Earthquakes and Sabotage

So here I am, a week and a day away from my scheduled flight to return to Arizona, and I am living in two parallel worlds.  World A, where I return home and get to hang out with Gary and Ang and my various wacky friends and everything is back to ‘normal’ (except, of course, that I no longer have a “day job”), and World B, where I really just don’t want to leave New York City.  Like, ever again.  It hurt to leave the first time when I was just here visiting as a dorky tourist, and now that I’ve been living here amongst the Sovereign Nation of New Yorkers (that’s sort of the opposite of the People’s Republic of California) for three glorious months, I know that when I hail that final cab to take me to LaGuardia, I’m going to feel my skin being ripped away from my bones, dragged along Lexington Avenue, and snagged in the spurs of the Triborough Bridge as the taxi rolls farther and farther away from the Manhattan skyline.

Whoa, that’s like, really melodramatic.  And kinda gross.

What I’m trying to say is, it really will feel like a part of me is being ripped apart, because so much of me wants to stay here.  And when I get home, I’ll have, like, lesions on my soul, man.  No, really.  Stop scowling and rolling your eyes.  Your face could freeze like that some day.

But hey.  Some people leave their entire hearts in San Francisco.  So at least my heart will be completely intact by the time I return to my sweet husband, because I left it back in Flagstaff for him to take care of.

I know – sappy, isn’t it?  You’re getting nauseous, you say?  It’s because you keep rolling your eyes.  Stop it.

But seriously, folks, it’s been a wild ride.  Lord knows I wish I could stay, but the job search is just going to have to continue from the comforts of my Arizona mountain home with my dog at my feet and my cat splayed across my keyboard (she does that; you know – cat) while I Google myself silly looking for more job openings to grovel about.

*cue angelic choir music*

For a few days, however, there was a snag in the now-implemented Fallback Plan.  I saw an internship opportunity arise with the Upright Citizens Brigade.  A DREAM internship, in fact.  Well, dreamy enough – it basically involves working as a production assistant and filming their performances, editing their comedy shows, doing general administrative stuff, that sort of thing.  I was all like, wow – that sounds completely AWESOME!  And based on the fact that the UCB is pretty much the most nationally recognized and well-respected comedy venue in the whole wide world (that’s what their website says anyway), I thought, this could be IT!  The experience and “connections” with the real-world entertainment industry that I’ve been waiting for.  Yes, folks, these kids are in cahoots with the likes of SNL, Comedy Central, and all the important people in the world like that. 

So I hunkered down and applied.  Wrote up a beautiful cover letter based on the job description exactly, and the more I wrote, the more I realized, wow – I really am qualified for this; they just might call me! 

So I polished off the cover letter, attached the resume, and sent it off.  Then I sat there and stared at my “sent” box for about an hour, all giddy with myself.  All the while having horribly mixed feelings about having to leave Gary behind in Arizona for another semester, but thinking that this could be the big break we’re looking for – the one that might eventually lead to getting us BOTH out of Dodge and on with our lives together.

And then, just yesterday morning out of the sheer blue sky, I suddenly realized: the email describing the internship gave explicit instructions to write a cover letter based on what you expect to get out of the internship.  My cover letter just described why I’m insanely qualified.  Not one sentence did I provide that gave them any inclination of what I expected to get out of it.  So basically, I sent them a cover letter that just said, “Hey!  I couldn’t follow directions even if I was standing in the middle of Times Square and looking for Broadway, but I think you should trust me to run all your video equipment and let me play around with your show footage anyway!”

*slapping forehead repeatedly*  Stupid!  Stupid!  Stupid!

My excuse:  I’ve written so many cover letters over the past two months that I think I got locked into that way of thinking, and literally could not see the sentence in the email notice that said, and I quote, “If you are interested, please send (so and so) your resume and a cover letter detailing what you'd like to gain from the internship.”  I saw everything but that, as I dutifully and industriously tracked back and forth between Word and my email client, consulting the email repeatedly to make sure I addressed each and every point of the position and why I’m just hands-down the perfect candidate, baby – yeaah.  It was made for me, this internship; oh, beHAVE.

OR, there’s another possibility:  “Self-Sabotage”.  The ‘SS’ of our subconscious that gets in the way of what we think we want out of life, and says, “Naaah, you’ve gone completely bonkers, lass.”  (my subconscious is apparently a surly Irishman who’s always hopped up on Guinness)  “Who the heck are ya,” he went on, “…to think you could hang with the likes of people who might actually know people who know people like Amy Poehler -- or that you should even dare to think of yerself as one of the It crowd, the cool kids, the class clowns that ye so admired in grammar school.  Get over it and go home to your husband, lassie, and buy yourself a house dress… and for God’s sake, learn how to wax the floors.” 

My subconscious is a very talkative, very cynical drunk.

Sigmund Freud is the dude who came up with the whole “self-sabotage” term, but he also snorted hordes of cocaine and said that dreaming about boats meant you had an unconscious desire to have sex with your aging psychology professor who smokes cigars – or something like that.  So, you know, I’m sticking to my first theory that I got stuck in the mode of writing traditional cover letters and could not be rehabilitated to write this particular one any other way.

On second thought, self-sabotage at least sounds a little more glamorous…

Oh well.  That was fun.  So back to Plan A – which of course coincides with World A:  Going home to the husband and pretending that everything’s going to be okay.  That something will “come up” and I’ll magically find that “big break” that I need to get hired somewhere even without having networked sufficiently (the UCB might actually have turned out to be a most fantastic networking opportunity, but, alas, I blew it).  Flagstaff doesn’t exactly have that “network” of connections that could get me hired at NBC, MTV, HBO, or any of those fancy places that I so covet.  (It’s just a coincidence that all of the employers I mentioned are based in New York City.  No, really.  Shut UP!) 

But in addition to the internship application, I did actually apply to a few positions that I felt were worth my time to pursue.  And if one of them calls me for an interview, I’ll be on a plane back to NYC so fast that… that you can turn the light off in your bedroom and I’ll be on that plane before the room gets dark.  Eat that, Chuck Norris. 

So I’m sure you’re all dying to ask, “Didja feel the earthquake?”  Heck yeah I felt it.  In fact I was in a basement office located inside an old building in the TriBeCa district on Worth & Broadway, just a couple of blocks from the Court House.  It was like a weird rumbling at first, then the floor sort of swayed back and forth for like, what seemed like 10 seconds or so.  Everyone was all, What the Hell?  And then one of my co-workers checked twitter and everyone was going nuts, so we knew it wasn’t just somebody spiking the coffee again.

The dynamics of how each person dealt with it were very interesting to observe.  Michael the Film Producer is from New York.  So he was the most weirded out by all of it.  The other two in the office at the time, Andrea and Matt, are both from California and were like, pshhh – whatev.  I, for one, was just busy thanking my lucky stars that it was natural caused, and not something else, being as how we’re inching up closer to that 10-year anniversary, plus whatshisbutt got “murdered” by us not too long ago, so there’s been a few threats out there – for real.  And not just against Letterman.

Then I heard that people were being evacuated (or more like evacuating themselves) all over Manhattan and the outers, but especially down in the Financial District (really, can ya blame ‘em?).  I wasn't sure what to think of this, though.  Seems to me that if there’s a minor earthquake, stuff will be falling down around you from a lot higher up if you’re hanging around outside.  If you’re inside, the books jiggle on the bookshelf, the coffee cup might go kerplunk and then kercrash.  But there are gables and steeples and spires all over the City, not to mention the precariously placed cement gargoyles and statues that literally loom on the edge, just waiting for an excuse to lop off their own head a la some scene right out of “Prophecy” and crash down on some unsuspecting sinner-monkey.  Nope, I’d prefer to stay inside, thankyouverymuch.  If the shaking continued or got any worse, of course, I’d start to wonder at the integrity of the building itself, but the little quakes like that are the ones that cause the pointy and plastery stuff on the tops of buildings to come crashing down.

"Just gimme a reason.  Any reason."

No one was hurt, according to the 6 pm news, so that’s good.  They say to expect aftershocks and whatnot… okie-dokie.  But when I got back to my room, everything was still exactly in its place.  I didn’t even have any books go jiggly off the shelves, and my coffee cup was intact exactly where I’d left it.

So there you have it.  I was in Manhattan when the quake hit.  You can tell people whom you want to impress that you know me if you want.  No autographs, please.