Hannah, Meet Hannah. Hannah, Hannah.

DAY EIGHTY-NINE: The Pauper Drinks a Boost

I used to have a major problem watching the show Girls.  This is a well-documented road block known to my friends.  When I was in college, I had an idea to write a show about three post-grad women in their early twenties trying to navigate life, love, and career pitfalls.

"But Hannah, everyone who has ever had an idea has had that idea."

The reason I was sure watching Girls would cause me to convulse, spasm, vomit, and rotate my head 1080 degrees was a tonal reason.  I wanted my show to be real.  It would star a young woman, not stereotypically beautiful, but a woman that women could identify with.  She would be an anti-heroine.  Not always the best person, someone you certainly shouldn't admire, but she'd endear you because of her humor.  She would make horrible sexual decisions.  There would never be a scene where the characters begin kissing, and then slowly fade into the morning after with the two of them laying awkwardly in bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin.  She was an aspiring writer with deeply penetrating fears of writing.  Her "love" interest was named Adam, because I always named my male counterpart Adam.  And she was me.  She was Hannah.

I tell you all this because some of you readers don't know me well enough to understand my frustrations at seeing and hearing about this show.  But I can assure you from the number of times it was brought up in conversation, "Have you seen Girls?!  You would love it!" that this show stole my idea.  And Lena Dunham would pay... by not having me watch it!

Until, yeah, I watched it.  I cringed as I saw exact storylines I had thought of executed in incredibly similar ways.  I squirmed as little "self-deprecation in the face of comedy" moments played out like Hannah always sneaking into the fridge to eat something when stressed, even if it's Cool Whip.  I agonized as Jessa responded to Hannah's sighting of Adam with "Who?  The first man?", a rationale I adopted long ago in my writing.  It was difficult to digest, but I watched the whole damn thing.

Girls and I have a very complicated relationship.  It's nearly impossible for me to watch this show without bias.  The same things I love about the show are the same things I love about my writing.  But the Catch-22 is I therefore hate everything about the show that I hate about my own writing.  And that self-loathing is the reason I'm sitting here at 26 writing a blog that about 4 people read and at 26, Lena Dunham won a couple Golden Globes.

She had the confidence to go after an idea she had.  Whereas I have a tendency to overanalyze everything I do creatively, she just did it.  (Don't even get me started on Tiny Furniture.  I have a nearly finished screenplay stored on my hard-drive that would like to have a word with it.)

So how do we attain this confidence?  Well, speaking from two month's experience, it helps not being berated at work on a daily basis.  It helps actually showing your work to people.  It helps forming friendships with people who not only support you, but encourage you.  And it even helps when you have a nice conversation with a mother/daughter at your table who writes "Good luck with your career!" on your credit card receipt.  But ultimately, you just have to understand that you won't be perfect, but with practice you will be good - even great.  And the difference between the people who make it and the people who don't is confidence.  Or an amazingly stupid amount of luck.

Girls and I are doing a little bit better now.  I've forgiven it for making me feel like shit about myself.  Because something happened over the past year.  I realized it's not really the storytelling I aspire to anymore.  Kudos to Lena Dunham for doing what she is doing, but the idea of reliving my early 20's for the sake of my career seems like a certain place in hell meant for pedophiles and sandmonsters.  My desire to create is stronger than ever.  And I think I had to get over myself a little bit before I could do that.  I have confidence in knowing Girls is a show I probably could have written (and maybe I'd have a couple Golden Globes to add to my shelf, though I've already got a couple of my own.  HEY-O!), but it's no longer the show I want to write.  It's no longer the story I want to tell.  Because I finally realize I my creation abilities excel beyond recreation of the past.  And without Girls, I don't know if I'd ever have gotten out of that frame of mind.

So thanks, Lena.  But if your next heroine is named Katharine, I'm coming for you with the force of a thousand and twelve banshee grey hounds.

All Day I Dream About Smarts

DAY FIFTY-NINE: The Pauper Needs Some Stimuli

Working out is something everyone in their 20s at least mulls over.  Unless you are one of those cross-country sporty types in high school (read: I was never), then exercise is something that rarely crosses your mind.  Even if you are uncomfortable with that excess flab (read: I was always), you'd still rather LiveJournal it or cry in your room over it while listening to John Mayer albums believing "if only he got to see my personality, he'd fall in love with me!"

Really sorry that never worked out, by the way.  Try again next time.

But once your metabolism starts to fail and you realize that what you put into your body and how you treat it genuinely affects your own personal output in society, things start to change.  Motivation will strike in the form of a break up, an upcoming event where you just have to look a-MAH-zing, or a good old fashioned weekend-long ANTM binge that leaves you feeling like a balloon filled with delivery pizza and shame.

The point is, we motivate ourselves to be better people when a catalyst forces us to take action.  The same is true for our brains.  But people don't often realize that their brains are atrophying in the same way our muscles do.  In other words, getting dumber is a lot less obvious than getting fatter.

My catalyst for writing was quitting my job.  It gave me the freedom of time, which I covered last post.  But the motivation is getting harder to come by as I realize how atrophied my brain has become.

In high school and college, I was often the girl that students gave a silent (or in some cases, verbal) "yes!" about when realizing they were paired for an assignment with yours truly.  I got good grades.  Teachers loved me.  And I wasn't afraid to voice my opinion (read: be "that girl" who raised her hand to answer every question.)  If I wasn't going to be cool, I was at least going to be smart.  I liked being smart.

But something happened in my four years of paralegaling.  My brain was devoted to a field I cared very little about.  I didn't have to think the same way I used to.  I trained myself to be good at allowing others to succeed at their dreams.  Routine took precedence over challenge.  And I'm no longer the same thinker I was four years ago.

Sitting down in front of my computer, finding motivation becomes more and more difficult when I don't trust the thoughts brimming inside.  People around me seem to have evolved, while there's some personal devolution I can't seem to shake.  How do you overcome atrophy when you don't have school to knock the cobwebs loose?

You have to do it yourself.  It's not just a matter of writing at this point.  I have to study.  So before I get down on myself because the blank, white LCD screen in front of me shouts back slurs of insecurity; I'm going to do some things I haven't done since the last time I felt confident about my abilities.

I'm going to read.  Leisurely (fiction), scholastically (non-fiction books on writing), and research-based (screenplays).  Regardless of how much I hated studying in college; this becomes a matter of mental life and death.  Before our brains become a sedimentary rock formation, some times we have to push ourselves to get up off the couch, strap on our reading glasses, and start running some mental laps.

That Barrel-Chested SOB

DAY FIFTY-THREE: The Pauper Times It Right

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.” - Albert Einstein

Time.  Friend or foe?  Hero or villain?  Protagonist or antagonist?

One of the reasons I quit my job was because I never felt like I had enough time to do the things that I wanted to do.  I was emotionally exhausted by the end of each work day (being a human chew toy will do that to a person.)  So my goal from the minute I walked into my second story apartment was to shut down.  Make an easy dinner.  Pour a glass bottle of wine.  Binge on 30 Rock reruns courtesy of our great, red friend.  There was never any time.  Or at least never the right kind of time.

And here I am, fifty-three days post-decision.  And time has become my mortal enemy in lieu of the barrel-chested companion my heart craved.  

Brought to you in RealD by Time.

Suddenly, there's simply too much of it.  It sits there mocking me for not getting things done.  The financially responsible side of me panics on a daily basis and spends most of the day applying for jobs.

The truth is, I can't say that last statement in earnest.  Yes, there's the panic that hits me in the midst of catching up on Homeland (a lunchtime respite) when my mind wanders into the regions of remembering that rent is due tomorrow while my plane ticket to London shouts insensitive slurs on my credit card bill.  My stomach both drops and jumps inside its connective tissues.  But that's not the whole truth.

Failing at finding a job is the easier option.  If I can't find a more interesting job that I at least somewhat enjoy, it's the easier pill to manage down.  Because it's really just something I want.  But to fail at writing.  To fail at the only thing that really feels like it matters in my life right now.  To fail at my passion.  It's not really something I feel like I can handle.

And so I wait.  I procrastinate.  Until the panic turns into fuel.  Until the rejections turn into some form of mental cocaine.  Until I simply can't handle it anymore.

Happy Halloween, everyone.  I'm not dressing up because right now, I can't think of anything scarier than exactly what I'm doing right now.

Except hillbillies.  Nothing scarier than hillbillies.

The Switch

DAY EIGHT: The Pauper Gets Turned On

There's a reason why an illuminated light bulb universally represents an idea.  Don't believe me?  Type "idea" into Google and search images. 

This guy is especially enlightened.

If there is a more apt representation of emerging from the darkness of a quandary or conundrum, mankind has yet to touch upon it.  And though I will try not to over-generalize for the masses, I can personally attest wholeheartedly to the fact that there has been no deeper, darker pit of despair in my 26 years than figuring out why the hell I've been put on this sodding rock.

And this week, I managed to find the switch in my labyrinthine brain.

It's not like it hasn't been on my radar.  I have spent the better part of my life fantasizing about being an actress.  Hell, I even fantasized myself into an Academy Award win at the tender age of seven (take that, Tatum O'Neal!)

But I after a certain point - some time in college when a paralyzing audition shattered my confidence - I figured I just wasn't cut from the same cloth as the people who "make it".  So I shunted out those ludicrous notions of following my dreams.

And then in post-college, 2009 economy boom crash, I materialized a new dream: make just enough money to support myself; working at a job where it feels like lampreys have latched onto my innermost desires.  Tedium for everyone!  Huzzah!

But this week, I found the switch.  And I turned it on.  

During an exercise in my improv class, my teacher told us to clear our thoughts.  That in order to be creative, we need to remove the roadblocks in our minds.  And on September 3, 2013, I removed the giant redwood that plummeted onto the corner of Serotonin and Synaptic Vesicle shortly after that disastrous collegiate audition.  And I realized that I don't have to settle for tedium.  Nobody does.  Why should I believe that I can't "make it?"

There's no way to know for sure if I get to travel down the path I've dreamed of: writing, performing, being generally kick ass.  But I'm going to fight like hell.  The light's finally turned on.  Now it's going to be a lot easier to navigate this labyrinth.

We'll see about that, Williams.  We'll just see about that.