Moving Sucks

Moving sucks, from start to finish.

You pack, you heave, you hem, you haw, you haul, you unpack, you sleep, you live, you despair, you pack, etc.

I'm not particularly happy with where I live now. I wasn't when I moved in. I'm currently in that apartment, in the room I never go, the living room, and find the irony embarrassing at this point. I did a bad job of living here.

My first year in LA could be summed up that way. Not that I haven't seen so much of what this city encompasses. I have a rough idea of how to get around Silverlake and Los Feliz. I have climbed the hills, driven Mulholland at Sunset, cursed the 10 and 101 and the 405, cursed the 5, found some beauty in the Valley. I have California plates and a California driver's license. I've gone to a club. Gone to the beach. Driven the PCH. Corrected foreigners on the correct pronunciation of "Wilshire."

Not home yet.

I don't have high hopes for this next apartment either. After a certain point, they all start looking alike. White walls, whitish carpets, oh look another toilet. Great. I always think I don't need very much, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm as high-mai as any other girl, and I just like to pretend I'm not until I realize I'm miserable.

Moving sucks. The only thing is, I can't stay here. I really, really can't stay here.

BTW JWP

By the way, did I mention Joanna Wilson Photography posted my headshot photos on their blog?

Best photographers on two coasts...

Libraries are for Lovers

I rotate between several writing spots in my neighborhood. The community Starbucks, of course, whose many downsides include constant seating limitations and a complicated Wi-Fi process that makes me feel angry. Then there's the hip & funky local coffee shop (owned by the same family who runs the hip & funky local bar next door) which used to have free Wi-Fi until a day ago ($5 minimum now, and of course, the drinks are just sliiiightly underpriced and the food is waaaay overpriced), and often is either too hot or too cold for this fussy chica. And then there's the library. Which is where I am today.

The library is undervalued, I think, except by the blossoming seas of underemployed. I realized the other night, as I lay in bed (because apparently when I lay in bed I think about public book lenders), the problem with the influx of job-seekers is that the library becomes...not a library. The books are forgotten. There aren't even that many of them. There's a good DVD section. Some very useful free computer stations. A printer. Lots of little round tables with midget chairs for children. Three open rooms with once-plush chairs. And an entire center section for all those desperately searching for jobs to spread out their resumes and laptop wiring as they click "Submit," "Submit," "Submit." Don't get me wrong, I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I have spent disgusting amounts of time in these miniature chairs. (NOTE: There is not one child in any of the children chairs today. Eleven adults, though...) But, I love a good library for what it represents: available literature to all who crave words. Ready worlds that don't exist but in your hands and your eyes.

Maybe libraries are on the way out. Who reads books anymore? Who read newspapers? Who needs a building when you can spend a couple hundred on a Kindle and take your library with you? No, I refuse to believe it. Nothing is free in this world. Not even, really, libraries, since they are paid for by taxes and by the town. But this is a safe place, in a world of meanies and jerks. This is a place where you are allowed to escape, and it's meant to be quiet, and cell phones are not allowed. (Can you hear my typing, lady in pink shirt and blue shorts?! CELL PHONES ARE NOT ALLOWED. Gah!) It's a vortex in here, like I don't even really exist. Except for the fact that I am here, typing on my laptop, connected to the internet, still hooked into the beeping, charging world outside. Oh poo.

I go to the library to write because it is free. I don't have to buy a coffee I don't want. The bathrooms are clean. The floor is clean. It is (mostly) quiet. I can pick up a DVD for a couple days while I am here. I am reminded that I am constantly looking for a job, but it's okay, because so is everyone else. I am reminded that I love words. I put them together into strings as I sit here surrounded by the strings of others who did the exact same thing I did with many of the same words and the exact same letters, and one day found themselves employed.

Gene Kelly was Right All Along

Every once in a while in an actor's life, (say, every 6 months or so) you develop a weird stuffed-up feeling. It's uncomfortable. It sneaks up on you. It makes you want to use a blow-up butt pillow. The problem, my friends, is creative constipation.

Creative Constipation occurs in the animal world because actors are artists, and to be actors we have to do all kinds of crap just to attempt to get work, things that have nothing at all to do with the actual physical experience of acting. Just like the old pros predicted, once you get out of school...you actually don't get to act THAT much. Now, because actors are artists, there rises a level of non-acting bile in the body, creeping up over time as you go through days and weeks and months of juggling rent jobs and paperwork and everyday crap without the balancing effect of a creative outlet. Oh sure, you can exercise all day long, and go see movies, and watch great tv shows on HBO, and say things like, "I just LOVE Dostoeyevsky," but there's nothing quite like that release of built-up real world sludge, like the expenditure of that glorious creative soup welling up behind your eyeballs.

In the winter of 2008, I found myself writhing with creative blockage, so I started blogging. Lo and behold, I was released, more joyful, eager to awake and write in the mornings. Then, I began to blog more. People were reading it! Soon, I began to get actual jobs blogging, ("People want to pay ME to WRITE?! My life is gloooorious!") and then more jobs, and then bad jobs, and then non-paying awful jobs, and then I became bitter and jealous as I started to receive rejections, and then I stopped. I stopped because the writing had become like the acting: bad work to find good work. Unjoyful. Bad. I found myself getting pissed off that everybody had a blog, and they were so prolific, and funny, and orginal, their writing was just as good, if not much, much better than my own. ("Does that mean I'm not...*sniff*...special?") The appropriate response seemed to be: STOP WRITING.

That's never the answer, by the way. Just stopping. It's never right. Unless we're talking about meth, and, after watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU last night, I have to say...you should really stop taking meth if you're on it. That shit is crazy.

But here I am, again, feeling my creative juices have solidified into that nasty form hot fat takes when it cools into jello-lard. I wrote because it made me happy, and I wrote a lot because it worked the same muscles I used on-camera, or onstage. (It's all tied to the same organs, you see?) And I never did it for anyone but me until I started thinking, as I do all day every day, "Maybe I can make money off this skill!"

I'm still not sure what this blog is about. My career? My goals? My wholly original and ceaselessly interesting thoughts on everything me-related in this world? Yeesh. I sort of want to scrap the whole darn thing and start over...but then, it would only be the same as before, and it would only be paving a giant exit-less rotary for myself. And what this little chickie needs more than anything is a release, and not a loop.

In any case, I'll be back tomorrow...

Why The Heck Am I Dairy Free?

Well, Lauren, that's a good question. And before I start, let me be totally truthful: I was not dairy free on Days 4 & 5 in July. It was a holiday, and I was with the Lopes Family and they made us a carrot cake for our birthdays and I couldn't say no! However! I'm back on the path and feeling great!

It all started with a random comment from Laura Hughes, lovely vegan extraordinaire. She mentioned that she was so happy being dairy free and she really felt a difference, and it was one thing she didn't miss in her no-meat, no-dairy, no-fish diet. Huh. Really? But, doesn't milk do a body good?

Well, yes, when you're a baby. You're supposed to have milk! It's fortifying, full of fat, and delightful! Yet, who ever thought to drink it from another species?! WEIRD. And when you tumble the idea of milk around more, it gets weeeeirder. You're basically sloshing the mucus of another animal down your throat. Eeeew...And not to be TMI, but ever since I damaged my vocal cords in high school, I've had enough problems with my own coating of my throat, and have gone through periods of going dairy free anyway to try to maximize vocal clarity. (IE My voice sounds like poo sometimes because of humidity, seasons, or, yes, dairy intake. What kind of actor am I? Aiiee!)

Beyond the gross factor, I've been reading up on the website Go Dairy Free (www.godairyfree.org) and it seems that the ol' cheese & milk intake does indeed screw some people up. GDF says, "Milk protein allergies and lactose intolerance have been linked to a wide array of physical symptoms. For some, it is as simple as lethargy or weight gain, for others crippling migraines and "autoimmune" type symptoms are a lifestyle complication." Everyone in my family is officially lactose intolerant but me. Yet! I do however get funky 2 day headaches and stomaches sometimes at night. Could it be the dairy? Beats the crap out of me! I may as well try cutting it out for a little while.

Besides, I'm only trying it for a month. And it's been surprisingly easy so far! Sure, I can't eat carrot cake with cream cheese frosting whenever I want, but that's probably not a terrible thing. I figure I only need to do it til July 31st, and then the cow-world is my oyster! Or something...

But, if I like it I can always remain
yours truly,
Dairy Free

DAY ONE OF DAIRY FREE JULY

It went pretty well. I ate a yogurt at breakfast.

My head hurts so much today. Gah! It'll stay around all day long, and possibly into tomorrow. I hate this.

In other news...Episode 2 is up. www.getJLoSHed.com. I'm happy. Despite the headache. And no more yogurts.

I Heart the Alphabet

I've been spending a lot of quality time in rooms with writers lately. I don't know any of them, it's not that sort of room. In fact, I'm with them right now. Tee hee. None of them know I'm typing away about their focused, frozen faces! Ha ha! You all look so funny! Making your serious writer pouts..."I'm writing the next Graham Greene," "I'm like Dave Eggers, sort of!" "I'm a blogger! I'm mocking everybody else!" Haha. Silly.

We're all plugged in, and wearing headphones so we can pretend like none of us actually exist together in this big, fast city. We search out this perfect room, full of other people who wheeze big sighs and drink too much overpriced coffee and store odd wi-fi passwords like baseball cards and won't judge our frizzed, unwashed hair and chunky glasses. Does it make me a hipster, just being here? I do have holes in my jeans. And my bra strap is showing. I don't have an iphone. Crap. No, I'm just regular poor.

This is my warmup, by the way. I think that makes me more writerly. I mean, there had to be a reason they always made us do this in high school, right? Keep a notebook of the five minute warmup exercises, one sentence topics. No one reads them but you.

The reason I post it online, for any old weirdo to read (not that I'm calling you weird, but you could be. I don't really care. I didn't wash my hair.) rather than storing them faithfully in a blue notebook to lodge in a drawer in my closet, is because I'm lazy. It's totally true. My hand will hurt. I'll not care. I'll not use periods. I'll start skipping the bothersome letters, like "s" and "g". At least my imaginary internet audience might have standards. You make me write better. (And if I wasn't such a serious, and diligent author, I'd insert a smiley face right there, just to prove to you that I love writing this shit for you.) (But I won't. Because I'm serious about this shit.)

Oh, fuck it.

: )