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Posts tagged as “Trips”

NYTVF 2015 is a go.

I have booked my plane tickets for New York City, JFK.
Virgin America style.

In case you missed the news, I’ll be heading this October to the 2015 New York Television Festival as one of their “Official Artists“!
This is thanks to my awesome finish at this year’s JHRTS Pilot Script Competition.

And speaking of festival business…

Remember the very tight draft deadline from last week? Well, I’m currently working on a pitch document for the same project. The deadline I’m aiming? This week-end. Only a few hours left.

Of course, I’ll be posting about my ongoing NYTVF experience down the line, including more details about what exactly I’m doing right this second (hint: I’m procrastinating).

Things are about to get quite interesting.

5 years in Hollywood (and the USA)!

5 years in Hollywood (and the USA)!

Today marks my official 5-year anniversary of living in Los Angeles. Hollywood. La la land. The city of broken dreams.

Five years ago (August 6, 2010), I moved out to LA from France not only without a car, but without a driver’s license. Or friends. After all, I’m a foreigner!

The first six months without a car were not great. And not just because “it’s LA” or because I didn’t know anyone.

Like many people, my first apartment–or sublet in this case–was horrid.
It was supposed to be furnished. When I got the place, I finally realized that, yes, there was a bed, a fridge, a stove…but that was it.
No sheets. No pillows. No utensils. No nothing.
Within the first 48 hours, I had to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy a ton of basic stuff I probably didn’t need, and then lugged it all the way back to to my place across town. In a bus. It was ridiculous.

As it turned out, the previous tenant also forgot to mention she had a certain moth infestation going in her closets.
Most of the clothes I had brought with me were destroyed within the first three months. Lovely.

Why am I telling this story now?

Well, for one thing– Holy shit! 2010 was FIVE YEARS AGO!

More importantly, I wrote about it during my very first update on my life in LA. Thinking about it again today made me ponder about how fleeting things are. More specifically, the famous adage that “life is what happens while we’re making other plans.” The good, and certainly the bad.
I didn’t expect the crap that I got. No one was there to drive me around and do my bidding (still no words on that last one). But I survived. I made it through. (Sort of.)

You can make due with what you have right now, but you still need to keep pushing forward.

Five years on, I’m still trudging my way through this town and the beast that is the entertainment industry. Cracking doors, knocking pavements, or something else that sounds like doing work.

Let me ask you something trite: where do you see yourself in five years?
Or how about: Where DID you see yourself in five years?

Nina Bargiel recently wrote a Medium article that caught my attention.
What hit home for me was this little bit:

There is an arbitrary line in the sand that we give ourselves:
By [age] I will have figured out [giant, important thing.
By 26 I will have figured out my career.
By 32 I will have figured out my love life.
By 41 I will have figured out my health.
This is a mathematical equation that is near-impossible to solve. Because all of the big stuff: work, love, health, involves hard work, yes, but it also needs a little bit of luck to make it through.

That impossible mathematical equation on life is something I’m still struggling with.
However many years later, I’m still getting used to the fact that, no, life isn’t a checklist with expiration dates attached to it.

We drive ourselves insane by setting arbitrary goals in the hopes of getting a packaged, predetermined life.
Yes, it’s nice to have aspirations and targets, but part of the journey (at least mine) is realizing not everything can be “controlled”, “scheduled”, “figured out”, or, you guessed it, “planned out”.

Life isn’t a biopic, or an autobiography, or a three-act structure, or a climactic hero’s journey.
As Opus once said: Life is life.

Five years strong. Let’s keep it going.
Here’s the next half-decade, and many more to come!

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Over the past few months, I have received a few e-mails asking me where I’ve been, where I’ve gone, what happened to me.
One message even pondered (rhetorically?) if I was dead. Spoiler alert: not yet — unless this is all part of some weird meta/viral campaign for a new Syfy show about hunting ghosts online.

I admit, there has been a lack of posting on my part, both on the site, as well as through the Twitterverse (At least I used to be a little more chatty).

The truth is that I haven’t been feeling that great for a while (understatement).
Shawna over at Shouting into the Wind calls it “the dark cloud.”
In fact, she wrote an amazing piece almost two years ago about her own struggle with clinical depression.
Although I don’t have an MDD, I had my own bout with depression last year.

But no Debbie Downers here!
This post isn’t about the past, it isn’t about filling a creative fetish of “artists must suffer to be good”, and it’s certainly not about having a pity party.

Reality is that most of us writers have been at some point in a dark place and/or through dark times.
And when you get there, the drive to be creative dissipates. And then you don’t want to talk or reply to anyone.
You end up settling into a rut. Alone. A vicious downward spiral.

During the holidays, I took a 3-week break to go back to Europe. It was the first time I had been back there since moving to Los Angeles (for those not keeping track, that’s almost four years ago). London, Paris, Metz, Strasbourg, Anglars. Lots of cities in a few days.
Even with Skype or Facebook, there’s nothing that rivals seeing family and old friends in person again. Needless to say, it was quite a trip.
Earlier this week, I returned to LA.
After all these months, I feel like I’m finally starting to get back on my feet.

This entry may be getting a little intimate, but A TV Calling started out as a personal blog. A log of my journey into this unique industry.
Over the years, there’s a bond that forms between a writer and a reader. On some level, you can call it trust.
I wanted to acknowledge the reason behind my absence. Firstly, out of respect for my readership.
But I also wanted needed to show that there’s a life outside these posts. This isn’t usually the stuff people shout from rooftops, yet words on a page don’t always explain what’s going on “in real life”.

Despite my lack of response and presence in the past few months, I am truly touched by the feedback and letters I’ve been getting, on and off the blog.
A writer never wants to write in a vacuum, and having people read and comment on/about one’s content is galvanizing, to say the least.
I love you guys.

There’s a saying from Galaxy Quest that I’ve always appreciated: “Never give up. Never surrender.”
It may sound a bit trite, but it’s still very pertinent.
We are who we are, not because of the result of our victories, but because of the way we handle our defeats.
This is an idea that can easily get lost in the abyss of this industry.
I was glad to get out of here for a few weeks mainly because it is hard to get any perspective when you’re in the middle of it.
And then you return. You get up. You try to face your problems as best you can. The hopeless road may not be as hopeless as it previously seemed.

And the last step could be to write this rambling post.
Maybe none of it made sense. Maybe this is just another meaningless comeback in the life of this site.
But you know what? Fuck it.

I’m back.

P.S.: To all those wondering, the 2014 Spec Script list will be posted somewhere around March(-ish).