A letter to my sister

I just can't thank you enough for helping me train and using your resources to get me through this.  Nobody has ever been so nice to me or helped me so much with anything ever. A marathon is an important goal for anyone, but for me I'm sure you know it's the biggest most important thing I've ever done in my life, and even though training is difficult for me and my lifestyle I fully intend to continue for future races.

Training has changed who I am and who I want to be. It's shaped this whole new person that I always wished and never thought I could become. I still struggle every day with feeling that I'm somehow broken or can't have a normal happy life, but becoming an athlete--not just a runner, not just someone who will run a marathon once, but a real athlete--has taught me that I am not broken, I am strong. It's irrefutable proof that my strength of will can carry me through anything, even if it's sometimes hard, even if I sometimes don't want to do it, even if other people tell me I can't or shouldn't or I'm no good.  Even if I am broken and even if my life is never normal, I really can get through anything and there is no reason for me to give up hope, ever.

I thank you every time I run for giving me that gift. Every time someone tells me how great I look I thank you. Every time I sheepishly decline a drink because I have to run 15 miles the next day and someone looks at me in awe I thank you. Every time I "matter-of-factly" tell someone I'm in training I thank you. Every time I look in a mirror and see a woman I am proud and happy to be--a woman who was once hidden by fat and anger and shame--I thank you.

Whether I make it through the finish at 3:59:59 or if I break my foot and can't finish at all, coming this far is a great achievement.  I'm doing it for me, but I am inspired and motivated to do it because of you. I am proud to be your sister and so excited to be following in your tracks. I love you!

I want to go here.

The President is planning a trip there next spring. I know I (hopefully) get to go to India next spring, but I want to go to Machu Picchu anyway. I've always wanted to go. I want to go right now. This place looks amazing. I'd probably have to go here instead, but while I'm dreaming I may as well dream big.

Behold the Turtle.

When I signed up with my bank they charged a monthly fee for overdraft protection, which I thought was bullshit. In lieu of paying six dollars monthly I got in the good habit of checking my account online once every couple of days, figuring if something ever did go wrong the chance of a thirty dollar fee was better than having to pay seventy-two dollars annually guaranteed. The other day I logged in and suddenly I wasn't so sure.

Oops. I overdrafted my checking account because I accidentally scheduled a bill payment a day earlier than I ought to have. The bank charged me thirty bucks. Later that day I deposited money to cover the bill (not knowing it had already been drawn from my account), then because of the fee and because I made my deposit after 5:00 (my budget is tight right now) the account overdrafted again when my other bills went through the next morning. The bank charged me another thirty bucks. When I went to monitor my account I was shocked and upset to see $60 in bank fees! The first time was my mistake, I admit it, but the second time would never have happened without the first fee! Distraught, I called my bank's India office to ask if they could refund the second charge. The nice lady actually refunded ALL the fees and also informed me that overdraft protection no longer comes with a monthly fee, now they only charge if you actually go over. So we got me all signed up and protectified.

The point is that I got sixty bucks back by calling in and asking for thirty. All I had to do was make a tiny effort and show some initiative and not only did I get what I wanted, I got double!

It doesn't always work out to double but I'm finding that the "Just do it" method is the one that has given me the greatest success in my endeavors, whereas trying to take smaller steps to slowly build toward what I want has gotten me diddly. Wanna move to New York City? Don't move somewhere else first just to try your luck at city living, just effing move to New York City. Wanna work in the movies? Don't do other stuff for ten years while you put yourself through film school, just go work in the movies. It's time to apply this principle again, because I'm getting restless with PA life.

I have come to call this way the Bell Method, after the UPM on my current job explained that he became a production manager by just doing it rather than by working his way up the chain. Working with a gaggle of production executives (from the L.A. based company that funded the show) who are barely older than me, his point really hit home. Why resign myself to years of toiling away collecting set days to become an A.D. when ultimately I want to go further than that? If I want to produce a movie, why can't I just produce one?

The first roadblock that pops into my head is money. I don't have the money. Where would I get the money? How do I convince people to trust me with a bucketful of money (yes, I know, don't overdraft my bank account--but that was an isolated incident, I swear!)? How do I distribute the money? How do I make people think I already know the answers to all these questions??

The second roadblock is content. This one is a little easier for me, since I work with dozens of aspiring screenwriters. My daily grind is chock full of people like me who have talents and knacks and know-how but lack opportunity. Nobody, I have come to realize, is going to give any of us an opportunity unless we're supremely lucky. So why not create one out of the resources available to us? If you build it, they will come.

The third roadblock is the nagging insecurity that tells me I have no business trying to make a movie. Who do I think I am, Barbara Broccoli? I don't have the training or preparation. I don't have years of industry knowledge, I have one year of working in production offices and doing other odd jobs on film sets. I have never had a cost report meeting. I've never asked anyone for more than a couple hundred bucks. I've never been responsible for someone else's paycheck. And even if I get past that stuff, so what if I make some dinky little movie? What does it prove to have a DVD Of some video you put together with some friends? What production values can I really expect to achieve that anyone will actually give it a second thought?

Well you don't know unless you try, right? There are people who made it happen who had never set foot on a set before they made their first feature. If they can do it, why not me? And if I try, what's the most I could lose if I fail? Money? I barely have any to lose. Pride? I'm better off without it. Time? Better than losing time any other way. Respect? I respect failures far more than those who lack the mettle to try.

The turtle only makes progress when he sticks his neck out. It's time to be a brave turtle. It's time to try and get somewhere I'd like to be.

kyle the girl
(on iPhone)

Let the awesomeness flow from within.

Someone smart said to me today, "Stuff is simple if you let it be. Smart people complicate things as an excuse not to act."

Without even knowing it, he boiled down the entire Miss Adventurous philosophy into a sentence and reminded me of who I am.

I'm a smart people. No reason to start complicating things now, right? Right.

Additionally, The Salty One referred me to this Article about Just-In-Time thinking as opposed to Just-In-Case. (It's good. Go read it.)

All this smacks of that whole John Kabat-Zinn Wherever You Go, There You Are sort of mindfulness. I read some of his stuff a little over a year ago, and I still find comfort in closing my eyes and whispering "This is it."

It's three different messages that all express the same thing: instead of worrying so much about what could be, I should really just focus on what is. I'm having a hard time with that right now, perhaps because the job I'm on isn't that awesome, and I'm really wishing to move up to something different, something more challenging. It's hard to stay in the moment when you're not happy in so many of your moments. I've been placing a lot of pressure on myself to make all my moments outside of the job happy to compensate for not being happy in the job, scheduling dates and runs and friend time instead of relaxing and letting things flow. In doing so I'm really just making myself even more miserable. When things just happen organically they always turn out much better than expected anyway.


Well today I give myself a clean slate. Simplicity is my mantra for the week-month-year-life-whatever. Today I will quit putting so much pressure on myself to force awesomeness and just let the awesomeness flow from within.

Today I'm takin' it back...back to when I first got here, before I had my career, before I had any real solid friends, before I had superbly awkward moments in the back of taxicabs, back when I had no complaints because I was experiencing my life as my own for the very first time. Back then I had only three things that made me happy: running, dancing, and tooling around New York with love in my heart and a fool's grin on my face. And that's exactly what I plan to do today.

Thank you, Henry Miller.

My heart races as the train approached 7th Avenue. I put away Tropic of Cancer, which I brought to hypnotize myself into a state of calm during my commute. I sidle without apology past the big, puffy-coated brute who'd blocked me into my seat and leaped past an Asian woman trying to pretend her stroller wasn't in everyone's way. The doors have aligned perfectly with a staircase. I know there's an escalator, but it will be crowded with people. The stairs at this station once burned my thighs during a unit shoot for Friday Night Lights but now...now my legs feel lighter than air as I vault up the steps two by two. I see the blinking red hand as I ascend to the street and hurry aside a fat tourist woman to dash across Broadway before the light changes.

I climb the slight incline between 53rd and 54th streets and fly between oncoming cars and into the office door of the Ed Sullivan theater. I don't have my license so I lie to the guard that I'm going to the Mayor's Office without thinking, but she reminds me it's nearly six o'clock so they've gone for the day. I plead with her for a moment to let me run up and check if anyone is still in the DGA Training office. Please? She fussed to go check on a ruckus outside at the stage door. I consider sneaking onto the elevator but I don't know if it will be worth it and something about the slow old bird leaves me feeling at peace, so I'd just as soon not upset her.

She returns so slowly, settles herself in her chair and asks for something with my name on it. I fish around and turn up a maxxed out credit card that has sustained me in my unemployed state. She checks against the Mayor's database, fingers crawling. "Now where on earth did that return button go?" I am aching. My skin feels like it is going to crawl off my face and up under my colorfully knitted hat.

Finally she gives me the nod--she's spotted my pigtails from last April, grinning at her from the computer screen--and I am already in the elevator and on my way up, trying frantically to dig the paperwork out of my messenger bag. When the elevator doors open I see the familiar sixth floor hallway and for a moment I panic. Then I spot a color inkjet printout on a door: "DGA Training Applicants, please come in to submit your application." I hold my breath as I try the handle and nearly vomit when the latch opens.

"Hello?" the lobby looks deserted. "Yes," I hear from around the corner. I am glad I wore my nice coat and my matching scarf and hat. I am glad I changed into dress pants and wore sensible shoes. I wouldn't want anyone here to know I had been in my pajamas all day, frantically hammering away at my keyboard to make sure every letter, every comma, every line break and hyphen are in the correct places. I see a tall, slim woman with a shock of grey hair and a lovely smirk on her face and breathlessly blubber at her that I'd like her to take this from me, please. "You're lucky I'm here," she quips with that smirk and one wagging eyebrow. I smile.

"I would have postmarked it."

She dismisses me and I turn, not giving myself time to think about it. I feel like I am walking six inches above the ground, and my cushion of air bounces me to the elevator doors where I push the call button. Suddenly the door behind me clicks open and the shock of grey hair is there again, eyebrows wagging over wide, curious eyes. "Are you related to J---?"

"Yes, actually, I'm her niece," I admit. Without realizing it fully I hope that my application will not be at any disadvantage because of this information. I suddenly wish the elevator doors would open with no car there, that I could just step through them and plummet down to the basement floor, land on my feet, and walk out underneath the Ed Sullivan theater. I imagine briefly the faces on the audience members of the David Letterman Show as I rise through a trap door in the stage floor, grinning and waving while the band plays the theme song to Miss Adventurous.

"That was the right answer by the way," the woman says with a wink.

"The right answer...?" I still cannot breathe. I am kissing Dave hello. I am running up the aisles shaking all the hands that are sticking out of the audience.

"That you would have postmarked it." She smiles warmly at me and gives a nod before her hair disappears through the door again.

Ding! The elevator door slides open.

Skydiving, or, How Do I Afford My Rock 'n Roll Lifestyle

I was buried in a pile of office supplies to inventory and paperwork to update, but I was working on my resume. Payroll plopped herself down on my desk, nibbling on a string cheese. "I want to go skydiving."

I perked up.

My boss, the President, chimed in: "It's fun! Go to SkydivingRanch.com and you can check out the place I go.". The Pres is like the sweetest little woman ever. I'd even describe her demeanor as dainty...and yet she skydives regularly. But that's just her...she surprises me so often with her non-daintiness that I just expect it now. It's part of why I like her so much.

Payroll hopped down and scurried into her office and I popped right in behind her, crouching to read over her shoulder as she browsed the Ranch's website. I was tingly with excitement, knowing that Payroll is just as nutty as I am for extremes. She'd never wuss out on me and she wouldn't let me wuss out on her. This conversation had launched a great moment in my adventurous life. Then I asked.

"How much?"

"$200. Not bad, if you have a job lined up."

We looked at each other and laughed nervously.

"Maybe when we get hired for the next one," I said. I patted her shoulder and slipped out of the room.