It's hard to believe that only two weeks have passed since I left my job. I feel like an ex-con who has just been released from prison and doesn't know what to do with all of the freedom. Should I wash the car? Go see a movie? Do some laundry? Maybe take another nap?
In fact, the first thing I did on the day after I quit was to go back in to work. And considering I didn't have an access card any more, that wasn't so simple. But I had to do it. There was one last thing that needed taking care of. And me being the overly-responsible control freak that I am, I just had to set things right.
The whole last week went pretty smoothly, actually. I had anticipated that certain lawyers would wait until the last minute to hand-off some loose ends and had kept my plate fairly clean just in case. I spent quite a bit of my time boxing up old cases and sending them to storage or to the trash heap. All in all, I marked about 75 boxes for destruction and at least another 50 for storage. Gives you an idea of what my office looked like.
I did get put on one new project during my last week, but managed to wrap it up before the deadline. Or so I thought. About midway through the week, the partner in charge came to me and said there was suddenly some additional work that needed to be done and asked if I could come in the following week to finish it up. I told him I was already booked up. Fortunately, I managed to dump it on someone else. I wouldn't want to leave anybody in the lurch.
My last day I finished up everything on my list before lunch and it looked like I would be able to coast the rest of the day. No such luck. When I came back from lunch, I found out that my boss needed me to sign a declaration attesting to the authenticity of a chart I had prepared that was being filed in court. The only problem was, when I read the declaration, it didn't describe what I had actually done. And rather than change the declaration to fit the facts, it was decided to change the facts to fit the declaration. No, nobody had to lie. I just had to go through the process that was described in the declaration, i.e. read through a 75 page document and compare it to my chart for accuracy. But first I had to find the document. This is all standard stuff, of course, but IT WAS MY LAST DAY! All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. Now I was stuck doing some bullshit declaration. And I was running out of time.
I found a copy of the document online, raced through it and made sure my chart was right. Double checked my chart. Printed out the declaration, signed it, and emailed it to our San Francisco office. I ended up fifteen minutes late to my exit interview, where I received my final paycheck as well as my surplus vacation pay (sweet!) and then I was done. DONE.
I made the rounds to say goodbye to certain special friends and co-workers, apparently wearing the biggest smile they had ever seen on me. A few of us went to a bar afterwards for a beer or two. Then we grabbed a slice of pizza. I had to pick up my car before the parking garage closed and, finally, I was on my way home. I was free. It felt... funny. I should have been ecstatic, or at least relieved. But instead I felt distracted and numb. Maybe it takes a while to hit you.
It hit me the next morning, when I woke up and realized that I had forgotten to leave the original signed copy of the declaration. It needed to be sent to court to be substituted for the copy I had emailed. But how would I get into the office? What a great way to start my new life, filled with anxiety, anger and fear.
As it happens, I had sent out a farewell email giving my home email address to my co-workers. One of these fine folks, who had been out on Friday, was in the office Saturday morning and had responded to my email with a nice note. I called him immediately and asked how long he would be in the office. He agreed to let me in, so I raced downtown, got into the office and placed the missing declaration on the chair of the secretary who would file it with the court. The whole process took about an hour and when I was finished, a wave of relief flowed through my mind and flooded me with satisfaction, peace and happiness. Now I was truly outta there.
I drove home feeling more relaxed than I can ever remember feeling. Not even the freeway bothered me. I went to lunch at Irv's and spent the rest of the day cleaning the bathroom. I even bought a new shower curtain.
The next day I woke up feeling great. My only problem was what to do. Go for a walk? See a movie? Take a swim? It was too much to think about, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
HWD
There is a pivotal scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid in which Butch and Sundance are standing on the edge of a cliff. They have been pursued by a mysterious group of men who have chased them across the desert, tracked them through water and over rocks, and finally trapped them on the cliff. There is no way out. They can either stay and fight, or they can jump. Two hundred feet below them is a rushing, rock-filled mountain stream. It looks treacherous at best.
Butch suggests that they jump. Sundance disagrees, he wants to stay and fight it out. Butch points out that their enemy is moving to higher ground and will soon have them caught in a deadly crossfire. Sundance doesn't care, he won't jump. Butch reminds him that the enemy has rifles and unlimited ammunition, whereas he and Sundance have only six-shooters and a handful of bullets left. Sundance won't budge.
Butch is frustrated. Why is Sundance so intent on fighting a losing battle?
Sundance glares at him, "I can't swim!"
Butch laughs, "Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya."
This scene has been running through my mind lately in response to something my sister said to me the other day: "Jump and the net will appear." She was referring to my recent decision to quit my job. You see, I don't exactly have a plan in mind. I just decided it was time to move on. It's been a long time coming. About a year and a half ago I got so fed up at work one night, I literally packed up all of my stuff and was ready to walk out. I decided to wait and ended up taking off a few 'mental illness' days instead. Two other times since then I have reached my boiling point and once I even got as far as my car. Both times, cooler heads convinced me to reconsider. But this time was different.
One of the things that had always prevented me from leaving was that I kept waiting for the right time. We were always in the midst of one crisis or another and it never seemed like a good time to make an exit. Finally, a friend pointed out that if I wait for the right time, it will never arrive. I have to choose the time and let the chips fall where they may. As it turns out, now that I've made my decision to leave, things seem fairly mellow at work. Almost pleasant.
Almost.
Perhaps the biggest factor in arriving at my decision was the creation of the "Hollywood Dick" blog. For years people have been telling me to collect my various monthly newsletters and "do something" with them. I'm not sure if they meant for me to throw them out or try and get them published, but I did want to at least try and assemble them in a cohesive format of some kind. Then one day I was reading my sister's blog, called Writing Out Loud (good title) and I thought, "hmm.. I wonder how one gets oneself a blog?" Turns out, all you have to do is sign up. So I created the HWD blog and set about archiving all of the old newsletters. It wasn't as easy as I thought, since I hadn't actually kept them all. But I did manage to piece together a fair number and what I couldn't find I got from my sister. (She's the organized one.)
As I read through the newsletters, looking for typos and such, I became reacquainted with the guy who quit his temp paralegal job back in NYC and headed out for Hollywood to become a screenwriter. He was full of high hopes, crazy dreams and big ideas. He had a plan and a goal. He had saved up a little money and was going to devote all of his time to succeeding at his quest. He met a lot of people, sent out a bunch of scripts, learned as much as he could and all the while kept on writing.
Pretty soon the money ran out and he had to get a job. But he didn't let it slow him down. Well maybe a little. He kept writing though. Kept meeting people. Kept sending out those scripts. Kept dreaming.
He made a short film and fell in love with the whole experience of filmmaking. He wanted to make more films. It was hard to find the time. He went to film festivals and writer's conferences and felt like he had finally found the place he belonged. He kept trying to balance his two lives, the paralegal and the screenwriter. Almost by accident he got involved with music again, something he had always loved but had left by the wayside when he moved to L.A. Now he was balancing three lives.
At one point he got very ill. His doctor wasn't able to help him very much. He was just plain exhausted. He kept working, writing, playing music. But it was such a struggle sometimes. He wondered if he would ever feel normal again.
Luckily, he hit upon a cure for his ailment and after about a year of downtime he started getting his energy back. The band was now taking up a lot of his time. His job had become more and more stressful. He was still writing screenplays, but he wasn't really sending them out anymore as he had run out of people to send them to. A couple of people had asked him to work on projects. One even offered him money. He agreed to work on them in the hopes that by collaborating it would take some of the burden off his shoulders. He never did see any money, though.
By now he was so far off track he couldn't even figure out how he got where he was.
I remembered that guy, the one from the beginning of the story. He really believed in himself. He knew he was going to make it. He wasn't going to let anything get in his way. But something did get in the way. Life. Things just keep happening, you get a job, you meet some people, you get sick, you join a band, you try to do everything all at once. But you can't.
I realized that sometimes the thing that you are doing to help you achieve your goal becomes an obstacle. I needed a job to pay the rent so I could keep writing screenplays. The job was always supposed to be temporary. In fact at first it was literally a temp job. Then it turned into a "permanent" job. Then it turned into a monster.
So here I am at the edge of the cliff, working without a net. My enemies have me in their sights. It's time to jump.
Hope I can swim.
HWD
I am always waiting for something. All my life I have been waiting for one thing or another. Waiting for Santa. Waiting for my birthday. Waiting for school to be over. Waiting to turn sixteen. Waiting for some girl to finally let me see her naked. Waiting for just the right moment. Waiting for the light to change. You would think with so much experience that I would have gotten used to it. But I have never gotten used to it. I hate it. Oh sure, I have developed certain strategies to try and deal with the annoyance of waiting. These are mostly distractions. I have become quite good at crossword puzzles. I like to read. Sometimes I exercise. But mostly I just play mind games with myself.
A couple of months ago, I decided to take some time 
off from work and write a draft of a screenplay based on a book about the Cuban missile crisis called October Fury. A producer had offered me some money to write it, but I got tired of waiting for the money so I just went ahead and wrote it. As it turned out, two days after I completed the draft, the producer pitched the idea to a big-shot at Touchstone Pictures. The big shot seemed very interested and asked to see a screenplay. Suddenly we needed a screenplay and fortunately, I had one.
I spent one more week going over the draft to clean it up, then sent it out to the author of the book, his agent, the producer and our inside man, an exec at Disney/Touchstone who hooked us up with the big-shot. Then I waited. Would they like it? Would there be a lot of changes? Would they let me know what I needed to change in time for me to turn it around? We had promised the script to the big-shot by a certain date. And we certainly didn't want to keep him waiting.
As it happened, I had plenty of distractions lined up for this week of waiting. The Buzzards had a rehearsal and a show coming up. And my lovely Italian muse, Laura, was in town. Rehearsal went well, the gig was great -- Laura was there. Laura and I spent a wonderful day together at the Lake Shrine. I actually stopped obsessing about the script for a whole day.
Of course, the next day, I was back to checking my email every five or ten minutes, waiting for some kind of response to my draft. I sent out a reminder that we only had one more week to play with if there were going to be a lot of changes. I waited. The next day I woke up with a fever. I spent two days in bed, getting up every couple of hours to check my email. Still nothing.
Finally, on Friday, three days before the deadline, I heard from the author who forwarded an email from his agent saying the script was "very professional." I guess that means it was O.K. He didn't actually say he liked it, but he didn't suggest any changes either. That night the producer called and told me our inside man liked the script and had one suggestion -- the addition of a short scene to clarify the plot. I was still pretty groggy from fever, but I managed to hack out a decent scene. I sent the revised draft out on Saturday night. Sunday I slept all day. On Monday, I got a call from the producer telling me that the script had been delivered to Touchstone. Now the real waiting begins.
This guy at Touchstone is an executive VP. That means he only answers to one person, the head of Disney, Nina Jacobs. If he likes the script he shows it to her. If she likes it my whole life changes forever. Even the fact that this guy is going to be reading my script is a pretty huge break for me. It is potentially the biggest opportunity I have ever had. It could mean the realization of everything I have devoted the past ten years of my life to. It would make all of the sacrifice worthwhile. It would erase all of the doubt, the guilt and the shame of my frivolous existence. It would mean validation and recognition and encouragement after years of failure, solitude and fear.
Or not.
So I wait. Weeks have gone by. The Buzzards played another gig. I came down with bronchitis. Laura went back to Rome. No word from Touchstone. I bought some CDs to play in the car and learn Italian. I haven't listened to them for two weeks. The Buzzards have no new gigs scheduled. I've gone through a stack of crossword puzzles. I check my email constantly.
My friend Glen called the other day. Glen works at Phoenix Pictures and wants to produce his own movie. He pitched me an idea and I liked it. In fact, I was working on it when the October Fury project came up. I had gotten about halfway through a draft and then got tangled up in the other thing. Glen had been in New York for a while and just got back. He and I started brainstorming about our script -- we seem to have developed a method where he throws out an outrageous idea that I think is a joke and somehow it ends up being a perfect scene for the script. He got me back into the story. I had left all of those characters hanging to work on this other project that I was supposed to get paid for. I had left Glen hanging too. I guess he has been waiting for me. He has other projects going on too, but I know he has a lot riding on this one. So instead of waiting for Touchstone, I could be creating another opportunity.
Huh...
I guess I have a lot of work to do.
HWD
