image
image
image
image
image
image
image

One thing that’s frustrating to me about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is how Rebecca just heeds the signs on a whim. A quick time-jump and voila, she’s moved coast to coast, from NYC to West Covina, with a place to live and a new job. And someone like her, a successful New York lawyer who walks away from a job that would pay $545,000 a year (!!!), could do that, I suppose. Movies and TV shows often idealize the pursuit of one’s dreams, the following of one’s destiny, and don’t deal with the nitty gritty of what doing so actually entails. Just do it. Just go for it. Easy. But for most of us, if we’re privileged enough to be able to “obey” the signs at all–and many of us aren’t–the process of doing so is itself one of tremendous labor, commitment, and risk. 

About 12 years ago I felt like it was time for me to get out of Los Angeles. The Bay Area felt like it would be a safer, better place for me to move forward with my transition, and I also felt like the professional opportunities I was looking for were here. But making that change took months and months of work and devotion, lining up a job, relying on L.A. friends for assistance with the journey up and then relying on Bay Area friends for a place to stay until I was able to find one of my own. And it felt like I was risking everything. Now, of course, I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I’d stayed in L.A. My transition happened here. I found the professional opportunities I was looking for here. Heeding the signs to come here seems like it was essential in moving my life forward. But it was a process. It was work. And it was fear. Confronting fear with a kind of faith. 

My recent trip to New York gave me a lot to think about. Is there still momentum in my life here? Is this where I want to stay? If someday I decide it’s time to make another change like I did 12 years ago, it won’t just be a quick time-jump as my life is effortlessly transplanted to a new place. An essential part of the story will be the how of it all. The work involved. The risk. The people who help make it happen.