Quit God

I always get paranoid at the office coffee machine. I waste so much time taking selfies in the bathroom as is.

*Got. I no longer have access to unlimited free coffee. If I did, maybe I would be more concise in my writing. I assume this blog is being read to discover how and why I quit, and what that build up looked like, and how it landed, and what I did after, and what I’m doing now. Well, you may get snippets of that. I’m an open book. It was a mess, I put two weeks in and shut my laptop forever, then went manic, and now I’m in L.A. But I’m not going to give you all my information that easily. If you want it, you have to endure all the tangential thinking that I love so much. Ha.

And I do get free coffee at my parents’ house in NJ, but it’s not unlimited. My parents have this weird thing about my insane coffee consumption. Which sucks, because the office coffee machine and my parents coffee machine both produce coffee that gives a decaf vibe, and I’m looking for something of a crack-high. So of course I try to explain that it’s obvious why I need to drink 5 cups, considering the fact that 1 cup of this weak ass coffee barely does anything to me. Because people drink coffee to get fck’d up. My thought is this: a regular day is boring, and if I consume enough caffeine, things are much more fun because I get to float around feeling amped up and disoriented.. I can’t apologize that I actually want to feel something, I am sorry that life is often dull and uninspired! I believe abusing caffeine is harmless, and could help me get what I want. It also makes me happy. This line of thinking is that of an addict. Makes sense, considering I am both an addict and a quitter. I am also currently unemployed, but calling it self employed, and I’ve quit nicotine, but I’ve been binge chewing gum. I would never lead with this when pitching myself, except of course, on my personal blog. Here, my self-centeredness can take the lead. That, and a certain dead-pan humor that doesn’t necessarily land in print, or ever. Yayyyyy me.

My pursuit of getting high off everyday substances (like caffeine) offers perspective on why I’m sober from actual substances. I’m glad people don’t see that side of me now. I really enjoy being slightly less extreme and chaotic. I’m like, really zen now actually. Only partially because of the mood-stabilizer I’m on.

I was like, scared of weed as a kid, and I got wind of getting high off nutmeg in middle school or early high-school and I began to seriously dabble with the idea of smoking the nutmeg in my parents spice cabinet. The warnings online didn’t scare me, but my friends were kinda like, what the fuck, so I didn’t smoke any nutmeg. I’m really glad for their intervention cos how odd it would be, to have psychosis from smoking a pumpkin pie spice, at the ripe age of 15. I actually prefer my psychosis to happen organically, from internal stimuli. I wonder if my desire to detach from reality so aggressively is what made me a Bipolar legend. Cos now my dreams have come true and I can detach from reality all on my own, no nutmeg. The desire is so strong that I can achieve psychosis even with a Lithium prescription. So yes, the past year and a half, I have been happily sober. Mostly to be chill, because it hasn’t helped me avoid psychosis. (I can’t end this paragraph with Boooo me because I am trying to be more positive lately, despite it all).

Unlike sobriety, Quitting rent is a unique experience, mostly because I coined the phrase. It’s an empowering way of saying I currently live at home in NJ, because my NYC rent was too expensive. I know I am not the only person to move home and get my feet underneath me. I planned for this, which makes me feel better about it. The quitting rent was a precursor to quitting job, which I had been pretty cowardly about for the past few months (or years). In fact, it was cowardly that I even worked in corporate to begin with.

I can pinpoint the time I really knew I never wanted to work corporate. I did a ridiculous student counsel speech my Sophomore year of High-School, and it was a success. That is because I was authentic to who I am: a ridiculous person. I promise this long tangent relates to the matter at hand: when to Quit, and when to persevere, and how to always choose authenticity. Of course bringing up high-school when I am talking about corporate may give the vibe that I am stuck in High-school. Well, I’m not. I had a weird up-and-down high school experience, and while I was popular, I wasn’t popular enough to peak in high school, and I didn’t get all the most-popular-friend-group benefits because I wasn’t in that group, I was in a circle that overlapped. So I won student council on pure humor and audacity, and the history teacher who ran student council decided she hated my fckng guts after that, cos I made a mockery of it, according to her. According to me, the speech was an excellent campaign tactic. The year before I did not win student council, despite my mom’s own campaign tactic: handing out cake-pops. What happened was: my mom had baked cake-pops and she forced me to bring them to school to try to get people to vote for me. I actually did not give a shit about the election as a Freshman, and I had fucked up acne on my face and didn’t really want anyone looking at me what so ever. Plus, I’m not really into baking, or giving people things in hope to get something in return (I’m wayyyy to good of a Samaritan for that, if I’m giving something away, it’s a donation, because I am pure of heart). When I bake always try to add my special flair to the baked-dish, I mess up the measurements, and I totally fuck things up all together. This, or I lose interest and don't follow directions, and fuck it up in a more careless way. No one ever wants to try what I’ve baked, basically. And I’m a freak and a pusher, so it is honestly a very disheartening experience. Because I hate baking, and maybe because I was totally orthorexic at the time, I didn’t like the idea of trying to earn a vote with a baked good, alright. Like, if you don’t want me for my hot tight body, cystic acne, and wicked sense of humor, then scram. Passing out baked goods was inauthentic, and I pride myself on authenticity, obviously. But, my helicopter-parent tiger-mom was insistent that I bring these dumb ass cake pops to school. FML. So I lost the election to a more popular freshman girl (who transferred, btw) and I was like WTF, how did I lose, despite these delicious green and yellow school-color cake pops that my mommy made me bring to lunch one day?……. And I marched my tight school-kilted ass to the student council history teacher and acted all confused like: how could this be? Truly, I wanted to know, cos I thought people did Fuck With Me, despite my horrible self-esteem. And maybe they did, but not as much as they fucked with the popular blonde, who was very NJ-shore coded, which I found to be a very unlikable quality. But then again, I just don’t love New Jersey in an unconditional way like that. I’m not an idiot, I did get the weird feeling that I was getting made fun of for walking around with fucking cake pops, but I just locked in and tried to make it a Thing or whatever, because I had so many with me at school, my mom had driven me that day, and there was literally nothing I could have done, except through them away, and I am way too good of a samaritan to threw away perfectly good school-color cake pops. (I was pretty mortified through this whole experience).

So this history teacher did make fun of me to her classes, for going and asking about the election results, and for bringing in baked goods, which no one really did. Well, fuck her. That next year, when I ran again, I was going to win. This time I had more friends, and people understood my sense of humor, and if I was going to have an off-beat campaign tactic, it was going to be true to me: a little punky asshole with a layered wit and The Audacity. I won by a landslide. Which was a great personal win, because the girl opposing me was also technically more popular than me, because she was in the main #1 popular friend group, and she had buttery-clear skin, and I still had acne (but I had much better makeup, because at this point I had been dealing with covering acne for a full year, and I had honed my craft). I felt like I had friends in every group, so I did not fear her dirty bathroom-confrontation campaign tactic. To oppose her, I got up and gave the most unserious speech of all time. I referenced vines, I likened myself to Abraham Lincoln and referred to myself as honest-abe throughout the speech, and I quoted the movie: The Campaign, promising that I would “Clean up the Atlantic Ocean” and asking the student body to “bring your brooms, cos it’s a mess”, voice and all. God I’m funny.

So yeah, I was unserious, and apparently, Insultingly so. The whole lunch room was laughing my entire speech, so obvi it was funny as hell, and I knew it would be, otherwise I wouldn’t have wrote it, or thrown my back out performing it (I didn’t actually throw my back out, it’s not hard for me to be funny, I can finally admit this. I never wanted to take home the Funny title before because it felt presumptuous). There were even hot senior boys in the back, who were also hysterically laughing, and I’ll never forget that, because boys did not GAF about me because not only did I have acne, I also had way hotter friends. I took the risk of getting slandered again by this wack ass teacher, I knew I would benefit where it mattered. So yes, the teacher that made fun of me the year before wanted to bite my head off. When I was officially the Activity Chairperson of the sophomore class, she kind of spat green over it. It didn’t help my case that we introduced ourselves to the larger student council by naming our hopes and dreams for our future careers, and I said my hope and dream was to work at a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. This answer was sandwiched by other kids saying they wanted to be on the senate or work as a lawyer or financial advisor, which was probably attainable for them, because most of the people I went to high-school with came from money and prestige and their Daddy’s had Networks. I also had money and a network that could land me some pretty great jobs. But I didn’t need to gloat about that. I also wanted to continue to be obnoxious and ridiculous, because I was having fun, and sloths are an obnoxious and ridiculous animal. The costa-rica thing was not true, I don’t really care about animals very much, but I was happy to say it. I knew I didn’t want or need to work corporate to be happy in life. I had never been more sure of something. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I would figure it out. I always let life happen, calculated, and readjusted. Like I’m doing currently, quitting corporate all together. I said the sloth thing just to be a dick and fill in the blank where a question mark otherwise lived. I didn't know my dream career, and I didn’t really think it existed yet. I have a better idea now of course, but you know how kids are. All that to say, that kind of assy-honesty, and making a joke out of seriousness, and a literally who-cares attitude (simply because what other options are there?) was always my M.O. Being the type to sweetly hand out cake-pops never was. I’m a smart girl, and a hard worker, and not a total asshole, but I think those qualities do need to be balanced with humor and playfulness. In that way, from high-school to now, I have shown consistency and follow through. I think these qualities are super important in life and in your career. Though I don’t think authority and buttoned up environments with layeres of politics appreciate the unserious approach. Of course not, but this teacher was happy I said the sloth-thing because it gave her fodder to make fun of me in all of her classes again. I didn’t care this time, because I was smarter than everyone in her regular-history classes, seeing that I got bumped up to honors history. It made her look weird that she was so obsessed with me honestly, and it made me more popular, because people loved telling me what she was saying behind my back, and I loved getting to make fun of this teacher who was not even mine. I believe this teacher thought I would be a leper amongst the kids of upper-middle class society, who obviously wanted real big-time corporate jobs. Because most people in my high-school shared my humor, and because I shared their financial-status, no one cared that I supposedly wanted to work with sloths. All that to say, I kinda don’t care about risks.

Also, I grew up in an environment where you go to college and get a sick job post grad in order to fit-in and not be made fun of. So I did just that: I went to the good college. Then I realized a bunch of stuff about society, signifiers of wealth, what makes people Worthy of Love and Acceptance, and I went ahead and got the good jobs (by the white-washed private-catholic definition of good). That’s what people told me to do, and I always wanted to do a Good Job at Life, obviously. Now that I understand the landscape a little, understand life and understand myself, I’m happy to be authentic to who I am, and to take the risks. I’m happy to quit my Good job, and I’m confident that it will work out, because all I have to do is be true to myself, and I can live the life I want to live. That life does not look like everyone else’s life. And similar to my high school dynamic with this teacher, I don’t really care about anyone who makes fun of me behind my back with this sort of thing. I’m confident that they’re dumber than me, or below me, and I really can only benefit from anyone generating interest about what’s up with me. Free Marketing (I would know, the career I was in? Marketing and Business Development, god I’m so smart). Another thing I want to slide in here: I really don’t believe people in corporate America are actually smart. With most things in life, people just fake it til they make it. I would look at these big bozos and think: how the hell did you get here (by here, I mean, super rich and relatively powerful). I would think: the fucking audacity of this guy. Then I realized I could have the audacity, too. But to start, I would have to be a quitter. Mostly because I was not in a place where I cared to perservere, cos I didn’t care about it at all, and I was not being authentic to myself. See the full circle thing I’m doing here?

Beyond my high-school understanding of perseverance and authenticity, I was already well-versed in being a quitter. My freshman year, I had quit eating meat and eggs and dairy. Half as a form of neurotic control over food, and half to try and fix my crazy acne. Also, animal products had been grossing me out. I stuck with the veganism for 8 years, all through college, until I decided to quit being vegan so I could experience life a little more. I’m happy with my decisions, though I would have quit being Vegan in Japan, so I could enjoy omakase on my father’s dime. I will have to go back to Japan and try again, hopefully on a budget similar to my business-man daddy. Hopefully I prove to be very fruitful, on this new career path I’m crafting. Hopefully I can look back on this time and say: you were right, you don’t have to be in business to be successful and rich!

So yeah, it makes sense that I can make the hard decision, and quit my well paying, prestigious job. My set up was so good that I would almost say I manifested it in my journal (I do believe that). The fact I felt so miserable working there almost seems ungrateful. But that’s just how fed-up and not-built-for-corporate I was. I had just forgotten I was probably better-suited doing something else, or that something else even existed. The company was a global law firm and recognized as being pretty-great in Europe. I loved my boss, and my coworkers were fun. I worked in 3 World Trade Center, which was recognized as a pretty-cool set up when I mentioned it. The floor to ceiling windows I wanted to fling myself out of were beautiful: all of New York City splayed out in every direction. That kind of view makes you feel like a king. Myself included, the ungrateful miserable member of the proletariat, feeling like a king while I walked around with free coffees and healthy-popcorn. I would saunter out of the company-canteen with my $13 lunch, unpaid for. How dare this company ask me to pay for my own lunch, I only make 95K a year, and NYC taxes are crazy, and so is my rent. I must be fed like baby girl (I have an entitlement complex that also makes me a terrible employee, by the way). I would walk out of the building exasperated at 5 on the dot, as if my work was remotely difficult. Then I was able to reset, and catwalk back to my apartment in my trendy neighborhood, in my cute corporate outfit, feeling like the shit, forgetting how much I wanted to die for majority of the day.

So as far as the quitting timeline goes, I had returned from my suicidal sabbatical in February. I had in-fact spiraled over the winter (if you didn’t see all my depressing posts about it). The pro’s of my amazing job had quickly stopped outweighing the cons. I became paranoid not just at the coffee machine, but all day and night, I wasn't sleeping well, and I was overall tweaking. This wasn’t because of work alone, I had a lot going on in my personal life, but the job stuff didn’t help. So I told my boss I needed to take a medical leave and check myself into the hospital. I did not do that, but I did go home to my parents house in NJ, and treated that like my personal psych ward. By June I had three months back in office, and I felt it was appropriate for me to take a 10 day vacation to Europe. Bold PTO request after taking a full 3 months of short term disability leave. But please understand: jumping infront of a subway train was becoming increasingly temping to me. I have to go flit around Paris with my two best friends. Otherwise, who knows how I will feel in the subway tunnels.

My boss approved the PTO and I was like, Oh, Nice. I knew it was a rogue request, but I was happy that we were like, on the same page about my Mental Health Needs. Like, I will be miserable and hate my life again if I have to come to work uninterrupted. I’m soooo bipolar (I am). It reads like a threat, and it kinda was. Life becomes threatening with bipolar, and I am just being So Honest about that! If I had gotten No for an answer, I would have quit on the spot. The entire time during my Paris trip I was threatening my friends of how I would not return to my job when we got back. Like, I didn’t even want to return from my winter sabbatical in the first place. I just wanted to prove I could do it. Partially to prove to my friends who literally couldn’t care either way, partially to my parents, who only ever want me to be happy and healthy, and partially to the internet, who are pretty ruthless regardless.

Mentally, I was done working in corporate. I just needed to make it official. I’d say the reason I didn’t do it sooner was because I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself instead. This would only be partly true, because I really care about the success, and the validation, and whatever clout someone makes up in their head to make sense of why some random corporate job is actually very prestigious, and sexy, and happy hours are sexy too (they’re not). When you work in corporate for even one year, you can see your future. To me, it was like a looking-glass from hell.. I want a good life. I don’t want to live through my personal hell. So obviously I had to quit. That was a scary feeling, because I had made up my mind, but I was scared to do anything about it. Partially because of health insurance, but mostly all of the uncertainty. Like I had the promise of a social media following that I had established over the course of the previous year. Big woop, to any boomer I sound like a lunatic. Especially because I barely make money off TikTok, ever since I got freaky depressed. BUT! It was a promise of something. I never had something to turn to before when I said how much I hated the meaningless work I was doing. So I could quit my job hypothetically, waitress, and then focus on building out a creative career. My friends kinda poo-poo’d waitressing, because they’re all corporate, but I’m not above that hustle, honestly. There was another issue: Rent is expensive, and so are groceries, and so is doing literally anything in New York, everyone loves to set money on fire. I guess everyone is like, soooo rich or something. Or sooo in debt. Maybe both can be true, and can be true at the same time. I know a lot of people in debt. In fact, I am in dental debt. Who quits a well-paying job when they’re in debt? Me. So, on a whim I decided to sublease the my bedroom in Nolita through to the end of my lease in October, so I could set myself up to comfortably quit. I told my roommate via text:

“Hey I’m being a pussy about starting this convo in person bc I’m feeling embarrassed but I need to move to NJ for the summer to work off my dental debt, I can’t afford the rent right now and I’m also mentally unstable so I need to retreat and ground myself there, sorry to dip out on the lease but I did a fb post that is garnering a lot of interest for mid-may/ June to October, what is the protocol there both with [our landlord] and with your preferences?”

She was kinda like: what the hell? I thought we lived great together? But probably also was like: thank god, this chick is always eating and replenishing my snacks, and then eating them again.

(I don’t like to buy snacks because I kind of get out-of-control around snacks and eat like 3X the serving size, and feel immense guilt over it). I am very all or nothing. I quit snacks, like I quit everything else, but when my roommate brought them into our shared space…..I was feral. Bad roommate move of me, but not bad enough to banish. I guess because I also cleaned the bathroom, snaked the drains, tended to the dishwasher,, and did most of the cleaning-chores, because I am a little neurotic about a clean space. Maybe I was making a sacrifice by leaving my apartment, but I also I really wanted to be in NJ, where I had a big room, and a cleaning lady, and a clean house, and a stocked fridge. I didn’t have to clean up after anyone in NJ, except my brother when he’s there, because he leaves his plates out and I like a clean kitchen. But even my baby brother was making it work in NYC. We’re different.

So yeah, back to my parents house. Coffee at my parents house is not unlimited. This is because my parents really don’t like me going nuts with the coffee. Not just because they know I abuse substances, but also because I have the tendency to go manic. Like I did this July, right after I quit. When I’m using their loud coffee machine, they can hear just how substance-abusey I really allow myself to get with something so harmless. Originally my parents concluded the mania thing may keep happening because of substances (not because of my bipolar diagnosis). Now that I do not abuse substances, it is far more likely that caffeine sends me manic (not my bipolar brain). So I deffo go manic because of coffee. And I’m working from home in NJ, trying to conceal my coffee-drinking, and taking one day at a time on whether or not I can stand to work another week. Finally, I decided I couldn’t. My output was shite, I kept saying dishing out corporate jargon to extend my deadlines, like “I’ll get this to you EOD” or “EOW” and then milling around the house not even looking at my laptop. Every project was excruciating and impossible. I was kinda spiraling, but I was honestly just really stressed out that I was procrastinating my quitting, and that so much was apparently at stake. So one morning, I just did it. It kinda helped that my boss quit right before I went on my PTO. So I quit to this other guy who wasn’t really my boss at all, making the whole process a lot easier. I put my two weeks in, promised to help write a JD, and then closed my laptop forever and decided to go manic instead. Awesome.

This time around, there were many stress-factors at play, like the things I chose to do: move, travel, quit. And because I had quit, I wanted to execute on every little idea that popped into my head, turn everything into a theory or a business plan, and they’re all interconnected. And I refused to stop exercising, because I wanted to be less eating-disorders, and I got this idea in my head about momentum. And I was only eating melon, because I wanted to be light on my feet. And I told myself that I had to be doing output mostly all day every day, whether that was painting or writing or tiktokking or styling myself. Oh, and because I was in my childhood home, I also had to be healing my inner child. Oh, and I started to believe I was God. Or at least Jesus.

So I behave like this, and get myself locked in Jersey Shore Psych Unit for a week, but I refuse to quit coffee, because I already quit a bunch of other good things. I could replace coffee with equally satisfying matcha. But when it comes to coffee, I know I’m in love. You don’t always get to experience love in this morbid and sadistic life. And I’d like to hold only love wherever I can find it. I will quit whatever gets in the way of finding love. I want to love my home. So I had to quit a few sus living situations (no closet space, sus boyfriend-roommate, expensive rent no perks, etc). I want to love my day to day life, and build loving relationships, and a comfortable happy future, so I had to quit partying. I want to love my career and at some point, love my bank account, so I had to quit climbing the corporate latter. I’ve never loved a job or a career or a person before. I think that would be really nice. For now I will continue setting myself up to experience more love: like living at home with my parents, who love me, who want me to be safe, who want to feed me because clearly I don’t feed myself very well, and who want me to not go broke, who don’t charge me rent. Only problem is: I don’t love New Jersey for reasons I could get into another time, I don’t love the suburbs because I am not raising children, and I don’t love being a grown adult living with other grown adults who still want to have a very hands-on parenting experience with me. I don’t love how weird this summer has been, how many transitions, how isolated I am in the suburbs, how alone I feel.

So, I flew to LA. To look at palm trees, hangout with my best friend from college, and think things through.

I also get free coffee at my best friends apartment in LA, where I am currently couch-surfing. I haven’t couch surfed since I Quit my first-ever-corporate job in California (the Bay Area) and came back to New York to party. That couch surfing stint def proved for some interesting stories, but this one is much more pure and wholesome. I love hanging out with my friend, and I barely get to, because after graduation and our post-grad ski-town stint, she moved across the country and settled in Santa Monica, where she lives currently, on a lease with her boyfriend and his best friend from high school (they grew up in LA).

She has a Nespresso, the same one that I have in my NYC apartment (or had), because we’re kindred spirits like that. I have beef with Nespresso because those pods are expensive enough to make me feel good about spending $8 on coffee at a sceney coffee shop I would go out of my way to walk by as I catwalked to the West Village for my A.A. meeting, or to the subway entrance headed uptown to whatever museum I thought I should read the info-plaques at (read: I was going alone), or whatever random half-ass thing I was coming up with to make rent worthwhile. My thought is: If I’m at a coffee shop spending money at least I’m participating with the community and the local economy or whatever. Though I do find myself at VC-backed coffee shops here and there, because I appreciate some consistency. I should note: I don’t like Starbucks, it tastes burnt, or like gasoline, and I actually never liked it, because I don’t mind going against the grain, I never cared about going with what’s popular (if I didn’t like it), even when Starbucks was a personality trait in 2010-2013. I do like blank street, because strawberry-donut-flavored coffee is fucking delicious (some things are popular for good reason) and with the pistachio green branding and san serif font, I really get to feel like I’m in a black mirror simulation, but I’m like, doing a good job in the simmy, so there’s no sci-fi tragedy ending for me.

Admittedly, I do have a really interesting way of perceiving money. Like sometimes my dignity is lost with a purchase that doesn’t fit my idea of responsible (like a smoothie that is $14.50 is reasonable, but a $15 dollar smoothie is not, but a $22 dollar smoothie is, if its from a really well-renowned smoothie spot and then I am also buying my in-the-knowness, and I’m of the culture, and participating). SO I quit my job, I have dental debt as I mentioned before, I don’t have corporate income, and I don’t want to waitress in NJ out of fear of staying there. So I’m just casually spending my money here, and some days it feels justified and I’m being young and irresponsible while I can be, taking risks and some days I nearly pass out from panic at how stupid I’m being.

So I’m in LA and I did end up buying a few jugs of cold brew to stock the fridge. Cos like, I don’t need to waste my money coffee shop coffee right now unless I’m trying to post-up at the coffee shop and work, in which case the coffee is rent for a table. That is responsible, and if I dress cute and curl my eyelashes, who knows what could happen. I could become a movie star. Or the wife of a movie star.

I also would not want to be so foolish as to waste my couch-surfer-house-guest-blunder allowance on something as dumb as using up all the Nespresso pods, because they cost a fckng fortune (genuinely what is up with that). The less annoying and mooch-y I am, the more I feel like a good family dog, and less like a total freeloader on the verge of ruining friendships. That’s why I always get away with couch surfinggggggg. I know when to make myself quiet and do my own thing, disappear for long periods of time, so much so that my owner calls me back and is like: where have you been my loyal pet, come back to me, and let us break bread together. I love when that happens.

I have to note: I even got a call-back from one of the NYC couches I surfed on a few years back, yearning for me to surf with them once more:

Everyone wants someone sexy to sleep over, as you can see (this person is not straight). But I must admit: sleeping on a couch is not the sexiest thing I’ve ever done. In fact, this text a motivator to NOT become a couch-surfer again, and to just pay rent like a normal person, and sleep in a bed, and cry poor. Simply because I have a reputation, and I don’t love what that reputation indicates about my life choices. If you don’t understand my humor and need me to clarify: I don’t actually love the fact that I am an acclaimed couch surfer. That is why I poke so much fun at it. I will consider this reputation to be free-spirited instead of cheap and deranged until I am distant enough to see the truth.

My friend in Brooklyn is getting nervous that I will move to LA after this little extended-stay. My friends both want me to live in their cities. What can I say. They love me! Who would’ve thought. I don’t know if I am still being coddled because of my depressive meltdown in December or if I’m being coddled because of more more recent manic episode. What matters is I am still being coddled. And luckily, I get to partially blame hating my career. Now that I am starting a new career path, I pray my Bipolar goes away, so I don’t have to scramble to find something new to blame. Like, obviously I was mentally unwell, my job made me feel like a helpless, useless brain dead squid and I was reduced to tears and suicidal ideation for majority of my time working corporate. It’s not the bipolar. It’s corporate and its caffeine and its alcohol and its nicotine. So I quit all of that. Except caffeine. That sounds extreme, but I’m bipolar, so I’m allowed to be maxed out extreme and drama when I explain things, because I’m drama when I do things, too. Like my whole essence is extreme. And my friends love me, so who cares. I am allowed to quit my job and still be loved. I’m allowed to go on weird long trips to LA for no reason, following a manic break, and my friends don’t mind at all, in fact they like it. Somehow instead of feeling batshit insane doing all of this, I feel very babygirl and taken care of. My best friends both live with their boyfriends, no pets, so I can easily stand-in as a child, or a pet, or whatever couples get to practice being a family. I’m choosing between two very awesome set-ups on either coast.

I’m unemployed, but it doesn’t feel like it because I tag along to my best friends job, working as a community manager at her brother-in-laws start up. I work on my disjointed blog (the one you’re reading) and make my tiktoks, and she does her thing, and then we go to lunch, and it feels like neither of us are actually working much at all. Yet we look good on paper. Villanova alum, graduated with honors. Same as in class, where we met freshman year. Both of us had good grades all four years, good internships. Snapchat memories reveal the dark but playful underbelly of our college experience. Taking edibles and staying in the business school classrooms overnight, pretending to study. Holding court and being ridiculous (read: we were all funny, reckless with our sleep schedules, and loved a good fraternity party).

So we met in college, and now she’s living with her boyfriend in L.A., and neither of us really love the career paths we started on. To clarify, she lives with her boyfriend and his best friend, who both grew up in L.A., and went to high school together. So she has this little L.A. life and I’m kinda dropping in. I had hoped this exact scenario would play out when we planted the seeds for my visit during the spring. I didn't hope for the mental health crisis, of course, but I don't write the plot I guess. I’m just a character. An unemployed character. With potential. (had to write that part in).

Because I booked a one way flight, I am currently out-staying my best-friend in her own apartment. She’s going to visit her sister in Nashville for the weekend, so naturally I stocked up on body-wash, happily took her car keys, and agreed to go to a monster truck race with her friends on Saturday, since I am kinda replacing her at this point. I’ll spend the weekend with her boyfriend and his best friend, who is also their third roommate. But not that much time, because I am going to peel off by myself in her car, go on hikes and go to art museums and try hole-in-the-wall restaurants the same way I was doing in New York when I was finding any excuse to justify why I was even there. But you know what? I’m unemployed. Temporarily. That is why I’m here in LA, making the most of my time. Trying to sus out if I should move here to waitress and string together my little LLC.

When I was depressed and on short-term disability leave from work back in December, all I did was sit at home, have panic attacks, cry hysterically, and go to Ikea like once. So obviously I didn’t want a repeat of that. I have to admit: It’s harder to appreciate all of this free time when I am 100% unemployed. It’s been a week and I already want a waitress job so I can justify $20 smoothies. Though it wouldn’t just be for the money. I think I will appreciate my time-off more if I actually have time-on. I could make new friends who are rogue pseudo-creatives like me. And I think I will write more, because I am officially going to start writing a book. I am going to think about where this waitress job will be, and maybe manifest a great set up, the way I manifested my last corporate job.. And maybe it will be in L.A. and I will chase my big Hollywood dreams out here. Or maybe it’ll be in Brooklyn and I can approach NYC differently on this lease than my last. Because as it so happens, I actually do NOT want to re-root in my hometown. New Jersey is not for me, even if it does provide me the perfect place to free-load. I have to find a cheap enough rent and an expensive enough restaurant to make everything make sense. My parents always said: we are a safety net, not a hammock. This is a super upper-middle-class thing to say. So I hear that, and I’m like damn, my time being peaceful at home, unemployed, will not be long. So obviously I booked this random one-way trip to LA. To scope things out. And it kinda worked in my parents favor, cos I spent up all my money, and I will actually have to get a little side-gig sooner rather than later. And I actually will appreciate being fed at home for a week or two will I get all my ducks in a row. I will not admit to my mom that I have gone out to dinner mostly every night in LA, but I will tell her that I love her cooking way more, because it’s made with love. When I was living on my own in NY, I would cry poor while my bank accounts were replenished biweekly with my “good” NYC-job salary. I had stopped eating out and stopped grocery shopping so I literally had no expenses, and nothing in the fridge. My parents did know that. I have spent more in LA than I spent in New York, easy, and I have no income. Not brilliant.

Until I’m back home and being fed home cooked meals, seriously figuring out how I can make some money to live off of, and a place to go pay rent at, I am couch surfing, saving on rent, and wasting my money on dinners. My couch-surf blunder will probably always be getting the bathroom floor soaking wet every time I shower. But who cares about that, cos it looks really good to the roommates if I’m stocking up on coffee, and disappearing for so long that they forget I’m there, or more-likely become very concerned, and maybe they’re even concerned that I’m here in the first place (they’re not, they love me, and they actually have lives they’re focused on, and they’re just enjoying some light hearted company, a bit of a college throw back, no one is thinking about me).

Maybe me thinking the world revolves around me is what causes my extreme paranoia.