half Full People. As I explained my situation and my uncertainty about the future, my friend Karrin offered: “It sounds like you’re letting your creative work dictate your decisions. And that’s pretty cool.”

The next morning, writing morning pages by the fire in Grandpa’s beach house, I found myself scribbling that phrase over and over again. Let your creative work dictate your decisions. And I decided something: even if I had to move before my memoir class was over at the end of March, I would find a way to stay in New York, and finish it. I loved that class, loved the people in it, loved the instructor, and I knew it was helping me do the hard work of writing my book.

My last assignment during the last session of Memoir II was to write the reflective ending of my book. It was incredibly difficult because it meant I had to force myself to answer some big questions. What is the point of my story? How do I want the reader to feel? And what have I learned over the course of this very personal journey?

I wrote about the week before I moved to New York, when I gathered at the beach with some of my closest friends. One day, while we were getting ready for a boat ride, my friend Vim spotted a sight that is quite uncommon in the protected cove of Case Inlet: three Orca whales – two calves and their mother – swimming close to shore. Everything about the future was uncertain, but in that moment, experiencing the magic of seeing an old place through the new eyes of my visiting friends, I suddenly believed it would all be OK.

This is the last paragraph of what I wrote:

I don’t know what my life will look like in New York. I don’t know what I’ll do, or who I’ll meet, or how things will change. I just know I’m no longer afraid to face an uncertain future. Grief taught me that life unfolds as it will, whether we like it or not. And it also taught me that if one day can change your life for the worse, then it certainly can for the better. And I’m ready for that. I’m ready to embrace whatever lies ahead. Because the mystery of all the things we can’t know is what makes life exciting. It’s what makes me glad I’m alive.

I so badly want to own this. I want to abandon Worst-Case Scenario Sarah in favor of someone who not only believes good things will happen, she expects them. That’s why I wrote that passage. Call it an attempt at manifestation, call it faking it ‘til I make it, it’s my sincere hope that by the time I finish my book, I will have arrived at that last paragraph.

On my second day at the beach – December 20th – I sat in the living room, bundled up in blankets, waiting out a storm. When suddenly, I saw something that made me rush outside. It was a vibrant, unbroken rainbow, forming a perfect half circle from one end of the bay to the other. And for some reason, I thought about the poem by Shel Silverstein I began this blog post with.

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

I may not totally believe that yet. But man, am I working on it.

Until next time, friends.

 

4 years ago Short URL 11 Comments

Career/Change/Creativity/Friends/Memoir/New York/Pacific Northwest/The Beach/Writing

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10

Aug

Eclipse Season.

“I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

– Gilda Radner

On Saturday, July 27th, there was a full moon lunar eclipse, and I missed it. I knew the eclipse itself wouldn’t be visible from North America, but the moon would still be large and full and red-tinged (a so-called “Blood Moon”), and I wanted to see it. But I couldn’t find the moon that night, because the skies above New York were socked in with thick grey clouds, the result of intermittent rain and thunderstorms that had been rolling through the region over the last several days.

I should have suspected what I was in for when, ten days earlier, my afternoon flight to New York was grounded in San Francisco due to east coast thunderstorms. When I finally slipped into a cab at JFK, picked up two weeks’ worth of mail, watered the plants, unpacked, and ran the AC long enough to cool my swamp of a bedroom, it was the next day, and the sun was coming up over Manhattan.

That was how the dog days of summer began, and that’s how they’ve stayed. There have been a handful of days I’d call “sunny,” but for the most part, the ceiling has been low, the skies gloomy, the city shrouded in a blanket of humidity, and the threat of rain ever present.

It’s my first New York summer. The last of the four seasons I am experiencing here for the first time. As far as New York summers go, I’ve been told this one has been pretty mild. But still. For a Pacific Northwest girl used to the desert climate of Southern California, the cool breeze off the Pacific Ocean, and the safety of my air-conditioned car, it’s an adjustment.

The crush of sticky bodies on the subway, the wall of stifling, stagnant air in my un-airconditioned eighth floor living room, kitchen and bathroom, the stench of midtown Manhattan. . . I’ve been feeling the heat of the city in the heaviness of my limbs and the haze of my brain. It has made me cranky and tired, even though I have no real reason to be. It’s just that everything seems like it’s moving in slow-motion these days, especially my writing: a laborious process layered with plenty of self-doubt.

I haven’t published anything on this blog in over a month, the longest I’ve been away from Extra Dry Martini in forever. While it’s true I’ve been consumed with other writing projects, it’s also true I’ve been avoiding this space because I haven’t known what to say. Like the heat outside, I sort of feel like I’ve been waiting for something to break within me, something that will crack me open and make me feel like myself again.

The full moon lunar eclipse on July 27 was the second in a trio of eclipses that began with a partial solar eclipse on July 12th and ends tomorrow, August 11th, with a new moon lunar eclipse. In the world of astrology – which I admit, I put some stock in – eclipses are significant events, known to be catalysts for change, sometimes delivering that change in unexpected and dramatic ways. Their energy can be emotionally-charged and volatile, leaving us on edge and out of sorts, inviting us to confront uncomfortable truths that push us to end one chapter of our lives and begin another.

In these long, languid late summer days, as we approach the end of eclipse season and I approach the end of my first year in Manhattan, the question of the future sits heavily on my mind. I don’t feel ready to leave New York, but I’m not quite sure what I’ll do here if I stay. And if I return to California, what will I do there? More of the same? That doesn’t feel right, either.

I’m stuck.  And, well – hot.

Maybe I’m hoping the last of this trio of eclipses will flick on a light switch inside of me, illuminating some long-buried insight that I haven’t seen. Maybe I’m just waiting for the end of August, when I’m done with my writing classes and I can grab one more blissful week in the Pacific Northwest to swim in Case Inlet and pose questions to the moon and the stars and get really quiet and just listen.

It has been eleven months since I arrived in New York City with nothing but three suitcases and big dreams. My life today looks nothing like I thought it would eleven months ago, and I think that’s OK. I’m proud of myself in some ways, disappointed in myself in others. And I think that’s OK, too.

I have no idea what the future holds. But then again, neither do any of us. So, rather than tying up this blog post up in a neat little bow, I’ll simply end it with one of my favorite quotes, from Anaïs Nin:

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too.”

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 17 Comments

Career/Change/New York/Well-Being/Writing

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25

May

Ocean Avenue.

The email finally came through on a Tuesday morning, six days after I started looking for it. I wasn’t sure why I continued to obsessively check my phone. I already knew what it was going to say.

Yet even though I had felt in my bones that I’d be getting a rejection letter, when that rejection finally came it still landed like a gut punch. It still felt like an indictment, still made me feel like a failure, still caused me to send text messages to friends asking, “What am I even doing here?”

Of course, I knew the answer. I knew it the week before, on Mother’s Day, when I sat at the bar of a breezy, open-air restaurant overlooking Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue with two of my best girlfriends and cried into my craft cocktail. “I’ve tried everything I can think of,” I moaned. “But New York just doesn’t fit.”

But as much as I missed my friends, as much as – after nearly nine months away – L.A. still felt like home, I knew if I moved back now it would just mean that, once again, I was running. I hadn’t given New York enough time. I hadn’t given it the opportunity to change me in the ways I hoped it would.

I moved east with the goal of producing a play I wrote. I’d produced plenty of theatre in L.A., but I knew it would be harder in New York, and more expensive. I also knew I didn’t have the same network of people to call upon and ask for help. But still, I’d battle tested the script over the course of two L.A. productions and three New York readings, continuing to rewrite and refine and fix along the way. It was in great shape. I’d put together what I knew was an impressive submission package complete with glowing reviews from Hollywood. So, when I turned in my application for the New York Fringe Festival, I was sure I was going to get in.

But then something funny happened. A week after the application deadline, I stared a memoir class. I signed up for it partly to help me develop a regular writing practice and provide discipline in the form of homework and deadlines. But if I’m honest, the real reason I signed up was because I couldn’t get fiction writing – not playwriting, not anything – to hold my interest. And after a few weeks of class, a few weeks of writing exercises that pushed me to dig deep into stories from my life, memoir felt like the only thing I wanted to write. Even though it was painful. Even though it opened up a Pandora’s Box full of memories I preferred to forget. And somewhere in those first few weeks, I made the decision that it was finally time to write the book I’d been dancing around the edges of for years.

But secretly, I worried. If my play got into the fringe festival I’d have to shift gears and take on the tremendous task of producing a show. It was a prospect that thrilled me, but I also knew from experience how much work it would be. It meant the book would have to take a backseat. And because the money I’d been living on was starting to run low, it also meant that I would have to go back to work as soon as the festival was over.

I traveled back to L.A. with these conflicting feelings swirling inside of me. And as I sat down to dinner with my friend Jen on my first night in town and confided that I was afraid to step away from the fun and collaborative worlds of theatre and film to plunge into the lonely and painful process of writing a book, she just looked at me and said, matter-of-factly: “I think everything in your life for the last five years has been leading up to this moment. It’s time.”

She reiterated that sentiment two days later, on Mother’s Day, at the open-air restaurant on Ocean Avenue, saying that this thing –  the book I had been avoiding writing – was the thing keeping me stuck. It was the thing keeping me from moving on to the next phase of my life. And I cried, because I knew it was true.

It was nearly two years ago, in the summer of 2016, that I visited a psychic medium and asked for her help in communicating with my mother. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to expect. I only knew I had to do something, because her death had carved a hole in me and I had spent the last few years swallowed up by guilt and grief. The medium, a young woman named Fleur, was able to give me enough of the how-on-earth-does-she-know-that type of details about my mother’s life and death, that when she told me my Mom wanted me to forgive myself, and that she sent me white butterflies as a sign to let me know she was thinking about me, I chose to believe her.

The day before I left L.A., I rose early, leaving my friend Zoe’s apartment to walk to a corner café for coffee. As I strolled along sunny Washington Place, a white butterfly alighted on a nearby hedge. It skipped over blades of grass and skimmed the edges of flowers. It sailed away, then floated back. I watched it for a minute, then asked, “Mom?” like a crazy person, as though I expected the butterfly to respond. I was greeted only with silence. I took in the bright blue sky, the lavender jacarandas in full bloom, the towering palm trees overhead, and the dancing butterfly. “Mom,” I tried again, knowing it was hopeless but unable to stop myself. “I don’t know what to do. What should I do?” But the butterfly remained silent, continuing to drift on the breeze, until finally it glided gently away, into the beautiful Southern California morning, and was gone.

And it wasn’t the butterfly, and it wasn’t my mother, it was just me, just a shaky but sure voice inside that said, simply, “You know.” Which is why, a few days later, when I got the rejection letter, even though I didn’t think it was fair, even though I didn’t think I deserved it, I knew it was, somehow, right.

As I publish this post, it’s May twenty-fifth. It’s my mother’s birthday. She would have been sixty-six. Would have been because she died nearly six years ago, in a haze of vodka and pills. In a post I authored on this blog back in 2015, I wrote, “She drank until she disappeared. And when she died, I started disappearing, too.” It was true then, and it’s true now.

I am tired of disappearing. I’m tired of feeling stuck. And I’m tired of the ache inside me that only continues to grow. I don’t feel ready to dive into my mother’s story. I’m scared of what I’ll find when I turn the microscope on her life, and on my own. But I also think that we’re never really ready to do the things in life that call upon us to be braver than we believe. We just have to do them and see what happens.

So, I’m going to spend this summer in hotel lobbies, and cafes and libraries, writing everything I know is true about my mother, and my family, and me, until I have something that feels like a book. And hopefully by the time autumn rolls around, I’ll be ready to take another shot at starting my life over. Whatever that looks like. Whatever that means.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

5 years ago Short URL 21 Comments

Career/Change/Grief/Los Angeles/New York/Things My Mother Never Did/Writing

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21

Mar

Six.

On a Sunday evening, three days before the six-month anniversary of my move to New York, I sat in the orchestra section of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre during a performance of the musical Waitress. I was both alone and surrounded by people. I’d wanted to see the show for some time, and as luck would have it, the ticket I’d booked was for the last performance of Sara Bareilles’ Broadway run.

Bareilles’ emotions were palpable as she sang the lead role of Jenna, and they continued to build as the character she gave voice to became progressively trapped in a life she saw no escape from. When she reached the searching ballad “She Used to Be Mine,” the lyrics pierced me, finding their way into an empty space inside my chest and lodging themselves there:

It’s not what I asked for
Sometimes life just slips in through a back door
And carves out a person
And makes you believe it’s all true . . .
And you’re not what I asked for
If I’m honest I know I would give it all back
For a chance to start over
And rewrite an ending or two
For the girl that I knew

 I wiped at my eyes furiously, glancing around to see if anyone noticed, and saw that the woman next to me was crying, too.

It’s hard to believe it’s been six months since I got on a plane with most of my belongings contained in three suitcases. Over these last six months, there have been days when time moved at a torturous pace, because of winter storms and the cabin fever resulting from being trapped indoors. But mostly, time has elapsed quickly, a reminder that no matter how you spend your days, the clock keeps ticking.

It wasn’t long after I arrived that I started thinking about leaving. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss the ease of California living. How much I craved sunshine, and the ocean, and fresh produce and the warmth of community. I didn’t appreciate what it meant to live in a place where people know you, where they know your work, where you’re handed opportunities without having to interview or audition or prove yourself. I miss that. I miss being known.

But there’s a reason I decided to go. Maybe it was simply so I could realize what I was giving up. But I don’t think so. I think it was about a search for something I hadn’t been able to find. Something I still haven’t found.

So often in New York, I feel green and inexperienced and not enough. I know this isn’t true. But these feelings are a consequence of starting over, particularly in a city as hard-driving and as competitive as this one. As a friend said recently, “New York calls you out.” And it has. It has called me out on all the ways I hide, all the ways I feel plagued by doubt, all the ways I sabotage myself. It has made these first six months uncomfortable. But it hasn’t necessarily made them bad.

One of the few books I took with me when I moved across the country was Cheryl Strayed’s small but mighty Brave Enough. There’s a quote in it I keep returning to:

The question isn’t whether you should stay or go.

The question is: How would your life be transformed if you chose to love this time with all your intelligence?

I’m pretty sure Strayed is referring to romantic love here, but I find the quote to have broader application. I read it as: Wherever you are, be all there. Commit. Live in the moment, and love it, with everything you have.

I haven’t done that here. In truth, I’ve spent much of the last five years being anything but present. Running. Jumping on planes. Passing time until the next time I could go away and get out of town. It was grief that made me do this. Grief that kept me swimming like a shark, afraid that if I stopped moving, I’d suffocate.

I can admit this now. I’m not sure why I couldn’t before. Maybe I just couldn’t see it. Maybe it’s New York that made me realize it. But here it is: ever since my mother’s death, and my father’s death, and the deaths of my grandparents, I’ve become progressively unmoored. I haven’t felt connected to a place. I haven’t felt connected to myself.

I’m so tired of running. The transition to life in New York has been hard on me. It has been harder than I ever thought possible. But I don’t want to leave. What’s exciting about this city is the sense of possibility that is everywhere here. For every opportunity that doesn’t pan out, there are so many more things to try. So many more roads to go down. So many more doors to knock on. So many more people to meet.

As I write this, it’s the first day of Spring. Tomorrow, there is yet another snow storm in the forecast. But even still, winter is waning. The days are growing longer. And there is so much that feels possible, waiting just around the corner.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 21 Comments

Art/Career/Change/Grief/New York

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27

Feb

What could be.

“For what it’s worth. . . it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Spring came early to New York. Even if it was only a brief respite from the snow that hadn’t quite finished with us yet, the February day where the sun appeared and the temperature warmed to nearly seventy degrees was glorious. In the late afternoon, I took a thirty-block detour on my way to the gym to walk through Morningside Heights. An elderly couple sitting on a park bench smiled at me and said hello. Children chased each other and laughed, unencumbered by their scarves and jackets. As I turned down 110th Street, sleeveless joggers charged past, heading for Central Park. Even the way the waning sun fell across the brownstones lining Harlem’s Manhattan Avenue felt, somehow, hopeful.

When I meet people in New York and they learn I’ve only recently moved here, it doesn’t take long for them to ask the inevitable question: why? Why would I leave a seemingly comfortable life in Los Angeles – a place with enviable weather, where I have great friends and an established network of contacts – to move across the country to a city where life is arguably more difficult? Why now? Why, with no obvious anchor in the form of a job or school or a relationship, at an age where – let’s be honest – starting over is not easy?

Whenever I’m asked this question, I invariably answer with some version of the following: I’d been feeling creatively stagnant in L.A. for some time and I needed a change. I wrote a play that I want to produce here. And I’d always wanted to try New York and figured, if not now, when? And all of these things are true. They’re just not the whole truth. The whole truth is something more difficult to pin down, something I feel embarrassed to admit.

Ever since I was very young, I had an idea about the person I was supposed to be. She’s braver than I am, more confident. She’s successful and her life is glamorous. And – perhaps the most important part – she’s happy.  Like really, really, stupidly, ridiculously happy.

When I moved to L.A. as a baby faced eighteen-year-old, all the big dreams that drove me there were wrapped up in this idea, this need to find the best version of myself. Over the years, I caught glimpses of her. I caught glimpse of what could be. But the life I longed for never fully materialized. And just after my thirty-first birthday, everything went off the rails. And I began to wonder if time had run out on my dreams.

In a way, New York felt like my last shot. If I was too afraid to respond to the siren call of the city, what would that say about me? Would it mean I wasn’t as brave or as adventurous as I wanted to be? Would it mean that my best days were already behind me?

I’ve always been an optimist. But here’s the thing about hope: it’s a currency that grows more expensive with time and with exposure to loss. After every death, after every disappointment, after every heartbreak that has rocked this rollercoaster decade of my thirties, it’s become harder to pick myself up and begin again. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t try. It’s just that I have learned to protect myself by not only preparing for the worst, but by expecting it.

So, when the sparkle of starting again in a new city wore off and the inevitable reality of adjusting to life in New York set in, I got down on myself. I succumbed to melancholy and depression. I stopped believing that good things were going to happen for me.

But here’s the other thing about hope: it’s persistent. Our dreams don’t die easily. And sometimes, all it takes is one small shift in perspective to set the world right again.

I suppose it’s ironic that my shift in perspective was brought about by the flu. Forced to slow down, stay home, and stay in bed, I had a lot of time to think. And I thought about all the friends from back home who had been sending me love via emails and texts and calls, telling me they were proud of me and they believed in me. I thought about the new friends I’d made in New York, who had been so generous, so warm and welcoming, so willing to help me. And I felt both grateful for everything I had been given and ashamed of myself for taking it for granted. And I resolved to try harder. And I reminded myself that the only time you ever really fail is when you quit trying.

Until next time, friends.

5 years ago Short URL 22 Comments

Career/Change/Creativity/Grief/Los Angeles/New York

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22

Jun

Rain.

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

– Haruki Murakami

I was getting my nails done when the rain started falling. The Weather Channel and the app on my iPhone had been threatening for days that a storm was coming, but the warnings had thus far been inaccurate, and so I stopped believing in the forecast. But suddenly there it was, only a few hours before the staged reading of my play War Stories, the reading that I’d been preparing for all week, the reading that was the main reason for my trip.

By the time I left the salon, wearing only sandals, a tank top, and cotton shorts (owing to the hot, humid weather), the rain was coming down in angry, torrential sheets. As I headed out the door onto Broadway, my friend Rachel gave me my first New York rain advice: “Stay away from the curb.”

In truth, I’d been feeling angst-ridden all day, well before the rain arrived. Though my week in New York had been mostly wonderful, there had been difficult moments too, moments that made me question whether I’d made the right decision to move there.

And now, trudging along Broadway, head down, rain pummeling my bare skin and seeping into my sandals, text messages started coming through my phone. Well wishes from dear friends in L.A. that tugged at my heartstrings. The fear and doubt crept in. “What am I doing?” I thought. “I’ve made a mistake. I want to go home.”

Of course, it wasn’t a mistake. The rain stopped. The skies cleared, leaving behind pockets of fog that wrapped themselves around skyscrapers and leant an air of magic and mystery to their ascent into the heavens.

And the reading I was so worried about? It was great. Better than great. Friends showed up. The actors who read the script were wonderful. And the post-read audience Q & A was practically painless, free from the incisive East Coast critiques I’d been fearing. It turns out that people in New York – or at least these people in New York – liked War Stories. They liked it more than I thought they would.

Later that evening, sitting down to a tapas dinner in an elegant, delicately-lit restaurant in the West Village, I asked the friends who were gathered there to go around the table and explain how they knew me, as a way of introducing themselves to each other. And as they did, I realized that while I don’t know a lot of people in New York, the people I do know are pretty spectacular. And I’m damn lucky.

I am lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve had a big life. I’ve lived everywhere from L.A. to London, Anchorage, Alaska to enchanting small towns in the Pacific Northwest. And I’ve traveled to many, many more beautiful places. And now, I’m preparing to pack up my life and move to the most exciting, maddening, terrifying, exhilarating city I can imagine. And when my friend Maeve, an opera singer who I once performed with in our high school choir in Olympia, WA, announced, about me, to the table: “You’re ready for New York, and New York is ready for you,” I knew that she was right.

I know that nothing in life is permanent. Things work, and then they fall apart. The parts of my past that are wonderful and are over are chapters of my history that I still own, just like I own all the bad and tragic parts too. Nothing is black and white. It’s all bittersweet. And it’s all beautiful. Because it’s all life.

Last week, I was reminded not to worry so much about where I’m going, but instead, to lean into this moment and give it everything I have. I was reminded to breathe and to trust that there are forces bigger than I am at work that will support me as long as I continue to believe in myself. And I was reminded that though rain is an inevitable part of life, the sun always pushes through the gloom eventually, making everything lovely again.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 16 Comments

Career/Change/Los Angeles/New York/Performing Arts/Writing

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11

Jun

The distance of the leap.

“I’m not the sort of person who leaps.” That line of dialogue from a new play I’m working on, from a speech in which the female character explains how extreme life circumstances led her to take risks she normally wouldn’t, has been running through my mind lately, on a loop. “I’m not the sort of person who leaps.”

I’m not, either. These last few years, as I’ve written about my struggles with grief after the death of my family, as I’ve publicly navigated life and career and relationship changes, as I’ve tried to find solid footing on ground that is ever shifting, a lot of people have called me “brave.” I may be a lot of things, but “brave,” is not one of them. The way I look at it, life gave me two choices: play the hand I was dealt, or quit the game. And quitting was never an option, at least not for me.

Just over a week ago, with a carefully worded letter addressed to my landlord neatly folded inside a stamped envelope, I walked three blocks to my local post office. As I approached the building, walking up Alfred Street into the South Carthay neighborhood that I love, a neighborhood populated with statuesque palms and historic Spanish style houses, a neighborhood I jog through at least once a week, my hands started to sweat. Am I crazy? I thought. Am I really going to give up my apartment? My beautiful little sun-filled bungalow with its laundry room and expansive patio overlooking a perfectly landscaped garden? A place with unparalleled charm, at a price that’s unheard of in L.A.’s skyrocketing rental market? And with awesome, incredible neighbors to boot? I can’t believe I’m doing this, I told myself.

But the truth is, it was time. It was beyond time. As much as I love my apartment, I never expected to stay there for three years. It was always meant to be a stop gap, a place to gather and rebuild and then move on. I will always be grateful for the way that charming little cottage fell into my lap when I needed it the most, for the way that it sheltered me and kept me safe throughout the most difficult phase of my life. But the healing that I needed to do there is done, and now, it’s time to go.

A few days after I mailed the letter to my landlord, I broke the news to some friends at a Sunday afternoon barbecue: I was giving up my apartment at the end of June, moving in with a friend for the summer, and leaving L.A. at the end of August. I would go back to the Pacific Northwest to spend time with family, and from there, I’d head for New York.

“Do you have a place to live out there?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Do you have a job?”

“No. Not yet.”

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I feel a little bit terrified at the prospect of making this change, especially with so much that’s still uncertain. I’m not the sort of person who leaps, remember? But I’m also not the sort of person who buries her head in the sand and ignores what’s obvious, either. The truth is, these last couple years I’ve felt stagnant, both creatively, in terms of the work I want to produce, and personally, in terms of big picture life stuff. I feel the sands shifting through the hourglass at an alarmingly accelerating rate, and I know that unless I change, nothing in my life will change. And I’m not talking about the sort of change that was forced upon me by circumstance these last years – the change that caused people to call me “brave” – but instead, proactive, taking the steering wheel of my own life and pressing my foot to the gas pedal, change.

Sorting through items in my apartment, deciding what to keep, toss, and give away in preparation for a move, I flipped open a favorite book of quotes, Cheryl Strayed’s Brave Enough, and found this:

“We are all at risk of something. Of ending up exactly where we began, of failing to imagine and find and know and actualize who we could be. We all need to jump from here to there. The only difference among us is the distance of the leap.”

We all need to jump from here to there. Even those of us who aren’t accustomed to leaping.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 19 Comments

Career/Change/Los Angeles

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06

May

New York.

“So I went to New York City to be born again.”

– Kurt Vonnegut

I’m not sure exactly when it happened. It may have been catching up over drinks with a friend – who I met two years ago at a film festival in Alaska – in the crowded White Horse Tavern, yelling to be heard over the blaring jukebox, as she told me I was sitting in the chair rumored to be occupied by the ghost of Dylan Thomas. It may have been the historic old theatre I toured – one of many – during which the endearingly eccentric theatre manager regaled me with stories of past productions as we climbed rickety, dust-covered stairs into the rafters to look at her enormous inventory of lighting equipment. It may have been the afternoon I wandered through Washington Square Park daydreaming among tulip gardens, or the night I woke to the crackling of thunder and was treated to a magnificent lightning storm outside my seventh-floor window, or the number of coffees and lunches I shared with former Angelenos, all of whom told me what I already felt to be true: that their creativity and productivity had expanded tenfold since they’d moved to the opposite coast.

It may have even been that very first day, on my way into the city from JFK, the taxi cab snaking through traffic in the rain, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge and plunging into that glorious skyline of concrete and glass, all shiny and gritty and hopeful. But whenever it happened, all I know is that somewhere in the space of the week I spent in New York to visit theatres and research moving my play War Stories there, something within me shifted from “I think I could live here,” to “This is home.”

Truth be told, I’d been feeling anxious about the trip right up until the moment I arrived. I don’t know a ton of people in New York. One of my oldest and dearest friends keeps a place there, but lately she’s been working mostly in California and wasn’t planning to be back in the city until the last two days of my visit. Other than her, most of my New York connections are soft:  actors and writers I know from L.A.; high school friends I haven’t seen much of – or at all – in years; people I’d never met but who were introduced to me through mutual friends. The week before I left, I reached out to everyone I could think of, most of whom responded with: “Call me when you get here and we’ll make a plan.” And so, on the bright, early morning I left L.A., I had very few appointments on my calendar, and no idea how this whole New York experiment was going to work out.

But as soon as I arrived, a funny thing happened:  everything fell into place. The emails and texts started rolling in. Could I come participate in a screenplay reading in Williamsburg? Yes. Meet for dinner? Yes. Coffee? Yes. Brunch? Yes. On my second morning in New York, an email came through from the owner of the theatre where I produce most of my work in L.A., telling me to call a friend of his who owns an Off-Broadway theatre in Midtown. He was expecting to hear from me, he said.

And on it went, all week, like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering momentum, growing bigger, faster, stronger. I took three, four, five, meetings a day, and everywhere I went, I met lovely, hard-working, creative people. People who were engaged and interested and who seemed to genuinely want to help me. I couldn’t believe it. What was this myth I’d heard about New Yorkers being rude? That was certainly not my experience.

I should have been exhausted from all the scheduling, the emails and information exchanged, the city blocks covered on foot. But I wasn’t. I was energized. I was inspired. And it made me realize that this feeling was exactly what I’d been craving, exactly what I’d been missing these last few years in L.A. This is where I’m supposed to be, I thought. And before I left New York, I had made my decision. I was moving there.

I know that relocating won’t be easy. I know that New York can be a hard place to live, that the winters are cold and the summers are hot, that the apartments are tiny and expensive as hell and that the pace of the city can be exhausting. And I know that I still have a whole lot to figure out, like finding a job and a place to live. But I also know that the energy and excitement that I felt pulsing through my veins when I was there is something I can’t ignore. I know that last week, New York went from feeling like a near impossible dream to something that is very, very possible. And I know that if I’m serious about producing theatre there, then I need to be there. I need to spend the time to do it right, to develop a plan and a marketing strategy and do all the work that’s necessary to be taken seriously in a town where theatre is a serious business.

I moved to L.A. as a girl of eighteen, and I’ve now lived here – other than a brief stint in London and some extended stays back home in the Pacific Northwest – half of my life. I love L.A. and I know it won’t be easy to say goodbye. But the die has been cast. The decision has been made. And I’ve already begun to set the wheels in motion. And if all goes well, then by sometime this fall, I will be calling New York City home.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 45 Comments

Career/Change/Creativity/Theatre/Travel

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18

Apr

Graceland.

I’ve been taking a road trip in my dreams. It starts at Elvis Presley’s Memphis home, Graceland, and then continues on to Nashville, Atlanta, and Savannah, Georgia. All of these places – with the exception of Graceland – are places I’ve been. But I’m not the one taking this mythical journey. Instead, the travelers are a young couple who live inside of a new play I’m working on; a duo who meets and falls in love in the space of a few hours, and who – drunk on whiskey – decide to drive until they reach the ocean, because the girl has never seen the Atlantic, and because, two weeks prior, her mother committed suicide.

The play, tentatively titled Closing Time at Graceland, was originally slated to be just a ten-minute, one-scene piece; part of an evening of Elvis-inspired short plays that a friend is producing this summer. But the more time I’ve been spending with the characters – examining their histories, their hopes and dreams, the way their lives become irrevocably enmeshed – the more I realize that their story can’t be contained within ten pages. Theirs is a story of heartbreak and hope, a story about the choices we make and the lives we almost live, a story that – though it’s uncomfortable to admit – intersects with my own.

I’m currently engaged in the process of reinventing my life, or at least, I’m trying to. I’m looking at everything from where I live, to the way I earn money, to how I evaluate my worth in the world. It is a process that is slow, arduous, and humbling, and some of the questions I’m asking myself are painful ones. But I am determined to travel the distance between the person I’ve always been and the person who I know that I can be. And that road is a difficult one. I am impatient, but I also know that meaningful change doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t come easy or cheap.

Perhaps that is the reason why this new story has taken such a hold of me, and is insisting that I write it. It’s certainly not the most convenient time to begin something new. I’m still very much invested in my play War Stories, and in doing the work necessary to transfer that show – and likely, myself – to New York. And then there’s the pressing need to make money, and the process of trying to sell my skills to potential employers. There are essays to write, bios to craft, portfolios to build, resumes to refine.

I suppose it’s little wonder, then, that detaching from the tedium of research and resume formatting and disappearing into the fictional drama of a passionate love story is enthralling. And perhaps, at this time of profound soul searching and uncomfortable change, I want to look back before I can move forward. Perhaps I want to remember the girl who, at twenty-four, took her own road trip through the Southeastern United States, who wandered through ivy-covered old town squares and dipped her toes in the Atlantic for the first time, and felt like everything she dreamed of was within reach.

Or maybe I’m doing what I often do when writing fiction with parallels to my own life: maybe I’m trying to write my way to a better ending. One that, if not happy, at least offers some resolve.

Whatever the reason this story has taken such a hold of me, one thing is clear: I won’t be leaving Graceland any time soon.

Until next time, friends.

6 years ago Short URL 5 Comments

Career/Change/Theatre/Writing

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