Life Has An Uncanny Ability to Surprise You

I've now been back in Virginia, in my mother's house, for almost 8 months. While I love my mother dearly and am glad I could be there for her, I need to get out. Twenty-something's aren't supposed to enjoy living with their parents, especially those who have escaped for brief spurts and lived in the so-called Real World, fighting for their independence and snatching it with a cigarette-laden hand.

I miss my L.A. friends, and I miss my apartment, sparsely furnished and decorated in a mix of college and young sophisticate trying to escape the posters aligned with youth.

The thing is, I'm happier now... maybe not so much on the social aspect of life, as I'm still working on the "friends" bit... trying to find a sector of people that match my own nerdiness while keeping up appearances with high school friends I have long since lost common ground with... but happiness in the direction my life is headed. Looking back on LA and the multitude of jobs I had there (which I've been doing by rereading journal entries as "research" for my LA memoir), I was depressed 85% of the time I was there. Most of my jobs were disheartening, and for awhile there, my apartment surfing left me without any real connections or warmth of a home.

Since moving back, I have steadily changed course in terms of my career and life, and have been pursuing a career in Education. I'm about a year from my Masters, and have been working with kids nonstop, though jobs at an after-school care, two summer camps, and finally a Paraprofessional position (Teacher's Aide/Instructional Assistant are also titles that work), working with autistic kids at an elementary school, and while it is exhausting and can be difficult work, these kids make everything worth it. The next step now is moving out.

I read somewhere once that in the entertainment industry, you can't have a backup career option, as more than likely, that's where you'll end up... something about knowing there's a way out, a different choice allows you the freedom to give up... whereas if that's all you could ever want to do, you're stuck in it for the long run. I couldn't do it... I couldn't be constantly on the search for work and couldn't deal with the egos and fabrication of the city, of the industry, and so I fell back on my backup.

I don't regret anything about living in LA, about trying to "make it". If I'd never done it, I would have always regretted not going, not giving it a shot. People can tell you how difficult it is until they're blue in the face, but you won't find out, you won't believe them until you actually try it. So I did. And I'm not ashamed of failing, like I once was.

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." - J.K. Rowling

I'm living proof, you never know where life will take you... what decisions will surprise you, how despite running from something out of fear, it has a way of catching up to you.