She Wants Five Bedrooms. I Want Five Lives.
9/14/20265 min read
I have yet another problem in the big, exotic ocean of problems that are hardly real problems by most standards. It’s also not a new problem for me.
It's that I want to be able to do everything, all at once, and then some more. Key word being do.
As in, I do not want a Ferrari, a Porsche, and also a Jeep. I actually have a thing against cars since my last one was stolen in LA four years ago. I do not want a huge inventory of belongings - I can barely keep track of what I already have and I live in what one might call a ‘shoebox’, your NYC finest.
Really it’s just about wanting to do everything. I want to write movies. I want to write TV. I want to travel. I eventually want to write a book, a real book. And I also have a great idea for a coffee book with illustrations, the ones you skim through and laugh and really - what was the point of that? I want to live in New York. I want to be good at my real, corporate job. I want to see my friends, an unhealthy amount. I want to cook dinners and lunches at home and eat them while reading a book or watching TV. I want to write for my blog consistently. At some point I would also like to sleep.
Earlier this year I quit my job and traveled for three months. Somewhere between cheap hotels, coffee shops and moving around Asia and Australia, I wrote an entire screenplay in less than two months.
Then I came back to New York, got another job, and the screenplay started doing things. It got selected for a comedy film festival in Los Angeles, where actors performed part of it in front of an audience. It made the Second Round at Austin Film Festival. All things that make it sound like I am doing quite well as a writer.
I have written approximately one page since Los Angeles. Ideally, I’d have written a TV pilot by now.
The obvious answer is that I should quit my job again. I have some savings. I could give myself six months or a year. Write every day. Finish another script. Actually post on this website consistently. Figure out social media beyond sending approximately 150 texts a day. Maybe try stand-up. Take improv classes. Do all the things I keep saying I want to do while I'm still young enough to make financially irresponsible decisions sound inspirational.
And if it works, what a fucking story. I quit my job. I spent my savings. I bet on myself. I wrote the script that changed everything. People love that shit.
The slight problem is that I don't want to quit my job anymore. This would all be considerably easier if I hated it. I manage a restaurant and somewhere along the way I became annoyingly invested in it. I like being busy. I like solving problems. I like figuring people out. I like walking into a room where six things are happening at once and deciding which one actually matters. And apparently I really like managing people.
Recently, one of the hosts accidentally scheduled an important email for 8 p.m. instead of 8 a.m. A few fairly important people were attached to it, so ideally this particular email would have arrived twelve hours earlier.
There are probably several professionally approved ways to handle this as a manager.
I chose to go with texting her the following:
She immediately started apologizing and told me she was embarrassed, which meant I immediately started trying to make the employee I had just corrected feel better about being corrected.
At some point she tried to explain that several important people were attached to the email, except she accidentally wrote that they were all touched. I asked who was being touched. And then declared that I never completed my sexual harassment training. So it was probably fine.
Somewhere in the middle of this extremely professional exchange, the actual problem got resolved. She knew what she'd done wrong. She promised she'd triple-check it next time. I eventually had to explicitly tell her she wasn't in trouble because she'd started overthinking the whole thing.
I’m still not quite sure whether I am actually good at my job. I am likeable, yes. I seem to get problems solved when needed. I like the people I work with, and I think they like me. I joke with them, sometimes probably too much. They're people I spend an unreasonable amount of my life with.
When I started this job, I genuinely expected that after a few weeks someone higher up would eventually realize I did not have the necessary skills or experience for it.
That has not happened. In fact, it is increasingly looking like it is not going to happen.
I also don't put out fires that don't exist. There are enough people in blazers walking around looking stressed already. I don't like looking stressed when there's nothing to stress about. I actually don't even like looking stressed when there is something to stress about. It's just not a good look.
And somehow, to my genuine surprise, I seem to fit in there. I like hospitality. I like writing. I want to get better at both. Which is incredibly inconvenient, because naturally, this is exactly when writing has started asking more of me too.
I've been reaching out to people, asking for advice, sending them my website. And conversations keep ending with some version of: “Send me stuff.” Great. Except. What stuff?
I have half a TV pilot, rough ideas, scenes, characters and documents I'm extremely confident will eventually become something good. What I don't have is enough finished stuff I'd confidently send to someone whose opinion could actually matter. Somehow I've gotten myself into this very good, very stupid circle where people are saying, I'd like to see what you can do, and I'm saying, Amazing, I would also like to see what I can do.
I just need time to fucking do it.
And unfortunately, the thing taking up most of that time is another thing I also want to be doing.
Which brings me to my mom, who just got a house in Vegas with a pool and five bedrooms. She lives alone. She's also barely home. This woman travels constantly for work, yet apparently needed enough bedrooms to operate a small bed-and-breakfast.
I don't understand it. Which is rich coming from someone trying to simultaneously be a restaurant manager, screenwriter, blogger, traveler, and a great friend that has time to attend all the events.
My mom wants five bedrooms. I want five lives. At least she has the square footage.
Anyway, I'm going to Vegas this weekend. While it's a great place to party and I'm looking forward to seeing my mom, I'm mostly looking forward to getting some sleep.
I have a lot of lives to get back to.