Turns
out the whole economy sucking and people not being able to find work
thing is completely real! Especially for someone who was employed in a
low-tech position for 15 years. Loyalty doesn't count for much these
days.
Plan
B was for me to go to NYC for a month and lay the ground work in my
industry for a move back. I was supposed to go for the month of
September, but I was up for a part on a TV show that shot there in
Mid-August and my agent told me the sooner I got there the better. So
Monty and I went in Mid-August. New York City in August.
My
parents' house is a death trap. It's a miracle I survived there at all
growing up. There are three winding wooden staircases, one with a
wrought iron banister thingy. Monty's favorite thing to do, it turns
out, is climb stairs. He especially likes the part where the staircase
curves and the stairs get SUPER narrow.
It was an awful trip. Not because of the stairs.
Navigating the city with a stroller is rough especially since most of
the shitty hipsters that have infested it don't seem to understand the
concept of helping women with strollers up and down subway steps. It's
like they moved there with the cliched idea that New Yorkers are rude
and they want to be authentic, so they just pass you by in their skinny
jeans and scarves and stupid mustaches while you struggle up the steps
with a stroller, a toddler, and accoutrement. Also, my skin was FLIPPING the fuck out. I had taken the awesome advice of oil cleansing. Oil cleansing. Oil cleansing is where you literally rub OIL into your skin as a way to clean it. You CLEAN your FACE with OIL. Is that clear? Good, because my face certainly wasn't. The two women I know who oil cleanse have beautiful skin. The thing is, they have beautiful skin. So, they're starting out at a major advantage. They haven't been dealing with acne since they were 12. At one point in this adventure I was rubbing oil into my skin at night and rubbing apple cider vinegar into my face in the morning. So, to be clear, I was cleaning my face with salad dressing. I kept telling myself my skin was purging and I had to stick with it. All the websites I was looking at were telling me to keep treating my face like an arugula salad for at least eight weeks until my skin had purged all the gross stuff out and then I would look like Charlize Theron. By week six I looked like Hoggle.
Also, it's not like you use canola oil from the 99 cent store. Everything has to be organic and cold-pressed and you have to use a combination of different oils depending on your skin type (and good luck figuring out the right combination and ratio for your skin). By the end I was using a combination of castor, jojoba, argon, tamanu, and tea tree oils. Next time you're at Whole Foods take a look at how much a tiny container of organic, cold-pressed tamanu oil is...
I suppose walking around looking like a troll would have been okay if I had felt like I was home. New
York doesn't feel like home anymore. Honestly, it feels like a luxury
mall filled with Starbucks, cupcake shops, and T-Mobile stores. And
Park Slope is lovely, don't get me wrong, I grew up there, but $2500 for
a studio?? Come on, guys. It's not THAT lovely. You have to really
love New York in order to make a life there and I just don't. The deep
irony is I know that if I moved back to NYC it wouldn't take too
terribly long to start working fairly steadily and cobble together some
kind of a living. I could probably be comfortable financially, so at
least that part of the puzzle would be in place. But it's the getting
to that point that I can't hack. I can't deal with the snow and sleet
and wet pants on the subway and the heat and pee smell everywhere and
the jam-packed subways and the subway stairs and the prospect of having
to live all the way out in Bed-Stuy. I don't have it in me. Plus, to be honest, I resent the fact that I've been priced out of my own neighborhood.
On top of all that, I had two life-changing fights with my parents,
which, as regrettable as they were (and they were), helped me to
understand some things about myself that need changing.
In
the meantime, back at home, Kurt was going through his own shit and
coming to terms with some life stuff he hadn't wanted to look at for a
really long time. His language was changing. His priorities were
shifting. He realized that getting a job similar to the one he had just
left, one that largely meant catering to people with a lot of money, no
real concept of self-reliance, and a real concept of self-entitlement
was going to crush his soul. Further than he'd felt his soul crushed
already. In the five years that I've known him I've watched him lose
more and more interest in his "work". I've seen him go in day after
day, NEVER taking a sick day and hardly ever taking vacation days,
working with people who were rude and unappreciative. His skills vastly
outweighed his duties. By the end he just seemed beat down and
defeated. He felt like he was letting us down. More importantly, he
was letting himself down. He devalued himself. At the end of the day, getting shit-canned from that place was a huge blessing (but don't tell them that).
We
found ourselves kind of laid out bare by it all. Home is no longer
home for me. Los Angeles, as much as we love it, has just become a
place with great weather where we happen to live. I haven't had an
audition since the one (ONE) I went on in NYC (for a one page co-star).
We're both on unemployment and we have a child. And, for some dumb
reason, we insist on feeding him organic, healthy foods. A recent trip
to Whole Foods cost us $250. Two weeks later we were out of almost
everything. My parents have very generously sent us a Whole Foods gift
card to keep Monty in kale and bananas, but that's not a viable
life-plan. We can't just keep going this way, hoping something will
change and that our parents' generosity will continue eternally. My
agent tells me to get a survival job, but we're not talking about
waiting tables while I cross my fingers and hope to get an audition. If
it were just me, that would be fine. But I have a child. That shit
won't fly anymore. Plus, I've never waited tables, but I can guarantee you I wouldn't last a day. Could you imagine me waiting on you?
I
do love acting. And I know I'm good at it. But the sad truth is
making a career out of acting doesn't have too much to do with talent.
There are a lot of factors that go into having a successful career, and
I, for various reasons both in and out of my own control, have not been
able to attract enough of the factors to me at once in order to make a
solid go of it. Success does not guarantee future success.
I
don't feel sorry for myself. My story isn't tragic. It's pretty
mundane, actually. Most actors who have been doing it for more than
five years will have a similar story. It's okay. It's the life I
chose. It's just not working anymore.
As
it stands now we're contemplating a major move. We've realized that if
things need to change we have to change them. We can't wait around
anymore for something to magically be different. We have to think about
Monty and what kind of life we want for him. We have to show him how
to make a healthy life for himself by making one for ourselves. It's
looking like that life doesn't exist for us in Los Angeles or New York.
Which means we have options. We can go anywhere. This is both
exhilarating and utterly terrifying. But nothing is permanent. Right? RIGHT???
I
realize this reads like a diary entry. I'm just trying to fulfill my
promise to be honest and share this journey. This is where my journey
is today.
Join me tomorrow when I discuss coffee enemas, kale shampoo, and sun-staring.
