Retreading Old Ground, or A Prelude

Consider this a Foreword.

As my last year in school ticked past its halfway mark, I began to confront -- actually and practically -- the fact that I didn't really have a plan for What Came Next. There were options certainly -- a desk job at a studio or production company, freelancing on production crews -- but I hadn't proactively pursued any of those options. There were half-steps taken in fits of misdirected enthusiasm, most clearly manifested in an aborted move to a house in Silverlake. But all of these things fell apart or never came to fruition because of a deeper thirst that was beginning to foment inside of my unsophisticated spirit -- a thirst for escape.

Certainly, there were reasons to stay. A final, pesky class to complete my major would leash me to the area through the end of the calendar year. The film industry, though certainly present elsewhere, built its castles in Los Angeles. I had the beginnings of a network, however fetal and unshapen, of colleagues and friends that needed nurturing to continue to grow. Much of my family was there. It was my home, the place where I kept my heart.

Then in my final year and a half of school, I began to develop -- a tad belatedly, I felt at the time -- a taste for greater interaction with a wider world, a taste I had spurned for the indelible but familiar flavors of old friends and favorite places. Maybe it stemmed from being the child of immigrants, or a kid who read too many fantasy and adventure books, but I didn't want to be someone who only ever called one place home (even as I realize now that "one place" is only a relative term). As the end of my 18-year education approached, trimmed in armaments of sentiment and idealism, it seemed appropriate to not only dream big, but to start new. To find a new school to administer my learning, a new home to keep my heart.

So fuck it, pick up and leave. See where the road goes. Why not?

It's hard to pin down the reasons we do a lot of the things in our lives, especially big decisions made when we were different people in different spaces. And it's easy to shape a narrative in hindsight, to paint a picture with a single, tidy brushstroke. To button it up with some pithy platitudes. So maybe the decision to move to New York was not as neat as I've portrayed it to be. Maybe I've left out the part where whimsy and inertia did most of the work. But looking back requires a certain amount of erasure and adjustment. It's baked into the process, forcibly, by selective memories and retroactive auto-corrections. But that is the cost of doing your own storytelling; you cannot hide your vanity.

Now, let's get on with this silly endeavor, shall we?