How Moving To Hollywood Can Make You Sound Stupid
Moving to Hollywood—Los Angeles, if you nasty/practical/not a character from an old-timey drama who still calls it ‘Hollywood’—sounds like bitching, really. When I moved here from New Jersey-New York (I worked in New York, I was not a New Yorker in the sense of the sigh-filled term of endearment and hatred that people will cut you for misusing), people bitched a lot about it. I bitched a lot about it. There was the shipping of my car across the country, the potential roommates I’d have to go on awkward non-dates with, and the bitchiest part of all: trying to meet new people and hearing those people shit talk all of the other people. I love Los Angeles, but I didn’t love trying to love Los Angeles. This is the taxing thing everyone has to do in a new city they’ve committed to, the thing we all have to do when relationships get tough: try to love them. The trying is trying. It makes you question the thing that you did: “was it the right choice? Did I fuck up something I can’t fix? What if it fails, or worse: what if it goes well and I hate it anyway?”
Below are all of the things I wrote after I moved. Some of it makes me cringe, some makes me smile. I put these in reverse chronological order, because it’s kind of interesting how I started writing when I got to Los Angeles proper. It’s more attention-thirsty in June than it was in April, right? I was definitely trying hard to be…something. Not sure that panned out the way that I thought it would—and that’s probably a good thing—but this is what I sounded like when I moved across the country.
JUN. 27 2014
I hope I’m not at a weird stage in my life where I want to make friends/connections/just talk to humans in general about life so badly that I actually alienate people by making them think I want something. Like, this comedian was doing a bit tonight about how L.A. is such a lonely city by nature that he’s been like, going to Ralph’s late at night and buying a cheese platter or family meal just to feel a kinship. And…I’ve done that in real life and not for a joke? Just because I’ve been by myself out here and what’s a girl to do but go to a grocery store at 10 P.M. and buy ten sodas because they’re on sale. Right? Right?!
No. I don’t really want that to be my ‘rigggggght.’
I feel like every time I’m talking to people here I feel good about it until the end, and then there’s a voice in my head like ‘I think you fucked that one up,’ and I run off or whatever and it’s not a thing yet because these aren’t people in my social circles exactly, but it is a thing in the way that I never want to feel introverted, or so lonely that I get cozy with it and decide to say “fuck people.” I don’t feel that way in the slightest, that people are bad and Hollywood is ~evil~ or New Jersey was boring and stupid. I like where I’m from and I like it here, and I like people, and I want to love it and be shouting off the fucking palm tree tops about it, but I’m not there yet.
Ohhhh Crissy. Take another class or something.
JUN. 26 2014
There is a water heater above my room that sounds like…the sound of someone taking a really loud shower had sex with the sound of fireworks and the sound of shitty a car engine was in there gene pool and they made a baby.
And then they sent that sound baby to live above my bed and torture me every day at 1AM.
Every day? Every night? Whatever.
This is no real reason to complain about my life right now….but this drives me crAaAaAaaaAaaaAazYyY and I am out of earplugs. What to do, what to do.
Probably look at Kim Kardashian’s instagram and rate more books on GoodReads. ooooh! How low brow/middle brow of me! I contain multitudes.
JUN. 8 2014
http://38.media.tumblr.com/ba9c02147d0d678677ada4d58861c723/tumblr_n6lt9pWBTM1si1r43o1_500.gif
The attitude of Los Angeles.
MAY. 12 2014
0o0o0o0ohhhhhh I have been so lazy about writing lately that it makes me want to scream. Really need to hook myself up with a desk situation. So far, the most expensive part about moving out and adulting has been the not so necessary necessities, like pots, pans, silverware, and plates, hand towels and toilet paper, curtains, a bed frame. I still need furniture. I’d be happy just to get a decent desk and some curtains to cover up the huge window that runs alongside my bed and makes me anxious. The problem is that it’s one looong window, and I don’t have a tape measure and I am terrible at eyeballing length. I’m thinking about just laying my lanky ass body on the tiny windowsill (kind of a reverse-sill, really? dugout? I don’t know) and just figuring out how far it extends past my body. Cool.
I do have leopard print sheets, though, don’t you worry about my styles.
APRIL. 30 2014
I haven’t lived in one apartment for more than a year for a while now. It’s strange to feel like the next place I put my things could be permanent. I want to paint a wall or mount a beloved framed photo on the wall, something to remind me that I’m going to stay here, that this is home now. But I don’t know that I won’t be moving in a couple months. I don’t know whether it’s plain laziness (I don’t want to paint and then re-paint, put holes in the wall that I have to fill) or an uncertainty about the future, or both.
I’ve met a couple people in the past few months who I considered inspirations before I met them. They’re all around 25 years old, and they have all the things that I want at 25, in two years: stable careers, financial independence, seemingly fulfilling personal lives. Two years feels like such a short time. And I wonder what their personal lives are really like, the things I can’t know, the way they feel after putting themselves out there to write every day.
APR. 25 2014
I miss New York a little already. I’m not even living in Los Angeles yet, though, so I could just be missing city life in general. But L.A. is no New York, I don’t think I’ll ever be able/forced to casually sprint down a block on my way to work every day because of the smell of a particular stretch of subway running underneath.
It’s the little disgusting things that make you wonder if you miss a place.
APR. 17 2014
I spent most of my day alone, besides the two cats sharing this house with me. Actually, I think cats increase the degree of loneliness in your day. Science.
When I finally left the house at three-ish, it was to go buy sneakers so that I can start being ~active~, since I have nothing to do with my days but write, and I can only do that for so long before I want to never see words again or whatever. I went to Nordstrom Rack, which was like going to an all-you-can-spend buffet except that I couldn’t spend that much, because I don’t need to abuse my wallet. I thought that to myself when I paid for the sneakers and face wash and stupid glitter-capped chapsticks: “I do not need to abuse my wallet, it’s suffered enough.”
After dragging my clever ass through Nordstrom Rack and thinking clever ass thoughts to myself as I paid for the sneakers, I proceeded to drive back to the house. I stopped at the gas station at the bottom of the hill and pumped my own gas, which you will know, if you are from the great state of New fucking Jersey like me, is pumping your own gas, not just stopping for gas. I felt stupidly accomplished when it was all said and done. I took a picture to send to my mother: “look, Mom! I did it! I fueled my vehicle! How clever! How California!”
Since I had a flat tire the other day and had to buy two new tires, I’ve been driving without music on, so I can hear my car, just in case something blows out or explodes or falls off, etc. As I drove up the hill back to the house, I heard a faint clink, as if my car had dropped an earring on the pavement as it tried to put it on with its tiny car fingers. I kept driving, wondering if I hit something, or if something had fallen off..a lug nut? A screw? Something someone left on the car? Something I left on the car?
My wallet.
This clever lady with her ailing wallet had gently laid it on the top of her fixed-up car while she pumped her own gas. She then drove away and her wallet, clearly feeling abused for the last time, took a leap of faith off of the car, only to be hit by an Audi and run over by a Benz. The irony.
My cards are still in tact, the cash is ripped a little and I might have to buy a new wallet. In the end, neglect is just as abusive as excessive use, and I’ll be sure to pay more attention to my poor wallet, the resilient queen that she is.
Resilient queen indeed.