silicon implants around where my heart is

this one is on the longer side so buckle up. im serious. seatbelts save lives

Crazy that it’s 03/10/2023 in the title of the google doc that I use to draft this newsletter. I went to type 02/something/2023 as I began this document, and was surprised to realize we are in the third month of the year. I started this newsletter on 12/something/2022. Cheers to the passage of time, for being better at its job than I am at any of mine. 

I would also like to extend my appreciation to my readers for bearing with my dramatics two weeks ago. I haven’t gotten any less dramatic since, but I still appreciate the generosity. I don’t wish to beat a dead horse out of what I discussed, but just so we’re on the same page: I’m still very sad, and I also feel other things. I crave reassurance, have lots of questions, hopes, frustrations, I sigh a lot, cry sometimes, I journal, and attempt other mostly healthy coping mechanisms. I’ve experienced a good amount of joy, as well. I have spent a lot of time around my friends, doing things I love.

Fortunately and not, the week of the breakup was busy. The upcoming weekend was to be the one year anniversary of our monthly comedy show, Chicago 10s. It was going to be the first time that all four producers of our show would also host, and we came up with a super elaborate bit to do at the show. This required daily writing and preparation for the week leading up to it. However, the same weekend, I was going to be on set for a short film at the American Film Institute. The creative team on that film was insistent on ensemble work, so we had two rehearsals spanning two entire evenings that week. The same weekend as the show and the set, my best friend from home was going to be staying with me. I negotiated that he would be an extra on set. I requested conflicts to be on time for the show on Sunday, and to leave early on Monday, so that we could make our flight to San Francisco, where we would spend the next week visiting our other best friends from home. And, of course, I had a cold. 

Every day that week was a balancing act between grieving, working, writing, rehearsing, cleaning my apartment, watching required inspiration films, resting, taking medications, and attempting to feed myself and get eight hours of sleep. Make no mistake, I don’t believe in overextension anymore. On Thursday, before rehearsal, I sat in the Target parking garage scarfing down High Protein Snack Packs I bought, as the only meal I had time for that evening. I suddenly remembered why it was so easy to feel like you were constantly falling apart at theatre school, desperately trying to fit all life maintenance between your main curriculum, the double major you were doing for your parents, 4-6 hours of nightly rehearsal for whatever creative pursuits you were a part of, and coping with the plight of being 18-22 years old in general. I’m aware that’s just the story of any college student in this day and age, but the A-ha! moment was realizing that I do not prefer that to the life I have today. While the days are still imperfect, they are filled with much deeper breaths.

It’s no secret that living my life as an aspiring Someone in Los Angeles, I’ve had a lot of doubts and anxieties about the road that I chose. Some decisions that used to feel like investments, now feel like gambles. The payoff requires a lot of faith, and faith so easily wavers. I discussed this with my friend who was visiting, who we will call RJ. RJ is in a similar plight as a first year medical student. We related to the notion that the first 22 years of life were about dreaming. But now with our dreams in sight, they somehow feel farther than ever. Cheers again, to the early 20s. 

The weekend, although intense, felt like a dream being realized. The set I was on, filled with former theatre kids turned film nerds embraced RJ, and turned to him for advice on their medical maladies, as I do every day. RJ had insisted on sleeping on my couch, since I was sick, but for the three days on set, I felt that he was staying in my second home. 

There were plenty of other antics. One of our hosts ended up being sick for the comedy show, so RJ filled in, wearing a blonde wig. We rehearsed a new script while chugging coffees between our thousands of engagements for that weekend. Eventually, we drove to the show, and I watched my worlds collide as we performed to a roaring crowd and laughed backstage at the acts we heard through the curtain. It was magical to confirm that this life is really special, by seeing it through the eyes of a loved one. 

pic by greg feiner, of the chicago 10s + RJ

After the show, we celebrated. The night was dominated by more worlds colliding, to the tune of one round of small talk that I had with a friend of a friend of a friend, wherein we discovered that he was the last tenant of the apartment that I currently live in! Insane coincidence, and I had to inform him that his former landlord has since passed away. It was dope, no disrespect to Ruth intended.

Monday, after we wrapped on set, RJ and I got on the plane to San Francisco. As great as the weekend was, I was relieved to get to step into another life. I did wonder many times during the weekend if even this kind of nonstop work was ultimately too much play. I had a lot of curiosity about the world I was to be exposed to from my friends in SF. The charms of six-figure salaries in the Hip Tech Industry were not entirely foreign to me, and I was a bit scared of the holes this vacation could poke in my worldview. 

Landing in SFO was like being slapped in the face by a technocratic wonderland. The knowledge of what this city was, and to who, began to set in. Coffee robots and billboards that advertised software without including any logos inspired bewilderment. RJ described the relief of seeing billboards dedicated to LGBT advocacy, which sharply contrasted the public narratives he experiences living in Florida. The wide streets and clustered buildings gave me a sense of a mythic European city rendering against a block on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

Daily in SF, we worked our remote jobs as RJ festered, having a lot of expendable energy given that this was his Spring Break. The frustrations of the 9-5 became more acute as I handled them against pressure to socialize, which we mostly saved for the evenings once our friends were off the shuttles coming from their jobs in Cupertino. I talked to their roommates about what I was up to, and was even praised for my pursuits of filmmaking and performance. We walked through amazing parks, took public transportation, and I saw how many of the perks of Los Angeles that I had thought were exclusive to the city: great nature, sunsets, amazing food; actually seem to stretch all the way up the pacific coast. My mind churned through this data, seemingly pulling up errors as it processed competing information: all the different lives I could imagine for myself both affirming and negating each other at once.

For the first few, amazing days, I kept myself from indulging in any form of vulnerability, for fear of opening a floodgate that I had only been able to crack in small doses while faced with the intense schedule of the last week. But sitting in the car with my friends, on the way from Dolores Park to Alta Plaza, I held back tears while admitting to my friends that which I have rarely told a soul: That sometimes I fear I have already wasted my potential. I’ve taken the wrong path, lost my lead, fallen behind, and thus from grace. I didn’t always seek camaraderie amongst starving artists. In SF, around those I grew up with, I saw what looked to me like a different set of peaks, another mountain I could have climbed if I had started a long time ago. Maybe if I had, the top would look more visible than it does where I’m currently standing.

On the flight back, I got a birds eye view of this idealistic city. I was unsure about how it would feel to arrive back in LA, to the traffic and strip malls, to the feeling of aspirations just out of grasp. When I landed at LAX and made it to my car, which I had stashed in a rich neighborhood with no parking restrictions, I drove through the city and felt an immense sense of comfort. There was a rush, seeing billboards competing in the Oscars race, and I felt a sense of connection to them that I did not while reading copy about cloud-based password protection. No disrespect to cloud-based password protection.

That night, one of the Chicago 10s and I saw an amazing production from the member who had been sick last week, in a lovably shitty black-box theater. She had asked us to come due to ticket sales being low. The audience was almost entirely made up of people we knew from the East side alt-comedy scene out here. I ran into one of the actors from last weekend’s set, and felt an immense sense of joy at the newfound closeness I felt to them. There were no agents in the audience and only a thin profit margin for the show, but I felt a strong sense of kinship to the other people in the room who had all decided that silliness is a virtue worth orienting your life around. I remembered that I’m not alone in the values I chose. 

I still have an intense fascination with and respect for the paths my loved ones have chosen. I desire closeness to those who are in different worlds than I am. I know for a fact that a med student can thrive on a film set or a comedy show. And of course, there’s hardly an hour I can go without feeling my muscles tense, as they hold on to the life changing memories of reading plays and seeing theatre with a girl who studied engineering. The last few weeks, I was preoccupied with the notion that all these lives were separate and incompatible, but in reality, I don’t think the particulars of passion are that different after all. 

I see what another life could look like. I know that I’m still plagued by a desire to achieve. I would trade my LA parking permit for a MUNI card at some point in my life, for sure. But the A-ha moment was knowing that I chose this life for a reason. I’m here right now, stepping forward on my own path, sitting in black box theaters and performing on self tape backdrops in the pursuit of a life filled with my kind of magic. I experience a good amount of joy.