#also a stark reminder that if (some) people can't be honest with their therapist then why are even you going roflmao

[trashycosmos]

can we talk about the funniest thing of the whole experience was someome who sb me for almost 10 months straight saying they were upset i wasn't nice/distant/cold and didn't apologize for it and when i called out their behavior there was no apology from them they just didn't want to talk anymore lol

[invisiblerambler]

Unfortunately for all of you this is the last place on the internet I let myself be truly earnest and honest. Mostly because I do still treat this website like my journal because as far as I'm concerned this is mostly just for me.

ANYWAYS

Tomorrow marks my first month in LA and jesus christ what a month it has been. I don't even know how to begin to describe what I'm feeling right now because frankly it's everything and in a way nothing because I can't even pick out one emotion to have.

First of all, I didn't expect to get here. Yes, there was a point where LA felt inevitable, but that was only incredibly recently. Someone I met in 2018 via Al Gore's internet lives in LA so we got to meet up for the first time. We went to a bucket list event on Tuesday (more on that later) and she reminded me that when I met her, I didn't even think LA was going to happen. So it was okay, normal and probably even healthy to soak in the accomplishment of even making it this far.

As usual, she is right. There is a huge part of me that is trying to not let the awe of my current situation wear off. I imagined living in LA about as long as I can remember. It was the five year plan post graduating from college (pre-pandemic) and I did make it out here less than five years after graduating from undergrad.

It is and I hope will never be lost on me how unlikely all of this was. Based on my life circumstances, my childhood and about a million other things, this outcome of being in LA pursuing my lifelong dream of working in entertainment was literally anything but inevitable.

I told my therapist about a month before I left Pittsburgh that none of this was by accident. She agreed with what I said and told me that I had worked very hard to get where I was. I have a tendency to let outward gratitude overwhelm any effort I may have put into the process.

But frankly, I did work hard and honestly survived for a long time to get to this point. And I didn't think it would happen. I assumed that a mid-sized city probably in the Midwest working a job I tolerated was all I was going to get.

So I feel lucky and grateful and am also aware of the fact I didn't get here alone, but I also didn't get here without me. There are a lot of people in my life that didn't see this as inevitable but definitely saw it in my future, much more clearly than I did.

It's probably borderline delusions of grandeur but everything else I want feels so attainable with everything I survived the first 20 to 25ish years of my life. It could easily be naivete, but for now I'll let it carry me some of the way towards what I want.

While it's only been a month, I think the biggest lesson I've already learned is that in a lot of ways the hard part is over. I have no plans to take my foot off of the accelerator of my ambitions, but I am realizing it's okay to not have it all figured out. Tiktok by a mixture of algorithm and coincidence has sent me a lot of videos about not having to figure out the how of the universe, just the what and the why. Thankfully, while I am less clear than ever about the how, the why most of all feels in stark relief.

If you've read this far I might as well reward you with some highlights of my experience in LA so far, I want to preface by saying this is crazy atypical, but I want to document it for my posterity.

A noncomplete list of cool shit I've done this month

Documentary for your consideration event

Disney panel of music directors/composers of various TV fiction and documentary series and features

A tour of Disney Imagineering in Glendale

AND last but to me not least,

ATTENDING THE RED CARPET FOR THE SEASON 3 PREMIERE OF THE BEAR

The red carpet thing was hardly as glamorous as it sounds and open to the general public, but it is a night I will never never forget.

Like I am saying ad nauseam, I am so lucky and so grateful, and the way that these opportunities keep falling into place feels like beautiful confirmation from the universe that everything I want is in reach.

Unfortunately because of the way my brain works, there is a part of me that won't shut up about the fact that it can't always be like this, and I'm just setting myself up for disappointment and failure.

I am trying to keep that as quiet as I can. I suffered for a long time to even have half of what I am able to have now. Most things on that list were things I hardly even dreamed of, and yet I'm terrified of them being taken away.

The way everyone else views my success as inevitable terrifies me. I was and in many ways still convinced that without the right steps in the right order, I will never achieve the things I want.

Full well knowing that every single person in every facet of this industry takes a different path to the things they want, so why would I be an exception.

Everything feels more within reach than it ever has, meeting my heroes in professional contexts, working with people whose work I have always admired, and yet the proximity makes it feel all the more fleeting. That many years of pure survival is a hard programming language to rewrite.

The trajectory I am on is in someways (almost all ways) terrifying even to me. I am getting a crash course in learning how to internalize success and trying not to self-sabotage in the process.

Moving here in a particular way has felt as fundamental as learning to walk again. I felt immediately at home here in a particular way, but I am learning to adapt myself to the way I feel here.

Getting here at once felt completely natural and like the most jarring thing I have ever done, because it was and it is, but I'm learning how to let things be easy. The ways in which the universe can be kind because sometimes you have suffered enough. My relationship with the metaphysical is a fluctuating one, but something that I hold close to me is the idea that things get easier when you're on the right path. Doors open to you, and resistance falls away. Nothing, nothing has ever felt like that quite the way moving to LA has. There is so much more to do here, in almost every direction imaginable, but I am ready and willing to receive it all.