Teddy and Kathy laughed at his modeling photos as they passed the bowl back and forth, him clicking and changing the picture every other toke. Teddy gestured towards the screen. “Look at what Ky’s been up to.”

Ky was a server who started working at the Thai restaurant just before I left. We didn’t talk much: I remember he seemed real country, real green. He mentioned getting into acting and modeling. I could barely place his face on the Photoshopped Malibu Ken in front of me, who went through a wardrobe change and pose shift with every mouse click, the only ubiquitous feature the plastic smile on his face:

Here he is, wrapped in a scarf!

Now, flexing his abdominal muscles!

Wow! It looks like Ky’s ready for a night on the town! Let’s go, Barbie!

They laughed and pointed and laughed some more, half in good-nature, and the other half, not so quite. “Hey, I mean, good luck to him,” Kathy said.

“Yeah, hope he gets something out of these pictures,” Teddy added. Like these dismissive platitudes negated their ridicule, or concealed the resentment laced twixt every laugh, every comment, every puff of smoke exhaled in Ky direction.

I remember doing the exact same thing, once upon a time, while visiting my friends Jenny Beth and Danielle, in Nashville. Late one night and bored, we started flipping through the 30-pictures-deep Facebook modeling album of a former CTY co-worker. He proudly posted a short prelude, explaining that he never considered modeling, but a friend suggested it and he “loved the results.”

The “results” were far more over the top than Ky’s photos, and included super-mega-bonus suggestive captions, like “wanna get nailed?” as if wearing cut-off jean shorts, an open flannel shirt, and a firm grip on the shaft of a hammer wasn’t suggestive enough. Or if clutching a toy jack hammer directly in front of your crotch didn’t slap you across the face with a laundry list of double entendre, one was provided for ease of reference (“I’d hammer you, too.”) We laughed and we pointed and we laughed, until we went through the entire album, trying out each caption in our own sexy voice.

Half in good nature. Half not so quite.

This time around with Ky’s photos, it wasn’t as amusing. I walked out of the room, and the click of the mouse and more laughter followed me into the hallway. Their gaiety hit too close to home. It was a low blow, making the subject of their ridicule someone who was getting started in entertainment. Be certain that anytime you attempt something difficult, something without a proven record, people are lining up their bets against you and laughing as they do it. Rare are the people who wish you the best of luck, and mean it.

Which is helpful, in its own way. Ridicule weeds out those without the gumption to stick it out for the long run. If you can’t handle some razzing at stage one, it’s unlikely you’ll have the staying power to last the seasons, when ridicule melts to begrudging acceptance, and eventually, blooms to admiration.

Still. “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.”

No related posts.

Teddy suggests we get out there and tell her to move, but he doesn’t read horror scripts all day, so he doesn’t know any better. There’s always that guy in slasher flicks who approaches the seemingly vulnerable creature, disguised as an old lady or the ubiquitous little girl (equally ubiquitously played by Chloe Grace Moretz.) His hand is outstretched, like he’s about to pet a baby bird. He’s hunched over, his eyebrows furrowed, and in your head you’re screaming “No! Don’t do it! It’s a trick! She’s going to bite your face off!” but he inches closer and closer, unconcerned with your pleas because you don’t possess telepathy and he is inside a television.

He gently touches the old lady, and…

Nothing happens. He smiles…

Right before she rips his face in half.

I will not be this guy.

The alternative to asking the crazy homeless lady to move is realizing that she may be obnoxious, but she’s not doing nobody harm. We should just stay inside our warm, safe apartment, with running water and electricity and cell phones, counting our blessings.

Then get on the cell phone and call the police, and ask them to move the crazy homeless lady.

I prefer this option, though I’m not sure what good it’d do. In Los Angeles, there’s this “live and let live” attitude towards the homeless and panhandlers that still escapes me. There’s a panhandler I regularly pass, stationed right where the “10” empties onto National Blvd. Her scraggly brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and tucked into her USC sweat shirt. Every time I get gas or groceries, she’s working that corner, though her specific duties vary. Sometimes she’s got her cup in hand, walking down the long line of cars waiting for the light. Other times, she’s flirting with the homeless wheelchair guy, or drinking a 40 out of a brown paper bag.

Yesterday, I saw her at Starbucks, ordering a Frappuccino. It was half-off, part of the Happy Hour special they were running, but still.

Across our apartment, a woman parks her van loaded with cans and bottles she’s collected inside an outdoor garage. Like others, she makes her living hunting recyclables. I never gave it any thought until I overheard her conversation with another professional recycler.  “People look down at me,” he said, “but shit, I ain’t working for no man. I make my own money, and I make my own hours.”

He’s not a recyclables hunter; he’s an entrepreneur.

And what one might refer to it as panhandling, others call hustling.

In upstate New York, you throw an empty bottle on the ground, it’s littering. In Los Angeles, you know it’s going to get picked up: so you call it charity.

In many American cities, employing someone at no pay to keep the coffee machine going and fetching printouts is called slave labor. Here it’s an internship.

If that’s not spin, then I don’t know what is. It permeates from every crevice of our lives, a byproduct of being concerned with how others perceive you. Spin is everywhere and it’s still spreading, bleeding over Ethernet cables and wireless routers, diffusing from our real lives to our online lives and back again. There’s merit in developing the ability to spin, especially when it’s your Facebook or blog account that notifies others of your engagement, your job promotion, or what you ate for lunch.  It’s more fun (and easier on the ego) to spin a post about triumphing over adversity, versus admitting this recent slump of failures has got you frustrated and rapidly losing faith. And why admit you got your heartbroken when a simple “In a relationship with…” toggle box explains it all, and the only thing left to do is untag your former significant other out of your life?

Spin grants us a glossy veneer to cover blemishes. With a click, any defeat can be turned to victory, any failure, a success.  “Be all you can be,” has given way to “be all you’re perceived to be.” This power comes with the very real possibility of losing sight of who we actually are and what we actually feel. Until one day we find ourselves out on the street, babbling schizophrenics all, torn somewhere between our real lives and digital selves.

Related posts:

1. Wait

He had this “I-can’t-believe-my-lot-in-life-is-driving-a-bus” expression on his face. The sentiment seeped into his posture, and into his surly one-word responses to my instructions. He maintained that presence the entire day, up till the moment I signed his parents, indicating services rendered, and that he completed his duties.

After I shook his hand, he paused, then said, “Handshakes and thank you’s are nice, but that’s not why I do this job.”
I smiled and blinked, in that confused way we do when we don’t understand someone and hope they’ll go away if we stay cheerful and silent. He placed the form I just signed back in front of me, and pointed out the highlighted section about “gratuities not being included in the fee.” And he repeated himself:

“Handshakes and thanks you’s are nice, but that’s not why I do this job.”

Ah. He was, very not so subtly, asking for a tip.

I looked to my boss, Charlie. He had the very same smile plastered to his face. “I need you to tell me exactly what you need.” He blinked repeatedly.

Allan gestured to the paper. “Would you go to a restaurant, eat, and just pay the bill? Is that how you treat your waiters?”

Charlie explained to him, as nicely as he could muster, that we didn’t tip the drivers, and this was something he was going to have to work out with his company. Allan snatched his papers and stalked off, calling in heavenly reinforcement with a “God bless,” reminding us not tipping bus drivers wasn’t the Christian thing to do, before he disappeared out the door. I’ve never seen him since.

Despite knowing Allan was a troubled man working on his own issues, the whole experience left me feeling dirty. Well, not dirty exactly, but worse — cheap. I lived and worked in this community for a few months and had completely removed myself from the service industry for the first time in more than a decade. I surrounded myself with a constant stream of people whom I could tell, based on how they conducted themselves, saw these men and women in the service industry as beneath them. Did that influence or contact high or whatever you want to call it put me out of touch with my own humility?

Humility — how you view your importance to this world — is the quality I value above all virtues and attributes. It’s difficult to teach, and more difficult to fake, as it shapes your every interaction with others. At the same time it’s a quality closely tied to one’s resiliency; it toughens you up to do the hard work when your other resources: money, time, intelligence are scarce. And precisely because I value my humility so greatly, it strikes a nerve when Allan’s response challenges it.

Maybe Allan’s correct, and it’s proper etiquette to tip these drivers; just because we set the precedent of not doing it doesn’t mean we were right in the past. Navigating the rules and ethics of tipping is a treacherous path, though — put out a tip jar in front where something gets sold and money changes hands and we ask, “Oh, am I supposed to tip?”

Everyone knows they should tip their servers, though percentage points are often points of contention. Some tip bartenders extra generously, and others tip them the same way they tip strippers: a dollar per round, more depending on the square inch of cleavage shown. What about the baristas at our coffee shops? The furniture movers? Cab drivers and delivery boys? Sushi chefs? Camp counselors? Bell  hops and door men? Who do we tip and how much?

It sounds like an over analysis, but I don’t see it that way, because I am, and everything I achieve is, a byproduct of this system. In eleven years, I’ve made my living on both the overwhelming generosity and bitter stinginess of others. Every person whose food I served or dish I cleared, has microscopically yet very definitely had a hand in shaping who I am, and I am blessed. I am grateful. Not because of some glamorous lifestyle, or because I have so many great things, or because of any significant achievement: I am blessed to be at a station in life where I can make those things happen for me, if I work for it. Because of those people who tipped, I’m in position to earn it.

That’s the idea behind tipping, isn’t it? That no one’s entitled to it, no matter your life’s station or  your job title. No one’s entitled to the extra, even if you work in a profession where “a minimum 18 percent gratuity is charged for parties of 6 or more” or if it’s the kind of place where you put out a tip jar. We are not entitled to the tip. The same way we’re not entitled to the promotion because we’ve been with the company for x number of years, or the paying gig because we interned for three months and got really good at fetching coffee. We’re not entitled to any of it.

Everything we want, we must earn.

No related posts.

His beard resembled a furry cat, a tawny feline that perched onto his chin years ago and never left. Instead, the pussiness seeped into his pores and oozed throughout his persona: the entitlement in his strut, the condescension in his tone – he was a self-satisfied pussy alright, content with a belly rub, maybe a broken-winged butterfly to bat around. Behind every. last. word. was an inner sigh of contentment. An, “Ahhh… it’s me, bitches!” right as a Swizz Beatz beat dropped and looped endlessly in his head.

He was the kind of person you’d meet at wine ‘n cheese parties. He’d listen politely to whatever you said, nodding too often, after every. last. word. because that’s what he learned in his interpersonal communications class. Except the glazed look in his eyes and the superior smile itching to break out over his face gave the game up, and finally you’d pop the unavoidable question: so what do you do?

And he’d one-up your every utterance with his trump card, his bitch of spades:

“Me?” dripped with false modesty and fake surprise. As if he’s never heard the question before. “I’m a best-selling author.”

Then you nod and say something to the effect of “how fabulous,” though you may never have used the word “fabulous” in your life, before sipping the box wine and nibbling on some stinky Cabrales. You’d re-read the words on his shirt.

“I never would have guessed,” you’d say.

Promote, market, sell yourself. You gots to do it if you’re going to make it, yeah? Chalk one up to naivety, but there’s got to be some finesse to it, a balance between creating buzz and hawking yourself on the street corner with the name “Kandy Kane” screened onto your booty shorts. The line’s a blur at the best of times, and a beer-goggled squiggle at the worst, when wearing a shirt with your resume embroidered on it is an acceptable practice in branding. Seems the line will continue getting fuzzier and fuzzier, too, as this generation emerges into the market, a generation brought up believing they are all unique snowflakes, and encouraged to tout the specificity of their successes and talents with alarming ease.

The problem with this is you’re only as good as the hype until you begin to believe it. At that point, it’s all downhill, because the second you start believing you “made it,” the drive that got you there begins to diminish. Humility and humbleness won’t blow you up like a youtube video gone viral, but they’ll continue pushing your talents long after any glim and glamour has worn off. And no matter how loud the marketing gimmick, it can’t match the volume of the art you make or the content you create. If these don’t say enough about you, nothing will.

No related posts.

Seated around him, three individuals who arrived a month previous. All whom sang the song and danced the dance required to get established in this town.  He had every opportunity to pop questions, to mine for nuggets that’d make his transition easier. Finding even one morsel would make the effort worthwhile. Competition’s fierce, and that one byte of data might separate him from permanent resident status or a return ticket in three months with nothing but a story.

And he squandered the op. Instead, he talked. He shared his glorious triumphs, scheduling appointments from a league away, blowing in with the wind and blowing the hair back on his interviewers for his unpaid internship. He glowered about the bigger fish to come.

If you’ve heard “Los Angeles is a lonely city,” that’s why. Many people talk. Few listen.

The interaction, where one person opens their mouth, sound comes out, then the other person gets their chance, often isn’t dialogue around here. They’re two separate conversations, tangentially related. No interplay; just moments of waiting for the person to breathe or pass out, so the other person knows it’s their turn.

Does the entertainment business attract people like this? Or does it bring out this quality in them? Everyone’s looking to make it, on their own dime, sweat, tears – smart, brave souls, most – and that pursuit engages most of their energies. Their hustle consumes every morsel of attention. Any conversation not about them or their feats or their struggle is of no interest.  Their attention wanes in the time a youtube video buffers. Eyes glaze in the 20 seconds post posing an obligatory question.

In the trenches of this environment, a battle rages. It’s a war of soul, an internal conflict when you wake up every morning. The battle is reminding yourself to be sympathetic and kind. To be human. To remember when it’s all over, all anyone has is what they gave back to the world.

Most days, it’s a losing battle. Platitudes and sage words don’t advance careers. They don’t pay rent.  They don’t take away the loneliness.

How long can you look out for others who aren’t looking out for you?

How do you work hard and honest when most would take any edge you give them?

Offer up your soul and they’ll dump on it. Eventually, you get tired of cleaning shit up.

Seen one way, it’s a travesty to acknowledge you’ll walk away from this town jaded.

Seen another way, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to stand out by being the person who listens, the person who looks out for others as much as he looks out for himself.

First thought that comes to mind is “it can’t be done.” This is a business built on relationships, but it’s also built on smoke and mirrors, on nepotism, and big deals brokered and broken in old boy’s clubs. And trying to rise against that with, what – kindness? heart? – is an act of madness.

Except this is a town where game changers also emerge from the mist. Not in the same abundance as the people who don’t listen, but they’re present. People who were told “you can’t do that,” or “nobody does that,” and do it anyway, because they believed in something more than their own personal advancement. Because they saw an opportunity the rest of the cogs were too busy churning to notice.

Of course, it’s hard to be one of these people. A game changer.

Why else would so few do it?

Related posts:

1. Advice

Why?

“None of the assistants at the agency want to be actors or writers,” Teddy said. “They wouldn’t have time to do both. It’s just not done.”

He forgot. That every day in Los Angeles was another day someone back home said wouldn’t be done. He forgot how many friends wished us good luck (zippo,) how many thought this was a pipe dream we’d never execute (∞.)

Leaving home, leaving behind the foundation of a career, family and friends to live in a city with no home, no job, and no contacts, that’s “not done,” either. But we did it.  What we’re doing here – trying to make it in Hollywood – is something most people consider can’t be done. It’s something, for the great majority of people, won’t ever happen.

Yet those people still arrive in droves every year.

Us included. Here we are.

He lost sight of this.

Intern for any company or agency. You see the number of scripts in this game. You realize why it’s so difficult for any good script – any great script – to get noticed. As Eric says, “All the bad scripts are clogging up the system.” The WGA registers tens of thousands of scripts a year – and around 500 films are released a year in the states.

It’s completely improbable for anyone to write one of those 500 movies. That doesn’t stop them from getting up every morning and chugging out word counts, editing, and studying scripts. Relative to this long shot (they’re all long shots) juggling an assistant position and writing doesn’t seem too difficult.

Why can’t it be done? Why can’t you be an assistant and make it as a writer? Not enough time? Means you wouldn’t have enough time. You wouldn’t make the necessary sacrifices.

If it costs a studio $50 million to produce a picture, they’d say it’s impossible to do it for any less. Yet someone like Avi Lerner comes around and makes the same film for $20 film.

Saying something is impossible means they themselves can’t do it. Can and can’t are relative terms.

Teddy said isn’t how it’s done — making it as a creative artist by first being an assistant. That it doesn’t fit the model – what model? There is no model, no guaranteed path, that’s what makes this particular hustle, making it in Hollywood, so hard and so beautiful and so demanding. There are no guarantees, no right or wrong ways.

There are only the people doing it. And the people telling them why they can’t.

No related posts.

He took a drag. Stared out across Culver City rooftops. “Wish someone told me that, when I was in New York. So I kept acting, instead of wasting two years bartending.”

The choices? A modern, fine-dining Japanese restaurant. Or a local, burn-n’-turn Thai spot.

If I’m serving, I want to learn – and I knew since square one there was serious educating to get done at the Japanese restaurant. The sommelier introduced two wines every pre-shift, dishing out bubbles and aroma wheels and a lexicon concerning tannins and notes and complexities of such complexity my notes consisted of a mish-mash of nada. Our bartender didn’t consider himself a sake expert, but that didn’t stop him from selling a $160, 300 ml bottle of sake to a Hollywood financier trying to impress his date. “It’s not what you know, it’s how you sell it,” he said, and proceeded to break it down.

Then there were the countless Japanese dishes, beyond Benihana-hibachi, onion-ring-volcano gambits and a sushi selection found in most Ralph supermarkets, next to the frozen Tilapia filets and Long John Silver fish sticks. Management wanted the servers to educate themselves. Any question – they tried to answer; if they couldn’t, they directed you to a better resource. Not one condescending eye cast for a silly question. If you wanted an education on food and drink, this was the spot.

It was an experience replicated to exactly the zero degree at the Thai restaurant, where the only thing management frowned upon more than idleness were questions. Not that there wasn’t plenty to learn – on the contrary, it was a cuisine of which I knew zippo, with Thai-lime-chili sauces and fresh cilantro and cucumber slice garnishes. After years of working in kitchens staffed by Chinese, I was suddenly surrounded by the by the buzz of Thai and Spanish. Even the menu selection – Thai dishes complimented with fried rices, Chow Mein noodles, Korea BBQ, and a sushi bar – was reminiscent of a menu I discussed about replicating in the past, but never seen well executed.

There was plenty to learn, except it was done on your own, with an observant eye and attention to detail. Ask too many questions, and you were regarded with suspicion rather than delight; who learned well under those conditions?

Teddy nailed it though – I didn’t come to learn about the restaurant business. I came to write, to work in the entertainment business; which job catered to that End Game? I left an hour early to get to the Japanese restaurant, followed by a ten minute skateboard ride just to get through the doors. If I worked a double, I’d have nothing to do other than aimlessly wander the 3^rd Street Promenade with weekend European tourists and upper-middle class America during my break.

I commuted to the Thai spot in four minutes – by skateboard; home in the same amount of time it took most people to dig out their car keys. There was no “studying” either, no reviewing the wines and dishes I learned that day. I’d make a better income at the Japanese restaurant – cover more of my overhead, sustain my spot in this game – but that wasn’t why I was here, either. I didn’t move to Los Angeles to cover overhead, to play it safe and eke out a living, until I went broke half-heartedly chasing a dream. I came to write, to carve my niche out of the entertainment sphere, and the Thai restaurant gave me a stronger foothold to do just that.

I called my father for his input, after my talk with Teddy. I told my father what he said.

“That’s right,” he agreed. “That’s the only way you should look at this situation. Juggle both jobs at first, to make sure you like this new restaurant. As soon as you know you want to stay, drop the old job.”

I told him I knew that was the play, but I felt… guilt. There was loyalty to the Japanese restaurant, because they hired me first, and had been good to me. I felt I owed it to the management to stick with them, instead of dropping them like a bad habit the instant something better came–

My father cut me off right there. “That’s the last thing that should cross your mind,” he scolded. “This is the restaurant business. People leave – it’s the highest turnover rate of any industry. Don’t  worry about the restaurant or your managers; they don’t care about you. Right now, you’re alone in Los Angeles. No one’s going to help you if something goes wrong, so the only person you should be thinking about is yourself.”

Of course, he was right. He and Teddy were both right – which is why I left.

But I struggle with the idea, to only think of myself. The mentality infects this city – after only a month, already I see and feel its effects. It’d be so simple to buy into it, to bury the moral compass, but I can’t, not without a fight. There are consequences of thinking only about oneself, or thinking solely about money, or about what the benefits one reaps for xyz action, and they are ugly. It taints everything and everyone it comes in contact with, a reverse-Midas’ touch.

On the other hand, I’ve seen what happens when you stop caring solely for yourself, or your bottom line. When you take two seconds to stop kissing ass or climbing the corporate ladder. When you care more about doing the right thing, or getting it done right, instead of recognition or credit… and it’s a whole other world.

It’s also much harder. As is any endeavor that’s worth the effort.

Related posts:

1. How Much to Save Before Moving to Los Angeles
2. One Month In – Part Two
3. Wait

“So what’s your plan for this going out to Los Angeles-thing?” That’s what my father called it. The “going out to Los Angeles-thing.” He thought it more a pipe dream, one of my big-talk plans where I laced a fat juicy finger around the trigger but never succeeded in popping off a shot. Can’t blame him for it – it’s happened before. Not so often to call it a habit, exactly, but enough to half-anticipate it. Or to dub it a “-thing,” hyphen required.

Except everyday, the inevitability of this particular –thing drew ever closer. Clothes were getting sorted, then either rolled into tight little tubes and nestled into duffle bags, or slipped into large blue bins and stored away for a garage sale in that not-too-distant future. Rand McNally found a regular time spot into my schedule, and like a bastard child, I spent more time with him on our first day together than I ever spent in the past.

What really triggered the question, though, were the questions others asked him about my departure, questions to which he didn’t have answers for. Questions he wasn’t prepared for because he still thought it was just a –thing.

And he was very slowly realizing it was a little more than that.

There’s no real plan, I admitted. Drive out there, find an apartment, and get a job waiting tables to hold me over while I write. That’s it.

“How long you think you’ll be able to do that for?”

Until the money runs out.

“When do you think that’ll be?”

I shrugged. Maybe a year or so. I’m not sure.

He hesitated, teetering between not pissing on what he still considered his son’s pipe dream, and pistol-whipping him across the face with a dose of reality, good and strong, so good you could see the onomatopoeia flash across his eyes, like the old school Batman live-action show.

“You’re taking a big risk here, Ming. You know, I have 100 percent confidence that you can do anything you set yourself to do. And I know you have to take risks to get where you want to be in life, but make those calculated risks.” He shook his head. “This just seems like a big, unnecessary risk.”

Most fathers, somewhere along the Parenthood Timeline, acquire a Speech that renders any of their sons’ brilliant notions appear to be the Stupidest Idea Ever Conceived. These speeches may have different names, (“These Are the Reasons Why You’re an Idiot”-speech, or “Did I Really Raise You to be This Dumb?”-speech) but are all generally made up of the same texture – sticky, with shades of shame.

“You’re moving out for the first time, and you’re going someplace far away from your family and friends, a place where you have no support if something happens to you. You don’t have a job, the job market is bad and the economy is worse. And you want to go into a field you didn’t study and have zero experience in.

“If this is what you want to do, I fully support it. But why not wait? Take time getting established in your field here first, where you have support; then, when you have something set up for yourself, make the move out to Los Angeles.”

I knew waiting was important. There were important things to wait for – not a lot, but a few – and I spent the last year waiting for those pieces to fall in place. “Getting established” never made the list.

Wait for the money – not some arbitrary number in the bank, but go crunch the numbers, and save enough to last you a few months. Clear your consumer credit if you can, or get it down to manageable payments. Wait until you manage your finances, and not the other way around. If your financial house isn’t in order, and you got some consumer credit hanging over your head, it will eventually bury you.

Wait till you find someone – a friend, a colleague – who wants to do the same thing, who’s interested in the same line of work. One friend who’d make a good roommate goes a long way – cuts costs in half, another set of feet and eyes when it’s time to find work, and company to explore and commiserate with. Find someone who compliments you, who balances out your strengths and weaknesses while you take on this endeavor; it’ll go a long way.

Most importantly, wait until you know. Wait until you know you must do this, that there’s no other choice. The advice of countless other artists, from painters to writers to actors to everything in between, I’ll repeat here: if there’s anything else you’ve given thought to doing, if there’s anything else you think you might be even pretty good at, and can make a living doing, go do that instead. Don’t come after this unless you know it’s the only thing you want and you’re willing to give up everything to go get it. Unless you know that it’s what you were meant to do.

Then, there are plenty of things not worth waiting for: don’t wait for that arbitrary number, figures you heard quoted that offer no reasoning behind them. Figure out what your number is, and stick to that. Not, “Oh, save $10,000, or $15,000, and then you’ll be ready.” Money in the bank is relative – what one person can accomplish with $10,000 the guy to his right could do with $10, and the guy to his left would never be able to accomplish at all.

Don’t wait to secure an apartment, or a job. How will you manage the task from the other side of the country? At 3,000 miles, how much, in time alone, will you have to invest just to find prospects? It’s not like walking down the street, and taking the Help Wanted sign off the door, or passing by the For Rent posting in the middle of a drive. Besides that, who’s going to take you seriously? If you were serious, you’d be out here, on foot, meeting face to face, and not exchanging e-mails about coming out to Los Angeles when your apartment or job is ready. If you were in their shoes, would you rent the space to you? Would you hire you?

Waiting until you’re established in a place where you don’t necessarily want to be, or where whatever you’re pursuing doesn’t thrive, or isn’t the epicenter, isn’t worth it. That approach just means you’re too scared to do it for real. Make the tradeoff, play the gambit: give up security for location and time. Security isn’t worth it; it costs too much. Settling for the security of home and you’re opening the door to let obstacles stand in your way. All those bad work habits, the complacency of the comfortable, stuck and uninspired by the familiar.

By not waiting, and putting yourself in the environment where your art thrives, you accelerate the process of establishing yourself exponentially. You eliminate distractions. Every day, you’re reminded what you came out here to do, why you’re here: you wake up in a new town, far from friends or family, with limited financial means, and all the comforts that brings. Every minute you don’t pursue your passion, don’t produce art, is a wasted one.

Even in the midst of our conversation, I can’t fault my father for his advice, and his line of thinking. There aren’t many people I imagine would listen to that “plan,” and not respond with the same “That’s-the-stupidest-thing-I’ve-ever-heard” speech.

But I think sometimes, the right ratios of “stupid,” “crazy,” and “dumb” can do serious good.

Related posts:

1. No One’s Listening
2. Breaking into the Entertainment Business
3. Get Used To Waiting