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

[auntiesash]

Wonderful.  Awesome.  Keep at it!!!  (I assume that you'll be bringing this
to Portland, hmmmm??)

- sash

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:47 PM, TLW <tlwagener at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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)
>



-- 
"When under, remember the surface.
   When on the surface, remember the deep."
       - The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo