It’s been a year since I started my first 30 Day LA adventure. At the time, I was aimless and lost, meandering about in a city that didn’t feel like home. I had a steady job that I didn’t really want along with a waning interest in my usual nighttime distractions. It all felt rather pointless. So I decided one day that I would attempt to renew my connection to the city by doing something new every day for a month. A short 30 days later, I emerged completely broke. However, instead of being trapped within my notions of how LA is painfully fake and meaningless, I realized there was a wealth of worthwhile discoveries lying before me - restaurants, bars, museums, and people who had once shared a similar disillusionment as I did. The difference was that they had eventually figured out their own niche, small or big, from which to carve their life from. And that’s what I needed to hear - that there was actually a way to navigate through life in LA, but the map was up to me to draw.
But I was still lost. I still had the same unfulfilling job, the same mindset of insecurity. A month, no matter how memorable, can’t cure several years’ worth of missed opportunities. I’m a very restless person, and I knew that taking whatever handouts came my way wasn’t going to satisfy me. I would have to stop settling and catch something more on my own. So I did what one of the people I met on my 30 days told me to do – I took a risk. A few rejections later, I figured it didn’t pay off. No matter, I just had to keep trying. I thought about moving out of LA to either Seattle, Chicago, or New York. I went to visit Chicago and came this close to falling in love with the city, but something held me back. It was this strange feeling that I never thought I would have - I had come to think of LA as home. When I got back from Chicago, I tried to list the pro’s and con’s of each city, but it came down to the irrational idea that I wasn’t ready to leave. This after telling a friend that she should move to Chicago for law school instead of staying in LA just because it’s always been home. Then, a few weeks later, a letter came in the mail. I was in denial for the next two days, not ready to believe that the risk I had taken a few months ago had actually paid off. So the decision had been made for me – I would be staying in LA, at least for the next 3 years. After several failed rounds of applications, I had finally gotten accepted into film school.
I’m pretty sure that 30 Day LA was one of the biggest reasons why I got accepted. At the end of my undistinguishing phone interview with one of the professors on the admissions committee, he asked me about 30 Day LA, which I had written about it in my personal statement. He seemed genuinely interested when I talked about my most outlandish experience (which wasn’t all that outlandish). So while I started this whole experiment to pull myself out of a long mental funk, it ended up helping me distinguish myself from a big pool of talented and equally deserving candidates.
The main thing that had changed between the time I started 30 Day LA and getting accepted into film school was my perspective. I now saw LA as a place to explore as opposed to this giant city in which I was trapped. Once I broke free from that mindset, I understood that if I felt bored or unfulfilled, it was on me, not anyone or anything else.
Now that I know my life is going to change drastically, I’m able to look at everything through a different lens. My boring job was actually like a 3 year vacation that I got to enjoy with a group of crazed alcoholic coworkers. It afforded me the luxury of free time that I could spend on photography or writing. I had carved out a decent life for myself, and I hadn’t even realized it.
As far as the blog – it will continue on. J.Bean is finishing up her 30 Day San Diego adventure. We have a new contributor who just moved to LA taking over the reigns in September. The 30 Date experiment will continue as well, a little slower than originally anticipated, but updates are soon to come. To commemorate my one year anniversary of 30 Day LA, I tried to ride my bike to work everyday. While I didn’t completely accomplish my goal, I did manage to cut my gasoline bill in half this month. All in all, a busy and productive year for both myself and this little website.
Despite everything, I’m still pretty worried – worried about paying for school, meeting new friends, proving myself in the classroom. And that’s not even mentioning the lifetime of struggles and hard work that will follow without any guarantee of success. I recently went home and visited a family friend who’s good with numbers. He calculated that it’s going to cost me at least a half million dollars in lost wages, debt, and investments in order to get my new career going. I scratched my head, plunged into a whirlwind of anxiety. A half million dollars. Not too bad, he said, interrupting my thoughts. It’s a chance to pursue my dream. A few years ago I would have deemed this kind of thinking foolish and reckless. But now, I figure it’s all a matter of perspective.
Recently I celebrated a birthday. Birthdays usually get me in a foul mood because I start reflecting on my past. I had picked a restaurant that I had never been to, a habit that still remains from a year ago. Looking at my friends across the dinner table, I thought about how much things change but also remain the same. My friends still call me angry and bitter. And perhaps I will carry some of that anger and bitterness with me for the rest of my life, but at least now I know that I’ll be able to find reasons not to be. I smiled, something that used to happen so rarely that it would shock people, as we all raised our glasses in unison. A toast to another year gone, and also to new beginnings.
