Devil or Angel
May 16th, 2005
I just returned from four days in Los Angeles with my three best girlfriends. It was one of the best times of my entire life, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. I can’t wait to talk about these women and our Sideways tour through the San Ynez valley, getting lost in Santa Barbara at 2 a.m. and laughing so hard that my face hurt and I feared it might freeze in the Permalaff position.
But we’ll do that later. When I left for vacation, I expected a break from reality. I didn’t expect to have a small career/identity crisis. My upbringing, combined with my Capricorn tendencies, blesses me with a propensity to believe that work is supposed to be mind-numbingly hard, and you certainly aren’t supposed to do what you love. So, I stumbled into a career that is all of the above. Soul-suckingly boring, borderline abusive, and incredibly difficult – not challenging, yet lucrative, and I happen to be very good at it.
While in LA, I spent time with a friend of a friend who is trying to be a screenwriter. This woman is, in many ways, the antithesis of who I want to be. She has very few real relationships and suffers from brutal insecurity that manifests itself in dangerously destructive ways. She’s maladjusted. Discontent. Perpetually searching for something to make her feel more whole.
And yet I envied her so much during our time together that it almost consumed me.
She’s doing what I didn’t have the balls to even attempt. She’s in the film school at UCLA and is about to graduate. She has a writing partner and is writing scripts and shopping them around. She has a job as a script screener for a film agent. She might fail, but she’s fucking trying.
I know this isn’t right. It’s not healthy and it’s so, so very wrong. And stupid. And a waste of time. AND NOT LIKE ME. But I sat there in her gorgeous velvet chair in her small, charming apartment in Beverly Hills and I wanted to run screaming out of my skin. For the first time in a long time, I really and truly felt like a failure. I felt like a failure for not trying. For valuing stability and the potential for a family over what I really think I might have wanted. For being gutless and a total wimp and having that overwhelming Capricorn desire to contribute to a 401K and climb climb climb to some pinnacle of ambition with a clear path instead of doing what I wanted to do. For being a fool in not realizing what I might want earlier in life.
My dear friend Micki wrote a brilliant post already that sums up how I feel about what I’ve done. I’ve sold my soul to the corporate devil, thinking that writing press releases and technical whitepapers is going to fill the void for what I should have done. I have fucking failed. Yes, yes, I know my life isn’t over, but I look at what my practical Capricorn self has set out for me and I don’t see moving to LA to become a screenwriter in the cards. And it’s all my fault, for even as I write this, I have the little muses of negativity whispering in my ear, “But you’d hate LA!” “But you want children!” “But you’d die living with the Plastic Movie People!”
And they’re right. It’s not about the screenwriting. To compound the negative muses, I don’t do well with dialogue. It’s the fact that I have signed myself up for perpetual failure by continuing to devote time – mind-boggling amounts of time – to a job that breaks my heart. And the rest of my time to nurturing other parts of my life – my relationships, my cat, resting and relaxing. And I fail a lot at those, too. I’m not perfect.
So what’s it all for? Is the path I’ve chosen the right one? Will I ever get my shit together and stop fucking around in corporate America? Or – perhaps even more terrifying – will having a child actually bring me fulfillment, or will I resent them? Will it ever be enough?
I don’t fucking know.
Entry Filed under: Nuttin'
7 Comments Add your own
1. Tania | May 16th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Can you imagine how hellish it would be to be a child on whom a mother had pinned all of her hopes for fulfillment in a mostly unsatisfactory life? That’s thousands of dollars of therapy, we’re talking.
Yeah, I’m going through the whole life crisis too, and this time I think I’m fed up for good. I have a scheme to pay off all my credit card debt, which is the last thing tying me to this cubicle lifestyle, and my husband is going to school to be a physics teacher in a high school instead of a soulless metadata analyst for a mega financial information company, and I am going to take a sabbatical next year and write a goddamn book.
I went out with a writer a while back who had been making his own career writing books on media and culture, and he’d just written a novel, which wasn’t great but still, it was a novel, and he told me, “Don’t work for anyone else. Once you work for yourself doing what you want to do, you’ll never go back.”
There are two things stopping me: the money and the fear. I’m taking care of the money. Once that’s done, I plan on kicking a big M.F.ing hole in the fear.
It’s scary as hell, right? But we can’t just hang out watching time fritter away, doing nothing with our lives that we’ll be proud of once we’re shuffling around in our walkers and elastic-waist pants in more tropical climes.
Anyway, I’m saying I know how you feel, and I feel that way too, and it sucks, and the way to fix it is to do something with our lives that we love and can feel proud of.
In my writing workshop, we talk about this thing we call the shitbird: it sits on your shoulder and craps on you all day. It says things like, “You suck,” and, “No one cares what you think,” and, “What makes you think you can do better than this?” I’m trying to learn to tell the shitbird to flush itself.
I want to hear your scheme when you come up with one, lady. You are way too funny and talented and interesting to do that corporate communications crap the rest of your life.
2. Kate | May 16th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Both you (Jonna) and Tania are so talented, articulate and funny. Both of you should go for it, I’m banking that someday I’ll be able to tell people I knew you both when.
I also work at a job that bores me but it pays the bills. Having a child does change the situation.
I can’t just say “I’ll try this and see how it works out” because there is someone else depending on me, and my choices effect him.
I’m glad for both of you that you are figuring this stuff out.
3. Yesrie | May 16th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
First, blogging about it is a very, very good thing. You articulate the angst so well for those of us who also suffer in our own particular hells :-I
Tania, THANK YOU for identifying the Shitbird. Mine is about 500 pounds now; it has knocked me down and is sitting on my chest. I love your blog–but I haven’t read it in a couple of weeks, because my Shitbird is brilliant GREEN and feeds on the witticisms and insights of others’ blogs
Jonna, take heart. The end to your crappy job is in sight, and I don’t think you need to know right this very minute exactly what will replace it (aside from freedom and sanity!). Write down your dreams, your daydreams, and coincidences–notice the small stuff. It speaks in code, but you’ll crack it
About rugrats–they’ll definitely bring you fulfillment
although no one can promise it will be total fulfillment. I’d worry about you if they brought no resentment whatever, though 
Hell, I still resent not being able to close my eyes on a beach for 7 or 8 years 
but with a decent sensa yuma, the resentment can be channeled into effing HILARIOUS stories later. You’ve got the stuff to do it, too. If and when the demitransparents show up, I will applaud their excellent taste in parents and support you in any way I can.
4. laurie | May 16th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
It’s obvious to me… you already are a writer, and a clearly honest and excellent one at that!
I’m so glad you posted on my little website and now I have found your site! I love your voice.
I don’t know… I think following your bliss can take all kinds of roads. You’re already doing it… thinking, writing it out, evaluating. This shit is hard. But good. Or that’s what I tell myself
It’s hard. But good.
5. BarbaraFromCalifornia | May 17th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
I am so sorry I missed you in California, J!
Each stage of our lives presents us with questions about what may or may not be, whether we are making the right choices and decisions. As I become older, I truly believe that staying in the present,and being grateful for what I have, no matter how small, is the way to successful living and quiet thinking.
Many hugs to you, dear!
6. Atreau | May 18th, 2005 at 1:36 am
I know it J! You couldn’t have said it any better because I know and feel it all! Quarterlife crisis and I don’t know what’s ahead of me but something has got to be better than this!
We’ve got time though, think about those who live their lives filled with regret. Look up to those who follow their heart because they know the path!
Hugs Always!
7. WinterWheat | May 18th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
Gaaaak! Honey, please, go easy on yourself! (Kris here.) You are who you are. It’s so easy to romanticize the life choices of other (more risk-loving) people, but you know what would have happened if you’d taken that route? You’d have spent the entire time quaking in your boots about potential losses and wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a single minute.
According to my brothers, at the age of 11 I announced, “You cannot rely on anyone else to take care of you. You have to take care of yourself.” Sad, I know, but the urgent need to have my ducks in a row was established in childhood and it’s become part of the fabric of who I am. It’s neither good nor bad, it just IS. Why do you think I decided to become a professor? TENURE. Life security. I can’t be fired. Well, unless I do something criminal (must remember not to do anything criminal). I needed the security. That doesn’t make me boring or pathetic or inadequate (well, to me anyway), it’s just who I am, like the color of my hair and the shape of my nose.
Your Capricorn tendencies have served you well, and should you choose to change your career and channel that awesome creativity into a new, noncorporate career, you’re going to have it made. Do you realize how many creatives don’t even know how to write a check? You’ve got good sense, the ability to delay gratification, and major talent. You’ve got it all. Now kick some ass in Florida.
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