?
It occurs to me that I should update the fragmented remains of the livejournal community. So here goes:
I'm sitting on the couch on my porch drinking coffee, which I just spilled all over my shirt but I'll probably wear it to work anyway and pretend it happened there. I live with four and a half roommates (the "half" is Garrett, a former NYU student and friend of Ben Malbin's who lives in our basement and brews us 70 bottles of beer a month in exchange for rent) and one black lab named Pascal. Sometimes I come home and find goats on the porch and have to herd them back to the neighbor's house (they're the same neighbors who drive around in a cupcake truck for no apparent reason). It's a little weird, and by that I mean it's COMPLETELY awesome.
I live on Alberta street, so Last Thursdays are extra fun and there's no shortage of interesting weirdos to meet at any given time. We have an abundance of bars, coffee shops, and cheap Mexican restaurants within 100 yards of us. It's starting to feel like fall, which means bundling up for hookah on the porch.
And that's the setting.
Working at Airplay is fun in its way and hateful in its way. There's always too much to do, or too little. My coworkers are obsessed with coffee and, with the exception of one, don't have much of a life outside of it. The musicians who play at night are marginally talented at best. That said, there's a certain charm to the whole thing and I'm bound and determined to bust my ass making lattes for minimum wage until those last shreds of Smith Entitlement wear away, because god knows I'm not the only overqualified barista in the city of Portland and everybody else knows how to suck it up. But real-person jobs are starting to call to me.
L.A. is starting to call to me too, in a terrifying way. After letting two amazing job opportunities go because I wasn't ready to give up on Portland, I'm deciding to try for two others. One would entail working as an assistant to this guy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0958446, and the other as an assistant to the director of "Prison Break," a show I can't honestly say I've ever seen. Both of these guys are friends with Danielle, who's being really generous and helpful with the whole job hunt thing.
I just don't know. I just don't know if I'm ready to leave. I also don't know if that's a valid excuse for not trying something new. L.A. is this whirlpool and I can't get away from it. Every, every road leads there. I just don't know if I can talk myself into going.
But if LA is a whirlpool, that makes Portland more or less stagnant. Still beautiful, still creative, the people are still wonderful, and there are still a million vibrant distractions from the fact that there are so many young artists here who are all vying for the same shitty jobs. But it's missing the drive and ambition. And I need to learn how to compensate for that, fast, or I'm going to be stuck making lattes for the next 15 years.
I have some thinking to do about a lot of stuff, and I'm broke, and I'm wading through a long-distance relationship, and life isn't perfect. But it's GOOD. It's free and I'm in my element. I don't feel at peace 100% of the time, but I never feel trapped. I can't explain what that means to me.
Hopefully these updates will become more regular.
I'm sitting on the couch on my porch drinking coffee, which I just spilled all over my shirt but I'll probably wear it to work anyway and pretend it happened there. I live with four and a half roommates (the "half" is Garrett, a former NYU student and friend of Ben Malbin's who lives in our basement and brews us 70 bottles of beer a month in exchange for rent) and one black lab named Pascal. Sometimes I come home and find goats on the porch and have to herd them back to the neighbor's house (they're the same neighbors who drive around in a cupcake truck for no apparent reason). It's a little weird, and by that I mean it's COMPLETELY awesome.
I live on Alberta street, so Last Thursdays are extra fun and there's no shortage of interesting weirdos to meet at any given time. We have an abundance of bars, coffee shops, and cheap Mexican restaurants within 100 yards of us. It's starting to feel like fall, which means bundling up for hookah on the porch.
And that's the setting.
Working at Airplay is fun in its way and hateful in its way. There's always too much to do, or too little. My coworkers are obsessed with coffee and, with the exception of one, don't have much of a life outside of it. The musicians who play at night are marginally talented at best. That said, there's a certain charm to the whole thing and I'm bound and determined to bust my ass making lattes for minimum wage until those last shreds of Smith Entitlement wear away, because god knows I'm not the only overqualified barista in the city of Portland and everybody else knows how to suck it up. But real-person jobs are starting to call to me.
L.A. is starting to call to me too, in a terrifying way. After letting two amazing job opportunities go because I wasn't ready to give up on Portland, I'm deciding to try for two others. One would entail working as an assistant to this guy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0958446, and the other as an assistant to the director of "Prison Break," a show I can't honestly say I've ever seen. Both of these guys are friends with Danielle, who's being really generous and helpful with the whole job hunt thing.
I just don't know. I just don't know if I'm ready to leave. I also don't know if that's a valid excuse for not trying something new. L.A. is this whirlpool and I can't get away from it. Every, every road leads there. I just don't know if I can talk myself into going.
But if LA is a whirlpool, that makes Portland more or less stagnant. Still beautiful, still creative, the people are still wonderful, and there are still a million vibrant distractions from the fact that there are so many young artists here who are all vying for the same shitty jobs. But it's missing the drive and ambition. And I need to learn how to compensate for that, fast, or I'm going to be stuck making lattes for the next 15 years.
I have some thinking to do about a lot of stuff, and I'm broke, and I'm wading through a long-distance relationship, and life isn't perfect. But it's GOOD. It's free and I'm in my element. I don't feel at peace 100% of the time, but I never feel trapped. I can't explain what that means to me.
Hopefully these updates will become more regular.