Tuesday, October 22, 2013

New Developments and a Fact About Bears

Hey there party people, welcome to the first-ever regularly-scheduled blog post. I guess Tuesday is when we'll be spending our romantic evenings together, which is perfect, because guess who accidentally ate too many Famous Amos cookies today and is lookin' for some good old-fashioned bloated snugglinnnnn'.

Exciting if not slightly terrifying things are happening in the world of Jessica, so get ready for a string of good news. Firstly, in thoroughly un-terrifying news, I recently joined the LA division of Shut Up & Write!, which means every week or so I'll be scooting off to some random location in LA to spend an hour or two shut upping and writing with a group of other writers. As much as I want to give myself pats on the back and high-fives and congratulatory secret handshakes, this doesn't garner any approval or feelings of productivity from me or anyone else unless I go to more than one meeting, and on a semi-regular basis. So don't send me presents just yet. But then hey, if you've accidentally hit the "1-click purchase" button for that fine Parisian cheese on Amazon already, I will accept any and all mail-cheese. (New catchphrase?)

Other news came up today, which was the offer of a job that doesn't involve frosting or hairnets. My internship boss is canning her personal assistant, and as the finest/only candidate within her immediate line of vision, I wound up being approached about stepping in. This is essentially the best-case scenario of an internship, happening a month before the internship is over. It's like being able to ride the ride while you're waiting in line.

I've found Escalator Land!
Would I take the job? Well, I mean, yeah. Will it be easy? Well, I mean, no. My boss is nice but she's also kind of crazy and wants to work with people who can read her mind. I can't read minds, BUT I'm exceedingly good at nodding my head like a slack-necked baby and chanting "Sure thing" with a cordial little inflection on the end. This, my friends, is the key to being a good personal assistant. Especially with this woman. She asks for things in the most unspecific way, which is frustrating when you're trying to do about 24 unspecific things at once. While being her paid personal assistant would up this to about 48 unspecific things, it would also up my salary enough to where I really don't care.

I will miss: having work so conveniently close to home, as well as being surrounded by awesome people in a low-stress environment laden with cakey goodness.

But I certainly won't miss: going home each day with just enough money to buy groceries. And wearing hairnets.

I'd also like my weekends back, thx.


I'd also like having one primary source of income. As of now, I make about half of my income from the bakery, half from tutoring, and half from selling meth to the Czech Republic. It would be nice to have... well, less jobs. That's not to equivocate that with having less work, since I would probably only have more.

BUTT.

This is offset by the other significant perks. For starters, I'd be working in a quasi-writing-related job! Can I get a friendly Samoan chest bump?? See, my boss very much likes my writing, which today is channeled into writing e-mails, but somewhere down the line could mean slipping a script her way and suggesting she film it. And in the meantime, I'd also just be working in entertainment in general, networking, and working on her film productions with significantly less schedule conflicts. My job wouldn't be keeping me from other opportunities because it in-and-of-itself would be an opportunity. So I'll be set. And then I'll just keep at the job until Tina Fey moves to Los Angeles and comes to the gala premiere of one of the plays my boss is putting on and we'll get to talking when we bump into each other at the shrimp cocktail table and we'll become lifelong friends and writing partners. Loren Bouchard will also be there, and he'll hand me a tray of homemade chocolate chip cookies that spell out, "Jessica, you're the most amazing comedy writer the world has ever known and you and Tina Fey should let me join your team of comedy genius." And you know what? They'll be the most delicious chocolate chip cookies known to man. Seriously, Loren Bouchard uses molasses in his recipe.

Now that you've listened to me completely convince myself into taking this job, come hear me obnoxiously gush to myself about all the other wonderful things that are happening for my career. For one thing, a new location has potentially been found for the graduate film I'm PD-ing all over, and I'll hopefully be checking the place out this week. Best part about the location? That bitch is furnished. Since it's not a "movie ranch" but an actual ranch-ranch, the country look is built right in, and I don't have to coordinate three trucks filled with couches and cowhide-upholstered bar stools.

Heffer-tless style.

And finally, the last cool development in Job Land is being approached to make a small promo-slash-commercial type dealio. See, my younger sister informed me today that she was recently hired as a "promo girl" for this dude who sells gun safes. I'll allow you just as long a pause as I took to process that information. Anyway, apparently he told her he's looking for someone to write and create a video promoting his product, so she hooked a sista up and passed my name along. If I do this, this may top the YMCA pool commercial in terms of being the most random film-related shit I've ever done. But again, getting paid to write/direct/film things: boo-too-da-yaw.

People use the internet to exaggerate the good things happening in their lives and draw attention to their successes. I am an insanely guilty party in general, and this particular post is the quintessential example. So I just wanted to toss in the disclaimer that my life seems to be going well but I am still far from livin' la vida perfecta. For one thing, I'm still not doing nearly enough writing (except weekly blog posts, apparently). I have a sort of Catholic guilt when it comes to not-writing, but I imagine it was the same for all those priests, and that didn't stop them from molesting altar boys. Another big thing is that I don't have nearly enough time to see my main squeeze anymore, ever. I haven't seen that dude in like... 3 weeks? A month? Which makes me as sad-ually frustrated. Hoping I get to see him tomorrow, and wishing I could just plug my butt up with leaves and hibernate until the next time we're able to hang out.

...I shit you not, that's what bears do. I saw it on a nature documentary at an impressionable enough age to where I don't think I'll ever forget it. Bet you didn't know this blog would be so educational.



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