TheBanyanTree: How to ReInvent Your Life in Twelve Weeks of Summer: a work of fiction

[TLW]

I am writing this fun Chick Lit novel, and have finally gotten far
enough ahead that I feel I shall continue.  So I can begin to post
parts of it here, for my favorite group of friends.  I hope some of it
makes you smile.  (And Monique,missy,  I am looking at YOU.)  :-D

______________

WEEK ONE

Okay, so here's the thing.  I've had what most people would call a
really interesting life.  So far.  I grew up in Texas and had friends
and a boyfriend and everything,  but one day I just threw my life
there overboard and ended up in Los Angeles.  ("Ended up?" What am I,
dead?)  I am a twin, which people seem to find fascinating.  I wrote a
movie that you probably haven't seen but you probably HAVE heard of.
It was Sean Young's big comeback vehicle.  "Who?" you say.  Never
mind.  Let's just say the whole project didn't work out exactly as
planned.  I ended up (There it is again.  Ended up.  Geez.  Geez and
crackers.) right smack in the middle of the bottom of the list of top
screenwriters in Hollywood.  Which -- you'll just have to trust me on
this one -- totally sucks.

I have been envied my whole life.  That is, I like to think I've been
envied my whole life.  Okay.  What I mean is, I have recently realized
that I have consistently designed my whole life to be envied.  And
somewhere along the way, I missed out on the whole Be Happy thinger.
So dig this:  Beginning this week, I am going to take the summer off
from being envied.  I am going to figure out what makes me happy, and
I am not going to give a damn what other people think.

Just for the summer.  I can do that for one summer, right?  That's
twelve weeks, okay?  Because I am so abosolootly DONE with thinking
there must be something wrong with me because I cry at the least
little thing -- I mean, a Lost Cat poster will set me off --  and
everyone else thinks my life totally rocks.  Although actually  maybe
it does totally rock.  Maybe I'll find out that I really do enjoy
writing decent scripts for terrible Lifetime movies that do not get
produced.  Maybe I'm happy to pretend the producers and executives who
have to check with their assistants to remember my name before I enter
their office are my BFFs.  And the agent who acted like she was my
mother, for God's sake?  I'll pretend that she didn't get arrested for
fraud after telling clients that they never got paid when she actually
pocketed the fees, and then she auctioned off studio gifts to make
money to buy a cheese shop in the valley.  She now writes a column for
L.A. Magazine called "Say Cheese!"  There's a photo of her there,
beaming and holding a meat cleaver up in her fist. I do not make this
stuff up.  I don't have to, people.  She's right there.

I don't know exactly what else is important for you to know about me,
so I'll just drop in some bullet points now:

1. I wrote a play in college about a Mennonite family and it won an
award and Hollywood heard about it.  This producer person called me
and wanted to make a movie out of it, for "the built-in Amish
audience."

Yes.  That is what he said.  And, I dunno, I must have been huffing
Lysol or something, but I got in my VW and drove to L.A.  I mean, when
Hollywood calls, you don't just... let it go to voice mail, right?
That was four years ago, and I am still here.

2.  My name is Tess and my twin's name is Tracy.  Notice how I told
you my credits before I told you my name.  This is a Hollywood
sickness, and I am thoroughly cootified, apparently.  Teresa and I are
not close.  I know, I know, twins are supposed to be sympatico and
symbiotic and all.  But we have always just mostly competed with each
other -- for boys, for the parents' attention, for the biggest piece
of pie after dinner.  She is a writer, too. (Of course.  Because.
Because... of course.) She is also an editor at a slick niche magazine
about the New South called "Garden & Gun."  When I tell people here in
L.A. there is an actual real magazine called that, with no sense of
irony in the title whatsoever, they laugh till they snort.  And who
can blame them?

3.  I have a game plan.  I've made a list of things I'd like to
accomplish this summer -- kind of like a film treatment.  Here's the
list:

1.  Find a job I do not hate.
2.  Clean out the garage.
3.  Lose 15 pounds.
4.  Decide what to do about the boyfriend thing.
5.  Achieve zitlessness.  Just once.

Numbers  three and five are not unrelated.  Cheese and chocolate are
my favorite foods.  I should probably give them both up for the
summer, but I haven't told myself that yet.  I've hinted at it, but
myself has found some great reservoir of inner strength and ignored
me.

 Okay, I am already doing some rewriting on my ReInventing My Life
Summer Blockbuster film treatment, here.  I think this list is too
results-oriented.  And results are usually out of our control.  Only
the effort is within our control.  (This is from my
shrink-before-last, the one who had creamy skin but a few extra
pounds, herself.)

Rewrite #1:

1. Apply for 25 real jobs.  If I don't have one after that, reconsider this goal
2. Take more things out of the garage than I put into it
3.  Exercise at least two days a week
4.  Join an internet dating service and go out on ten dates
5. Give up either chocolate or cheese.  More on this later.

There.  That's better.  See?  Therapy can make a difference.

Rewrite #2 for #5:

Cut back on either chocolate or cheese.  Eat one or the other only
three times a week instead of every single freaking day.

Okay.  My next entry will contain some progress.  I hope.

__________________

Hi.
Okay.
Progress this first week:

#1: I sent my resume to six different places for jobs on Craig's List.
They ranged from helping a jewelry designer take apart her concoctions
that don't sell to being an assistant for an animal aromatherapist who
works out of her kitchen to working at this cute coffee place I've
actually been to in Pasadena.  I had an interview at the Pasadena
coffee place, but as soon as I told the guy in the straw fedora that I
had written the Sean Young movie, he ushered me out.  He hadn't seen
it -- or heard of it, even -- but people never think they missed the
film because it stank and sank.  They assume they missed it because
they are not cool.  Anyway, Straw Fedora guy -- and I remember him as
having fishing hooks hanging off that hat, but that can't be right,
can it? -- he seemed to think I'd be offered some huge studio
four-picture-deal soon and I'd take it.  As if that really happens to
people.

Live and Learn and Note to Self:  Do not mention that I am, was, or
ever wanted to be a screenwriter.  I should tell everyone I'm a
playwright, because that profession is vague and old-fashioned
sounding and no one really knows what that is.  No one expects to have
ever heard of you or your work if you write plays.  I might as well be
a poet or weaver or blacksmith, for all they know.

#2: Take more out of the garage than into it.  Um.  No progress on
this.  I don't even celebrate Christmas, really, so how do I have four
boxes of Christmas decorations?  How many rusty and broken gardening
tools can one person have?  There are three pet carriers out there
still, from when I volunteered for the animal shelter and its linked
rescue groups.  I have to figure out where they all go.  My bike, with
two flat tires.  A couple of broken barrels and a tree stump I found
somewhere.  A tumbleweed I found in the desert and started to paint.
Yes, really.  It could be art.  And I could be a turnip.  There's also
this thing called a "California fireplace."  This is a free-standing
unit I ordered from some catalogue.  It burns tin cans filled with
this weird fuel gel.  It is so, so faux and very, very not real.  But
you can buy gels that smell like applewood, mesquite, and oak.  And, I
think, pine and cedar, but those smell like antiseptic to me, so I
skipped them.  It's an embarrassing personal possession, this
fireplace, it is.  I need to just get it into the alley dumpster, but
that's a two-person job, and it's such a lame thing to own, I don't
want anyone to know I even have it to get rid of.

This is when I really, really miss my girlfriend, GiGi, who is in New
Orleans for the summer, taking care of her mother.  More on this
later, keep reading.

#3.  I joined an internet dating site.  I did.  I picked one of those
ones that is based on a very long and involved personality test.  I
have always been such a sucker for personality tests.  When I had mono
in high school, my mom bought me a Cosmopolitan collection of quizzes,
and me and Teresa and our girlfriends did all the quizzes over and
over again.  Teresa and I never had the same answers, and not because
we were trying to not.

Anyway, the whole breathless blurb on the dating site totally got me.
Basically:  "You are like this and you will like people like this.
Even better, they will like you!"  I paid for three months in advance.
 Yep, the whole summer.

It has become clear, however, that they don't really match you up
based on your personality test results at all.  They send you some
matches that are like you and some other matches that are not like
you, and they tell you that the two of you will either "have an innate
understanding of each other and get along very well together" or
"balance and complement each other because of your different
approaches to life."
Um, I thought they were supposed to sift through the guys for me?
Turns out -- no such luck.  "Maybe you'll like this guy and maybe he
will like you! Then again, hey! Maybe not!"

Anyway, I joined the thing.  But only because it was on my list.

4.  Exercise two days a week.  I took Jasper, my Lab/SharPei mutt
(Think: melted Lab.  ~Think: Walter Matthau as a Laborador Retriever)
to the hills around Dodger Stadium for not one, not two, but three
walks.  So there.  And, since they were mostly on the diagonal, I
think they actually qualify as hikes.  I plodded along, and Jasper --
only a year old, with Advanced Placement in ADHD --  did his usual
Interval Training.  Run, jump, pounce on empty gopher holes, repeat.
And repeat.  Aaaaand repeat once again.

5.  The chocolate and cheese thinger.  Okay, I am fixing to prepare to
hunker down and think about taking a serious look at this one.  Right
now, I am plowing with great determination and resolve through my
reserve supply of chocolate and cheese.  Because somebody has to eat
it. I have to get rid of it. Jasper can't have chocolate (poison) and
cheese makes him fart verily smellily.  It'd be downright criminal to
throw it all away.

And I am enjoying the hell out of it.

(to be continued)