May has been a banner month, and it is not over yet! Last week I got to see my director friend Adam Bronstein ("My Movie Girl") when his film was screening just outside of Philly. I hadn't seen Adam in a year and a half, when he last visited me in Baltimore. It was great to see him, I think we talked for 5 hours straight the first night and another 6 hours straight the next day. We're pretty well caught up now! Then this week, I FINALLY got back up to Mikey's cabin in the Poconos and got to see him for a couple days, and just chill. He went back to NYC today, so now I have a few days by myself to catch up on some reading and writing. I haven't been here since October, I really missed it, and Mikey. Also this week, my friend Bentley moved back to Baltimore, which makes me very happy. If all goes well, he will be my new roommate by the end of the summer, too.
All that is well and good and makes me happy to reconnect with my good friends, but the most important thing to happen this month is that I landed a job that I really, really wanted. Lately it was getting harder and harder to keep my chin up. A couple months ago I totally botched a job interview, by making the fatal error of not looking at the company's website before going to the meeting. A very dumb mistake, but it simply slipped my mind to do so - I hadn't been on a proper job interview in more than 13 years, and back then, not everybody even HAD a website. Then last month, a freelance gig that would have carried me through the entire summer fell through - after I had nearly maxed out my credit cards on a trip and surgery for my dog. I was starting to lose hope that I could continue to survive doing what I love doing, and would be forced to go back to what I once loved but now hate - hotel or restaurant management. There are good jobs out there in the hospitality industry that I would be more than qualified for, but just the thought of going back into that made me very depressed.
I was beginning to wonder if everything I have been doing for the last four years had been a waste of time. In a span of less than three years (the first year working on rewriting the screenplay for "Smalltimore") I worked on a total of eighteen productions, only three of which were my own projects, and won five awards. One-third of those films I worked on gratis, choosing those projects very carefully, to build my resume, my contacts, and a stockpile of favors. On other people's projects, I was most often a producer and/or assistant director, but I also racked up writing credits on five productions other than my own, and even a few acting credits.
But the last few months, things just seemed to stop clicking. People I thought I could count on turned out not to be what I thought they were. I was finding that a lot that I had paid forward was just that: not to be returned by the people I paid it to. My faith in humanity, and my own judgement of character, was a bit shaken. Still, I tried to hold on to the one credo I have in my life - that it, my life, always turns out the way it is supposed to. Sometimes it takes awhile to get there, sometimes it is a very scenic and unexpected route, but it always does get there. And once again, it has.
I won't mention the company name yet. I start work on Tuesday, and I want to make sure it is cool with them for me to talk about on my blog. But I can tell you that I will have the interesting title of Script Engineer. What the hell is that, you ask? Well, writing will be only about one-third of my job, and the rest will be rather technical computer programming that is going to take many months of training to get me up to speed. I will be scripting interactive training videos, which may sound boring but I don't think it will be boring at all. Some of these videos will be used to train people for jobs such as drug and alcohol counselors, people who deal with victims of sexual assault or abuse, and criminal investigators, among others. I will be a part of a team that researches these vocations in great detail, and then design programs to help them do their jobs more effectively. Getting to do what I love most, in a way that actually helps people? Pretty damn cool.
Of course, we'll see how it goes, but from what I know about it so far, this is a job that was practically custom tailored to my strengths, combining logic, empathy, and creativity. And to have a "regular" job in which I get paid to write has been probably the only consistent goal I have ever had in my life. I can't begin to tell you what that means to me. It was only one year ago that I received my first check ever for a writing gig. I probably only charged half of what I should have - but I likely would have been just as thrilled to do it for half of what I did get paid. For me, it was validation of the highest order. Like the first time I sold a photograph, I finally felt I could refer to myself as a photographer, or the first time "Smalltimore" was accepted to a festival, I could introduce myself as being a filmmaker. I know that I have always been a writer, but to be able to say that I do it for a living carries a weight that I have always longed for. I have never been so excited to start a job. No more sleeping in! No more Law & Order marathons! And I am actually happy about that!
So, I still haven't talked about the image at the top of this posting. This is the tarot card, "Strength," the eighth card in the deck. Something you may not know about me, I have, off and on for many years, read tarot cards, and I am told that I am pretty good at doing so. Strength is my favorite card, and is the card I use to represent myself in a reading. The image really speaks to me. Here is a woman, alone, dressed in a pure white robe, but her waist is entwined with red roses, significant of desire. The devil really is in the details. She is standing with a her hands on a lion. She may be opening its mouth or closing it, but either way, she has tamed this beast that in reality she should fear. The cold blue mountains in the distance represent logic, but there is also much green vegetation in the picture. A lemniscate of Eternal Life, also known as a figure 8, floats above her head. This card is about courage and fearlessness, but it is also about balance, and the importance of finding harmony between opposing forces. I don't know a lot about numerology, but there is something special about that symbol, "8". Everything is cyclical, everything comes back around. You get back whatever it is that you put out there in the universe. You might not get it back from the people or place that you think you will, but you will get it back. That is important to remember.
I start my new job on Tuesday, May 31st, which also happens to be my 44th birthday.
4 + 4 = 8
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