Happy Almost Birthday To Me

My birthday's on Wednesday.  I'll be 30.  That sounds so much older than I feel like I am.  That's like really stop being able to pretend I'm not an adult age.  I mean, the wedding in about a hundred days does that too, or at least it should, but, I don't know.  I'm not feeling particularly bad about turning 30, even though it sounds old -- I feel like I've accomplished a decent amount and it's not like I feel some sense of regret or unfulfilled childhood promise that could bum me out about it, the upcoming wedding feels pretty good in that respect too.  Yet I haven't actually planned anything to do for my birthday, which will sort of suck when it's actually my birthday and I have nothing to do, but at the same time I feel like I've been reasonably social the past couple of weeks and have also been fighting a cold I can't completely shake, and so even though most of me is like, yeah, I should send out an e-mail to some people and say we should grab dinner or something, I haven't actually sent that e-mail.  Maybe after this post.  Indeed, I'm going to force myself to do that right after I post this, because I really should not force future-me to have nothing at all to do on my birthday if there's no good reason for it.

I'm going to celebrate my birthday on this blog by finally posting the post I started in draft form about a month ago.  It was going to be my New Years resolution post, but I got cold post-feet about it, so we'll call it my birthday post.  Because a birthday is just as good a time as the New Year to take stock and force some thoughts out of my head and onto the Internet.  Blogging is weird that way -- it's like I've become conditioned to not be able to really let go of something I'm thinking until I type it into a box on my computer screen and press post, even if no one's out there reading.  In any case:

I'm asking the universe for a favor.  I figure this is a good place to start.

I think trying to be a writer is giving me less to write about.  I think I miss getting to be smart.  I think I miss feeling passionate about something and working with other people who are also passionate about it, whatever it happens to be.

I had lunch with a physicist friend this afternoon and, look, I know very little about physics, but I was totally envious that he gets to spend his days thinking about stuff that not everyone is equipped to think about, and gets to try and solve problems that actually matter to the world (he's doing something with carbon dioxide and turning it into a liquid so that it can be turned into a gas again -- the point being to save the Earth in some way, the details beyond that have escaped me but he used the word hydrogenation a couple of times).  The actual details of what he spends his day doing are not my thing -- but they're his thing, and he seemed pretty jazzed about it, and I thought that was pretty cool.

If I was smarter than I am -- really it's if I was bolder than I am, boldness more than smartness, I think -- I would not be in LA doing whatever I'm pretending I'm doing to try and be a TV writer.  I would be doing something else, something inspiring for its own sake, something I could feel passionate about, and then the happy byproduct would be that it would also give me something cool to write about and I'd have something real to say.  But, like with Anonymous Lawyer, the writing would be the happy, inspired byproduct, and the real stuff would be something totally different.

It's no one's fault but my own that I can't manufacture awesome new inspired material out of my own head without experiencing more stuff.  Some people can, and do, and they write great things.  I knew throughout the Anonymous Lawyer novel-writing process that I didn't feel like a novelist, and that Anonymous Lawyer didn't feel like fiction.  Some of you have seen the list of books I read -- I don't read many novels, for whatever reason.

And while I'm awesomely proud of Anonymous Lawyer, and awesomely grateful to the universe for that opportunity, I can't help but feel like it's leading me down a path I'm not terribly suited for, and that's not making me particularly happy.  To be as frank and honest as I can be about what I'm working on right now: Anonymous Lawyer the TV show continues to live in development at Sony, lots of rewrites (including a bunch of work on it the past few weeks -- their option expires in a few weeks, and this is their final push to get it to see some life somewhere, hopefully, although enough time has passed that it feels silly to still have any realistic hope it gets to go any further in the process).  And I'm also working on two other TV pitches that are at various stages in the process, although neither is too far along and it's hard for me to know whether it even makes sense to have any expectations at all with either of them, given just how many projects are out there at any given time, and how many writers are out there, and production companies, all competing for not that many ultimate opportunities.  (It boggles my mind -- and I believe it *should* boggle anyone's mind -- that TV shows are generally sold with a 15-minute sales pitch describing the setting and the characters, rather than with a script.  The script comes after someone's bought the pitch.  This seems crazy to me, since the end result *has* to be a good script for it to be a good show, and just the idea doesn't seem to get you very far toward something necessarily worth watching.  But I may just be overwhelmingly biased by the realistic truth that I'm a better writer than salesman, and that I'm a lot more comfortable executing and delivering than I am pitching and selling.)  I've also written a bunch of TV pilots in the past year and a half, ranging from "I think this one's actually pretty good, I guess" to "I think with this one I'm trying to write what I think people would buy, and in doing so I've written something that's pretty uninspired and soulless and isn't as awesome as I wish it was."

But it's lonelier work that I expected it would be -- you don't get a lot of "let's get a bunch of people in a room and be creative and make this thing awesome" unless you're on staff of a show with a writer's room, and there aren't many staff jobs out there, and there are a lot of awesome writers who have the experience and material to get staffed before me who aren't working, so it's just tough to feel like that path is anything close to a sure thing.  Would be awesome to be on a sitcom staff, but, more than I thought before coming out here, that seems like a really hard thing to try and count on happening, and even if it does happen for someone once, most shows get cancelled pretty quickly and then you're back at square one.

I guess what's been kind of disappointing for me is looking around and realizing people doing this kind of stuff don't necessarily seem more fulfilled or content or happy than people doing all sorts of other things.  Like anything else, it's a job.  And at the same time, I think having things working on the personal side of my life has made me realize that the career side doesn't have to be the thing I have to rely on for all of it -- if I'm not the absolute most successful whatever in the world, I can still be awfully happy and satisfied, and in fact probably more so if I'm not so consumed with worry about the career stuff and am just doing something that I'm reasonably enjoying and is keeping me reasonably engaged.

I feel like during law school I was putting an absurd amount of pressure on myself to figure out how to not end up miserable, and how to not feel like I was wasting my life.  And the fact that I got amazingly lucky with Anonymous Lawyer -- luck I did a lot to create, and luck over a creation I will stand by and say I'm honestly proud of, but still lucky compared to what all sorts of other much more likely outcomes look like -- and got to see that process through, I think has actually taken away some of my ambition.  Having a book published, getting to write a TV pilot, a lot of cool stuff happened with Anonymous Lawyer... but, honestly, it didn't make me any happier than I was before, it didn't change anything about the kinds of things I think about or the kinds of things I worry about.  A lot of the process was neat enough to do once but did not make me terribly hungry to do it again, if I'm being honest with myself.

Which all leaves me sort of mildly curious about whether I should really be trying some other stuff out and seeing what else I could be doing.  If nothing else, to make me appreciate the mere possibility of making a life for myself as a writer, and motivating me to get a lot more serious about what I'm doing and about forcing good material out even when I don't know if it's there, and about chasing down freelance work, and about all sorts of other things I should be better at doing.  Or even to maybe see if there's something out there that might be a better fit, long-term, and not make me feel guilty for every minute I'm not writing, and not make me wonder whether there's really a career path here, and not make me want to idly browse mediabistro job listings some nights.

So from the rambling back to my point: I'm asking the universe for a favor this year, even though I've already gotten my share of favors from the universe and am probably not entitled to ask for any more.  Just for some ideas to push me in a direction.  Can you use me?  Do you know someone who can use me?  For a brainstorm, for a project, for a job?  For ten minutes, for a week, for a year?  

I miss thinking about things, with other people.  If you want help coming up with a name for a cereal you're inventing, that seems like a fun project to work on.  I get strange looks when I tell people this, but I miss working with numbers.  I like numbers.  I like Excel.  I miss using that part of my brain, and I don't know how to use that part of my brain while crafting sales pitches for TV shows that will never get made.  Do you have a project that requires someone to play with numbers?  Maybe I can help.  Do you want to show me your corn field and have me write some web page content about it?  That sounds cool.  Do you want me to riff for 20 minutes about what I think the future of books are, and whether there might be a business opportunity in helping to transform the publishing industry?  That would be fun.  Can I help you train a monkey to open jars?  That seems really cool.

I miss doing things.  I am not bold enough to make myself do things when it is easier to pretend I am working on developing a TV show that will one day see the light of day.  The tiny ray of hope that I am actually doing that keeps me in my chair and leaves me not quite desperate enough to go make myself do something else.  I am scared by the inertia that I cannot overcome, no matter how much I tell myself I need to.

[I'm also a little bit scared that if I can't be satisfied with what I'm doing now -- which is absolutely better than what most people in this world do, and I am absolutely aware that expressing any sort of frustration in my position is terrible and unjustified and lazy and makes me a crazy person (which is why it's taken a month for this post to go from draft to post -- Anonymous Lawyer did nothing if not make me gun-shy about posting stuff like this -- I still haven't read the comments on the last post on the Anonymous Lawyer blog because negative commenters make me sad even when they're right and that's really a good part of the reason why I stopped posting).]

Comments

[Cindy]

Have you considered trying an appellate-level judicial clerkship? I know most people view it more as a means to an end, but I think it's a really fulfilling job for someone who likes thinking, writing, and bouncing ideas of off others. Just a thought.

Oh, and happy birthday!

[Andrew]

Happy (almost) birthday! While I don't have any clever ideas for you to find a productive outlet, it is an interesting background to be full-time creative looking for an outlet to use your mad spreadsheet skills. Most people are full-time in boring office jobs who are looking to find that creative outlet.

I still haven't quite come to terms with turning 30 last year. And as a big time procrastinator, it's depressing as a milestone, because it seems like it's a time in your life when you should have things figured out.

[Ben]

I've been feeling the same way. TV writing alone isn't enough. I feel the need to branch out and diversify. I'm sure you'll find something now that the search has begun.

[Lobbyist]

I loved being a prosecutor. And great material there.

Good luck to you with your search. I think your writing is really good, I hope you don't stop. I think you are right -- all jobs have pros and cons. I love to write but am too social to be a "writer" and honsestly I think I like the idea of being a writer better than actually writing every day. I like to write some, and in my current job I get to, and that is fulfilling enough.

[marc h.]

you could join a program like New York Teaching Fellows (is there an LA equivalent?) and become a teacher in a low-income neighborhood-- doing something worthwhile while pursuing your own goals of being a writer (my wife was in Teach for America-- i just write, understand your feeling)

[RES]

Happy Birthday, Jeremy. All good things for the next 30 years and beyond.

Teach for America. Look into it.

[Steve Hall]

Happy Birthday, Jeremy. If it's any consolation, I'm 56 and don't feel it's possible for me to be that age -- at least unless I look in the mirror. All the best,
Steve Hall

[Ashley]

There's nothing wrong with not being into TV writing, different strokes for different folks and all that. I would say though not to limit yourself to the usual, if you're lonely writing, find some other writers (there's plenty in LA) and write together. If you don't think your favorite TV idea is going to get made, find other sources until it gets made. The key is to find a job that makes you willing to fight for it in any way necessarily and allow you to creatively problem solve to find solutions. You sounded envious that the physicist was making a real measurable contribution to the world so what's your biggest cause or issue you wished was fixed? Go find a way to apply your talents to that.

[Martha Farag]

Perhaps you should change your definition of happiness.

I hope you had a happy birthday Jeremy!

[Nikhil]

Drop me a mail. I'm working on something which fulfils all your criteria. Though seeing the kind of work I doubt how much you'll enjoy this but I know you could bring a lot to the table.

[Nina]

Happy belated birthday Jeremy! Well, it's a very familiar turning 30-mood :-)when I turned 30, I quit my job in engineering and logistics, and moved to America to work in finance. Too bad you can't move to "America"... I've always wondered what do you guys do here when you need to start your life over? Then I realized that the local equivalent is moving to West Coast from East (or vice versa). But you have already done this. So, to share my experience - in the past 10 years, I worked as a macroeconomist on the Wall street, reporter (focused on Silicon Valley) (being a journalist has been my childhood dream. Thank G-d, it's not my full time job, thank G-d I got my engineering degree and REAL job), credit analyst (that's when I read an article about you in NY Times), auditor in Big 4 (that's when I read a great article about NY magazine chief editor (you posted a link on your blog), and that magazine was the only link to reality that kept me alive during IPO madness.) I turned 40 in November (can't believe it myself), and the only regret that I have is that I'm too old (and poor) to move into genetics:-) Life continues and I hope that you would also try multiple paths.