It will all work itself out...

Currently in this very moment....
This is what my world looks like.

I'm sitting on my un-made bed. On my left is a tattered copy of LA weekly opened to the "theatre reviews" section. To my right, is a camcorder that I haven't touched since I finished recording promos for RENT. In front of me is a sweaty unitard and my first pair of jazz shoes that I bought the other day. And I know it sounds pathetic...but I'm more proud of those jazz shoes then I am of my B.A. in journalism...because I NEVER....I mean NEVER, thought that I would be cast as a featured dancer in anything....and now I'm about to be a featured dancer in PETER PAN. After a morning thru afternoonish rehearsal I collapsed in my room.

Like many people my age, I continued to ask myself the same questions: What am I doing with my life? What is my plan? Am I including my friends in my life? Am I 100% happy? What can I change?

I ask myself these questions all the time. It never stops. I'm always trying to figure out the next step.

Here's where I'm at right now. Post-college I moved back home to save money. The plan was to stay home for 1 year, then move to LA or NEW YORK.....it all depended on if I magically got into the Equity union. Just over 2 years later, I'm still at home, and more broke then when I started.

How did that happen?
I got in a car accident (not my fault)= car payments on a used car....car payments that I never had to deal with before.
I graduated college= hellooooo student loans....
Aaaand, I actually have health insurance.

So the current plan is to move to LA in August.
Which is exhilarating...
And scary....
Does anyone ever really have the money to up and move? I don't think so....It might sound naive, but I'm at a point where my only focus is to just "go for it." If I fail, then I fail, but I'm going to stop letting my inner thoughts tell me that I won't make it if I up and move.

I'm proud of a couple things thus far....
1)I know what I love to do...and I make an effort to do it all the time. I'm working on my 5th show in less than a year, and to be honest, this IS what I love the most.

2) I'm completely unreasonable. I'm the most illogical person you'll ever meet. BUT at the same time....I'm always happy. Dreamers might be illogical, but we go for the things we want.

And that's it I guess for right now. I re-discovered my love of cheesy movies tonight. I sat down and watched "Dave," starring Kevin Klein, and I made a cran-pineapple martini that ended up being so tasty...that I had 3...maybe I missed my calling....maybe I should be bartending....

Credit Cards are Not Refillable Gift Cards...

I'm not one to stress too much.
Life is short. Don't worry. Be happy. We've heard that tune over and over again. Our lives should be focused on living...not on planning your life around paying the bills....

I'm not a complete failure when it comes to finances. It's simply been a strange string of events that have led me to where I am right now.

I had zero credit cards until just about up to college graduation. I figured if I wasn't charging things, I wouldn't be in trouble. Kind of true, however, I had failed to build up a line of credit.

That was me back then...I miss that girl. That girl who was scared shit-less of the credit card bill. That girl who treated credit card offers like envelopes filled with sin...and NOT the good kind.

That girl is long gone. If one more credit card company tempts me with a credit card offer, I might just have to bed it and wed it.

I currently have 3 credit cards, and I need to stop viewing them as refillable gift cards. I need to start doing those affirmations that people do in the movies. I need to start looking at myself in the mirror every morning, and write the following message to myself on the mirror with bold red lipstick: "Erika, paying a credit card bill is not the equivalent to transferring money into a magical checking account."
"Charging a latte to an almost maxed out credit card does not mean that your building your credit in a good way..."

And don't even get me started on student loans. I didn't even hang my B.A. certificate on the wall before the first loan bill rolled in. I take it back...I still haven't hung up my B.A....its still sitting on my bookcase nestled between a picture of John Lennon and Audrey Hepburn.

As I said before, you can't plan your entire life around the bills...after all...they never truly go away.

Here's some positive things that I HAVE learned about money:
Quarters are still considered money.
e-statements are a more non-confrontational way of receiving your monthly statements.
...
...
to be continued...

The Equivalent to a Literate Pansy

Lately I feel like I'm the equivalent to a literate pansy.
I graduated from CSUF with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism 2 years ago...after which I VOWED that I would NEVER pursue a career remotely related to the horrors of broadcasting.

I chose to study Broadcast Journalism for 2 reasons and 2 reasons only....
The first word in the title is "Broadcast." So I translated that to meaning, "studying to be a pretty talking head on tv."

And that sounded like a fun way to go.

Reason #2: The 2nd word in the title was "Journalism" and I LOVED to write. About anything. One time back when I was taking a reporting class, we were asked to write an obituary on ourselves.....being unable to take almost anything in life too seriously....I titled my obituary: "The Death of my Sense of Fashion." I went on to explain that I dressed like a bohemian...and not the cool kind...etc etc etc.

After only a few courses down the road to my B.A. in Broadcast Journalism, I realized that I hated what I was studying. I didn't feel passionately about any of the subjects the way my peers did, and since I didn't feel that way, I felt like I was wasting my teacher's time. Why study something if you don't love it? The obvious answer to my problem would've been to change my major, but I was already on the 5-year-college-plan, and quite literally couldn't afford to change my major (again). I started off as a theatre/public speaking major....switched to entertainment studies.....and after TRYING to convince myself that I would lose interest in theatre post-college, I made the final switch into Broadcast Journalism.

It was at that point that I realized that I needed to study something I love...even if it was only on the side....
That's how I ended up minoring in Radio/TV/Film studies....and I LOVED it.

I never thought I'd say it, but since I graduated college, I miss writing all the time. I miss deadlines. I miss that kick in the ass that pushes you to write something you never thought you'd have to balls to write about. My ability to sit down at my laptop and make something out of nothing is slowly heading down the crapper. I tried to make my way through the book, "The Spiritual Guide to Gaining back Your Creativity," but I threw in the towel within a week. I don't know what happened. And DON'T get me wrong...I'm not going to be pursuing a careers as a reporter anytime soon. But I need to push myself to write more. Even if I think that I have nothing to say....or if I feel I don't have a story to tell....there's gotta still be something there.

I was watching "Sex and the City" the other day, and I realized how much I missed New York. No..I've never lived there...only visited....but the energy...everything that it stands for...it took me back to a time in my life where my only goal was to live in NYC, and do off-off-off-off broadway theatre and attempt to pay my bills on time. Maybe I didn't make it to NYC right away, but I love the fact that things didn't happen the way I planned. Even though I'm not in the location I thought I'd be, I'm still doing what I love....I still kept theatre in my life, and thank goodness I have an employer who is willing to pay me to talk about film and television. For those of you studying something you can't stand in college...keep your chin up....it doesn't have to set the path for what you're going to do for the rest of your life...

On a final note, I might've left my broadcasting days behind me, but the experience still brought me a few laughs...
Shortly after college I auditioned to be a reporter for a hip new webisode series that was going to cover anything up and coming....my "call-back" during the audition process was to do red-carpet interviews...at a porn convention...
Now I was excited to get all dressed up and be around the hype of the red-carpet...as for the interviews, I just had to wing it....at one point in the evening I was interviewing a 250 lb. porn star with bleach blonde hair and I was b.s.ing my way through the interview. I asked her for the name of her upcoming film, and she replied, "Wicked." Of course being the dork that I am, I immediately thought of "Wicked," the musical...so I leaped up in excitement and shouted, "That's so cool!" Of course she responded with, "Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it too....lots of girl on girl action." whoops.

Cheers folks.

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." — J.M. Barrie