Sling-shot

   It's January 12th, 2012 here in unseasonably sunny California.  It's been three years last week since I packed all I could fit, including two cats, into my four door Sentra and booked it from the Georgia coast to Los Angeles in pursuit of quelling that incessant chatter deep inside that told me I had to.  I'm not from Georgia either.  I moved there thinking I had picked the other kind of life.  The kind where you don't follow your lifelong dreams, but do something practical instead.  So I followed a love I only thought I loved, and lived a life I only thought was living, until I couldn't bear it anymore.

     I only lived there for ten months until I decided I did in fact want no, needed to follow those dreams.  I headed right back to the west.  I was originally from Arizona, the state just to the right of California.  But I couldn't make that eight hour drive from there.  Arizona had defeated me, my parents were not in support of my goals to write and act, and none of my friends would make the move with me.  So I decided to shelf the most constant part of me as a person, my creativity.  But just like a sling-shot, Georgia and the experiences there shot me straight to my dreams.  So even though it might be painful, and at times full or regret for me, I am glad I made those choices that at the time I thought broke me.  I would not be here in Hollywood, and I wouldn't have been able to do it alone, until I absolutely had to.

     And man, was I alone when I first got here.  I typed into my GPS "Sunset BLVD.  Hollywood, CA" because I had NO idea where else to go.  I had only ever been to Disneyland, I had never even been to Hollywood or the surrounding area before.  I tried to figure my move out online the best I could.  A nice lady on Craigslist was even going to let me stay in her house for free!  I just couldn't call her, because she was old and deaf.  And the best news of all was that she liked me so much, she would let me work for her.  I just had to cash this cashier check she sent and I could keep half of the money.  If it's too good to be true, it's a Craigslist scam.  If it's too shitty to be true, it's a Hollywood Studio Apartment.

     A studio apartment is just what I got.  Right across the street from Paramount studios, as in literally next to it.  

     I was so excited.  It was out of my initial price range, $850 a month.  I had only been able to save about $2,300.00 coming out here, so I had to take out a loan, but the motel I was staying in kicked me out since my kittens didn't read the sign that said "No Pets" in room.  So, I took the apartment.  Let me go back, it was a bachelor studio.  That means one. very small room, a very small closet, and a very small bathroom.  I slept on a pullout couch that had about 2 spare feet from the stove and fridge.  The first month I was there I only had freezing cold water, and both my cats thought it was a good time to become women.  Neighbors left me death threats about their impassioned wailing at night.  But what could I do?  They were in heat, and I was in debt.



    The worst part of that complex, other than the fridge that broke, the gangs in the neighborhood, and the fact that in those months of my life I ate mostly soup out of a box, was the parking.  You couldn't park on the entire strip of road touching paramount, and my building did not have a garage.  So this dirt road Arizona girl got her first spoonful of street parking.  Street cleaning was a new concept too.  It's also not a real thing.  Men with leaf blowers just blow shit around certain mornings, why they can't do that under and around cars is a mystery.  So Wednesday and Thursday every week at 8am til 10am your car had to be moved to the opposite side of the street.  But in my area, parking was so limited that many times I would have to wake up and run with blood shot eyes to my car, and drive around cussing and sometimes crying from sleep deprivation for 30 minutes looking for a spot.  There was one night I circled at 2am for so long I gave up and just slept in my car, then woke up and drove around at 8am again.  My first parking ticket was from not noticing the street cleaning signs, so I thought, "Oh, I'll just park on the other side of the street tomorrow".  The next day as I pulled my second ticket off my windshield, a bird shit on my arm.  That experience sums up my time living at that stupid purple apartment.

     Insane transitions from small town to biggest city aside, I was optimistic, heartbroken, alone, excited, anxious, and ready for all the changes that were happening to me.  Now, three years later I've come far, and I need to remember to move my car at 10am tomorrow morning.

(an actual photograph of one of my first parking tickets in LA)