Is This Real Life?

I feel like the only way to appropriately capture the flow of the last few days is to simply record the events.  

So here goes. 

Having already met up with Milton High School alums Ashleigh and Adam separately, I reached out to them this past week to get together as a group. I sent texts Thursday checking on availability and woke Friday morning to both of them confirming they were open. I put together a group text on my way to the Metro and descended into the signal wasteland. Upon emerging downtown, I received a flurry of messages, in which Adam and Ashleigh picked a place and time, setting up the plan all while I read on the train. 

Friday passed with a little work and a lot of prep for my first actual project, which will involve two days a week in Phoenix for a few months. I did not anticipate that my steps back into the fray would carry me to another exciting Southwestern city, but the explorer in me couldn't ask for a better opportunity. 

Leaving work, I caught an Uber and met Ashleigh and Adam at Golden Road Brewing, a rare brewery for its commitment to a family environment. Adam had mentioned liking the place because it eschewed the normal exclusivity of a bar, the thought process being that limiting things to 21 and over is what creates the Moe's Tavern-esque escape from family, while a place that serves food, offers games, and allows kids and dogs makes it so unwinding isn't at the expense of family connections. 

The three of us sat out on the patio, where heat lamps rebuffed the slight chill in the air. Unsurprisingly, we talked a lot about high school, but we also talked about work, from Adam's full-bore freelancing to Ashleigh's excitement for the world to see Disney's Zootopia after all the hard work she and the rest of Disney Animation put into it. It's so cool to hear about all of the great, creative work they both do and to have their help navigating this wild new place. 

After a fun happy hour, Ashleigh gave me a ride home and after checking in with Bing, I went up to bed to rest up for what I intended to be a busy Saturday. 

I woke up EARLY the next morning, 7AM in fact, which allowed me to get through morning pages, breakfast, and a shower at a leisurely pace while still getting out the door just after nine. My plan for the morning was to shop for some clothes in Beverly Hills, having collected suit-buying input from about a dozen male friends on the drive out, as well as purchasing a Groupon for tailored shirts this past week. Unfortunately, I struck out on my first stop to get the shirts, finding that the fitting room not only wasn't open yet, but in fact was only open on week days during normal business hours. 

I moved on to suit-shopping, which I did at the far-too-fancy Brooks Brothers on Rodeo Drive. I was greeted by a cashier who directed me up a staircase out of Titanic to the suit FLOOR of the store. I found a salesman who quickly got me into a few coats before landing on a suit that worked. A tailor took measurements and chalked up the suit and in the end, I wound up with an order in on a great charcoal grey suit, which will supplement the literally ONE suit I have that fits (which itself was tailored down from 40 lbs north of where I am now).

After that, I had a lazy day. Lunch and coffee in the midst of the shops, both while forging forward in the Chernow Washington. Then, I returned to Los Feliz, where I parked and found yet another sidewalk seat to continue reading. Bing and I watched the Clippers game at home in the early evening and then it was time for me to head out into the night.

My destination for the evening was the Serial Killers show by a theatre company called Sacred Fools. When I told Seamus I wanted to get into a theatre community once I came out, he recommended the group as one he liked working with, particularly on this Serial Killers series. Essentially, every Saturday, they have an 11pm show consisting of 5 ten-minute serial plays. The audience votes and three winners move on to the next week with two new challengers. Some shows go weeks and weeks, each week bringing a new chapter in the story. It's a fun idea and the late-night nature sounded a lot like the midnight shows we had in college.

My first experience with Sacred Fools was at their membership meeting last week. I sat in the audience as they conducted company business, with particular focus on their new, exciting home (ten minutes from my place) and their upcoming shows. I could tell from the personalities that it was a great community vibe filled with people who want the group to succeed and thrive. The producers of Serial Killers stood up and spoke and I made a point of talking to them at the meeting break to make some connections.

A week later, I was sitting in the audience, waiting for the show to begin, still alone, but soon chatting with a woman named Samantha who had also been a newbie at the meeting. As I watched the crowd file in and greet each other, I saw a girl in a blue dress who I thought I immediately recognized, only my brain had no context for why she would be in the setting. Then, looking through the program, I spotted her name listed as the writer of one of the pieces: Annette Fasone. Annette went to the same elementary school as me, but more importantly, because her dad and my mom worked at the same company, our parents occasionally arranged for us to hang out. One time, they even took me to Six Flags.

Being that our interactions hadn't really made it beyond elementary (we actually went to the same middle and high school, but both didn't realize it), I had no idea she was into theatre or that she was even in Los Angeles to begin with. I was so dumbfounded that it took me until after the show had finished and an afterparty began to go over and confirm this weird small world. As I started with saying I think we went to elementary school together, I could see confusion on her face, but then when I said my name, she immediately recognized me and joined me in flipping out. She proceeded to introduce me to some of the other members by sharing our bizarre story while we both kept processing the fact that we were in the same place.

I'm still reeling. It was a big, fun, loud party, so she and I exchanged numbers and plan to get together and figure out how we each got from the same point A to the same point B. It's unfathomable to me, but also great to hear she's involved with such a great group (to say nothing of her working as a voice talent agent in town)!

As for Sacred Fools on the whole, I loved it. Everyone was kind, welcoming, goofy, sharp, and jubilant about their company's new space. Everyone I spoke with told me to get involved however I could and advised that Serial Killers was a great start. As I'd hoped, the show itself was a rowdy, tipsy-crowd-participation romp just like midnights had been and I definitely want to be a part of it. I stayed at the after party until about 2:30, at which point I knew I had to go or I'd not get any sleep before meeting Adam and Ashleigh in the morning. I rode Uber home excited for the prospect of seeing their main stage show Past Time with Seamus on Friday.

My sleep was limited, but for a good reason. Ashleigh texted Adam and I on Saturday to invite us to a friends and family screening of Zootopia. I met up with them at the Walt Disney Animation studio in Burbank, where freshly popped popcorn and drinks  awaited us in the lobby of Ashleigh's offices. Inside the theater, we found some seats and settled in among the various families. The movie was fantastic with particularly beautiful visuals and touching performances. I plan to go see it again when it comes out (March 4th for the interested folks out there), just for all the little details I know I missed the first time.

As it ended and we saw Ashleigh's name in the credits, I felt really lucky to have reconnected with someone who contributes to work that I have loved for years now and grateful that Ashleigh shared the experience of seeing it.

And that's how my fourth weekend in LA went. I can't believe this place at times, but I love it. 

Learning the Ropes

Friday, after running out of legislative highlights from the last six months, I found myself still without work and with hours to kill before a work happy hour. Since rolling to a stop in LA, I'd been meaning to learn a little more about my local geography, tired of nodding knowingly through more than one work conversation straight out of SNL's The Californians. After starting with Wikipedia entries for each neighborhood I knew, I eventually clicked through to the LA Times Mapping L.A. project, which was exactly the resource I needed. Over the next few hours, I memorized all 114 neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles, to the point that I could name them by sight on the Times map and list them from memory.

It was an admittedly obsessive exercise and I have already found its usefulness to be comparable to middle school academic bowl when I learned the lyrics to American Pie, but not the tune. My knowledge of the LA neighborhoods was exhaustive, but sterile. I still knew nothing about how each area felt or, perhaps more importantly, how I would feel IN it.

The exercise paid off eventually, though. Sunday, I met my friends Lauren and Sam at The Doughroom for brunch and afterwards had an urge to drive. I realized I STILL had yet to see the Pacific as resident, so I quickly hopped on the 10 and followed signs towards Malibu. The ocean appeared from beneath an overpass, glittering blue and insistent on my attention. Northward, the road narrowed, carrying me past huddled packs of beachfront houses.

A few miles up the PCH, I decided to program my GPS with my destination for the Super Bowl and keep driving until the ETA on the app was the time I intended to be there, at which point, I would start following the directions. It seemed like enough structured spontaneity to make an afternoon of and I would have held to it if I hadn't seen an alluring sign for Malibu Canyon Road.

In a matter of a few turns, the ocean was forgotten as I sped along, hugging the steep canyon walls. The road took me past Malibu Creek State Park and within sight of some astonishing rock formations before finally depositing me on the 101 near Calabasas. My jaunt was over. All that remained was to head east to my buddy Adam's for kickoff.

While I was blissed out on the PCH, it was on the next stretch of the drive that I noticed the benefits of my furious memorization. Instead of ignoring exit signs until the GPS told me to pay attention, I smiled at names I recognized, neighborhoods arranged north and south of the freeway just as they had been on the interactive map. I began predicting the next sign and found myself hitting more than I missed. I'd had the lyrics, now I had the tune, the physical sense of how one place knit into the next. I was on the freeway, to be fair, and surely missing some surface road broad strokes, but I still enjoyed the comfort of not being lost. I was no longer surrounded by the foreign language of unfamiliar places. My Los Angeles geography was passable, if rudimentary.

It's a nice feeling and it bred more confidence. I keep finding myself trying new routes and new extracurriculars just to put myself in a new place in the city. Yesterday, after work, I walked 20 minutes southeast of my office to the Arts District, where the Angel City Brewery holds a Monday game night. I was nervous, having been told not to stray too far while Downtown, but with plenty of daylight left and the sight of hundreds of normal folks living their lives very unthreateningly, I never felt unsafe (acknowledging that to be the luxury of the six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered, white male). Instead, I got to walk through some new neighborhoods, feeling the pulse of areas Mapping LA would have slapped "Downtown" on before calling it quits. A few hours later, after some good beer, delicious food, and a game of Pandemic, I called an Uber and made it home with such speed and ease that I could hardly believe it. The utility and price of Uber is going to make happy hours hard to pass on.

I'm liking it here and if I can't claim fluency yet, I at least feel my mind opening wide, seeking immersion.

Novelties

I prepared the deep thoughts that follow first, but then realized a more concrete update might be worthwhile.

Work has begun and is excellent so far. As with every Towers office (or Willis Towers Watson, whenever that sinks in), LA is filled with bright, clever, kind people whose gears are always turning. Yesterday began with my welcome breakfast, an event shared with another new hire and consisting of the two of us sitting in a conference room with a breakfast spread while the whole floor came through to get food. While the receiving line format felt a little odd, it provoked a lot of fun conversations, including an almost unanimous encouragement to take the LA Metro in to work. Given that vote of confidence and after my cube neighbor toured me down past the station by work, I tried it today and found it to be a pretty good means of getting in, certainly for a former DCer.

I also sent an introductory e-mail around full of my sense of humor and my interests, trying to improve once again on the long process it has been to bring my self, all of my self, to work. My desk sports a little Funko Tyrion and a bobblehead Darth Vader, while my coffee mug options are Doctor Who and Hamilton, both amazing gifts. It's good to be back in the swing of things and I took no small joy in choosing my benefits today, so that I can get a little knee work done and adventure out into the wilderness again.

On to the deep thoughts! At the office today, I found myself thinking about the relativity of time. Ever since I reached back out to Towers, I have remarked to friends how strange it seems that so momentous a time for me will seem like a much shorter time to my former company, especially when it comes to my service history. The retirement work cycle is, like so many jobs, annual, so missing six months doesn't feel like that much...except to my Atlanta office friends who have accused me of planning my six-months of self-discovery to conveniently miss a big special project AND disclosure hell month. Oops? The six months felt so very long to me, in the best of all possible ways. It feels like years since I left Georgia in August.

Then, today, I realized that I have only been here five days. This seemed impossible. How could I have been in Maryland a week and a day ago? That's not right, is it?

Which brings me to my two cents as far as the relativity of time...the key, at least for me, seems to be novelty. Doing new things slows time...or perhaps more accurately records memories on slower film. My six months off feel so long because such a high percentage of that time brought new experiences, new friends, new places, new growth. When I consider instead how the periods of sameness I have felt in the past...and how quick they seemed at the time and still seem. Whole years or handfuls of years I could describe in a sentence. Years spent living for the weekends, so that the weeks themselves were edited out of my life story each time I returned to it.

It's just a thesis (and I can almost guarantee it's more friendly to extroverts), but in this absurdly short time since my westward rocket landed in LA, nearly every moment of every day has been new and surprising, dynamic and challenging. Those moments have stretched, extended by the novelty of it all. It gives me confidence; if all I have to do to put down a life of great length is to keep aching for newness, then I have come to the right place.