So late last week I allowed myself a pity party, particularly on the long slog back to LA on Friday.
But today is a new day, a new week, and there's no point crying over spilt work.
Last Tuesday I had received a call out of the blue from a creepy sounding man in Tarzana. He owned an agency that catered to construction related industries and he had been referred to me by a person he refused to name. He had looked over my website, liked what he saw and was interested in meeting me.
"How about Friday? he said.
My first instinct was to pass. Although my Bako salary was minimal and I could certainly use the extra income, it would have meant concocting a cockamamie excuse to take a personal day off and I didn't feel like I could chance it being so new in the job. But then he said the magical phrase "this would be ongoing work" and suddenly I had a change of heart. Taking a personal day for a one-off job was iffy, but doing it for a potentially ongoing revenue stream seemed a reasonable risk. I told him I'd get back to him in the morning and then spent the afternoon and evening trying to craft the perfect lie.
Call in sick? Family emergency? Death in the family? What to do, what to do.
But as fate would have it I was canned the next day, so I was free to schlep into LA guilt free.
In the past three years I've had many strange meetings and this one certainly makes the top ten. I won't bore you with details save to say when my new client walked into the room it was as if he just stepped out of a touring production of "Fiddler on the Roof". A bear of a man, he had a long unkept beard and was wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl. And he was barefoot. The meeting was odd but productive and it looks like we'll be doing business together. He said he'd call me midweek with work. Let's hope Tevye is a man of his word.
Beyond that I wrangled a job from Hollywood. I had forgotten how much I'd grown to hate entertainment work. That is, until the check clears. I'm booked for today and tomorrow and will make more in two days than I made in a week in Bako. And there are a few more irons in the fire so we'll see if anything comes of it. All in all, I'm looking on the bright side, such as it is.
The trip to LA was odd for another reason. In the first couple of months of living in Bako I had had to trek back to the city at least once a week to tie up loose ends. I always looked forward to going back "home", even though once I got there I was usually consumed with sadness and despair. But I hadn't been back to LA since February and this trip back proved to be different. I found myself getting increasingly anxious as I cleared the pass into the LA sprawl. And once I hit the 405 like a brick wall and found myself inching along, stuck in the "morning" rush hour at noon I found myself thinking "thank God I don't have to deal with this anymore." It should have been a two hour drive, but I had allowed myself three. And still I barely made it to the meeting on time. The whole time I was in the city I found myself completely stressed out. While I was sitting in the meeting I kept eyeing the clock, hoping to end it before 2 so I could get back on the road before "evening" rush hour began, to no avail. When I finally hit the freeway at 2:15 it was already gridlocked. "How do people live like this? I thought to myself, conveniently forgetting I had done it for 25 years.
Once I finally cleared greater LA at Castaic, two hours later, I finally felt myself start to relax. And when I cleared the Grapevine and started descending back into the San Joaquin valley I actually kind of felt at peace. It was Golden Hour and the sun was shimmering off the wheat fields. Or maybe it was dead corn, who can tell; I still new to all this farm crap. At any rate, it was beautiful.
They say you can't go home again, but I guess that all depends on where you consider home. And to be honest, I'm not sure I know anymore. But I'm pretty sure it aint LA.
