Necessary Evil

While working at a head shop in Oregon last year, a local psychic woman told me that when I turned 28, I would fulfill my life’s purpose and good things would happen for me. She also told me I should stop talking to my mother.

I suppose 28 is, in the grand scheme of everybody-dies-eventually, a really good age to find your calling. Some people wander around aimlessly for much longer, sometimes for the rest of their life; just social asteroids colliding into each other and perpetuating cycles forever.

While working my second stint as an office production assistant for a reality television company located in Culver City, I got an idea for a comic strip based on my workplace called “Monster Office.” I started doodling monster versions of my coworkers in the Amazon brand notepads I had been stealing from my office – along with pens, pencils, whatever other office supplies I thought I needed at my apartment desk (which itself was an awkwardly large children’s dinner table lodged between my Murphy bed and my wall that my parents gave me from their brief townhome stay in California), toilet paper, La Croix, as well as the occasional unspoken borrowing of office power tools to screw my physical idea board onto my apartment wall (a corkboard which is now sitting propped against my record shelf in the living room, driving my fiance crazy on a daily basis).

“Monster Office” was quickly warped by the pipe dream that I told myself at night while I drank to stop me from fleeing L.A. in the night like a madman; that one day, I would write an original (cartoon?) sitcom and make my calling. That my brain would finally reach it’s potential and make all those Super Saturday classes I took as a child unironic. That I would prove to everyone that I wasn’t just a cautionary tale first child fuck-up who never finished anything. I began brainstorming a cartoon version of “Monster Office” from the P.O.V. of the 20-something human production assistant with anxiety issues and a creative streak (so original). The more I wrote, the more personal the storylines got, and the more I realized I was writing my life in Los Angeles. I had finally lived enough life to have something to write about, and it was going to be my Ninth. Unfortunately, I was unable to see the forest through the trees, unable to decide on a format for the show as I feebly attempted to make time to write while living in poverty. My now-fiance and I had recently moved in together, and were both exhausting ourselves working to keep a roof over our heads. Page after page from notepads were crumpled and piled as I wrote furiously in pen ink (I don’t know why; I realize the permanence of the ink and how much paper I waste. I just can’t fucking help it to tell you the truth. Although problematic, it soothes me.) First it was a cartoon, then it was a comic, then it was a live-action show with cartoon monsters, then it was a cartoon again. I had no idea how I wanted to do this.

Meanwhile, in LA, finances went from bad to worse, and after giving three years of my life to the company and the idea of making it in “the industry,” my misery outranked my imagination and I was finally able to say to myself that L.A. was no longer a feasible place to live. It was time to pack up the dream and regroup.

It was during this time that I lost most of my friends. The only friends I had, my “best bros” in college and who kept me hopeful in the dark times (in which my parents gave me a psuedo-intervention and took back complete control of my life and decisions by forcing me to live in an RV with them and my two siblings traveling the country while I attempted to get sober), apparently didn’t understand why I was giving up on my dream, and chose to blame my fiance for my major life decision. They then proceeded to cause a massive fight between the two of us (something I now believe they intended to do), then proceeded to also perform a mini-intervention while giving me a ride home from work, spending the two hour commute back to the Valley telling me how I’ve turned into a shell of the person I used to be, and that my fiance is a bitch for not continuing to encourage me to stay and pursue a career in “the industry.” Yet despite all this concern, none of them could acknowledge the part they played in my spiraling alcoholism and the influence they put on me in the recent past. They completely denied that. I still stood my ground with my decision, and they attempted to hang out with me one last time before we moved to Oregon. I made myself throw up in my friend’s toilet so I could say I was sick and go home. I’m pretty sure they could tell I was full of shit, but at this point I don’t care anymore. They wanted to party til 3 or 4 in the morning. I went home at 11:30. Because the second I got there, I realized I didn’t want to be friends with my friends anymore. They had completely betrayed my trust, and I could never trust them again. A few days later, my fiance and I fled California like The Von Trapps, crossing through the mountains to Oregon without looking back once.

Oregon didn’t last long. Things were just as expensive as they were in California, and it was surprisingly even harder to get a good enough job there. The need for financial stability multiplied exponentially once we found out we were expecting a baby, and we realized the best decision would be to move back to our hometown.

Since we’ve gotten back, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. About my time in Los Angeles, about my family and friends, about how I wasted years of my life working myself into the ground only to be worse off than I was when I started. I know how I want my story to look, and every beat is written on a flashcard pinned to the cork board. I become a father next week, but that isn’t going to stop me. I might as well have something to work on, since I won’t be leaving the house much anyways.

If I can write this, everything I’ll have went through might be worth it. It’s worth a try. My friends haven’t spoken to me in a year, and my relationship with my family is forever ruined, but at least I have three years worth of writing material.

The Signs as Quotes from “The Catcher in the Rye”

interestingastrologythings

Aries: “I don’t even know what I was running for-I guess I just felt like it.”

Taurus: “It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.”

Gemini: “It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”

Cancer: “Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

Leo: “I wouldn’t describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though.”

Virgo: “I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.”

Libra: “I’m always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”

Scorpio: “People are always ruining things for you.”

Sagittarius: “I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice.”

Capricorn: “People always clap for the wrong reasons.”

Aquarius: “All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

Pisces: “I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.”