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October 19, 2003 - 11:58 pm

The Rescue, The Narrow Escape, And A New Beginning

"I think I'm just going to research the show I'm writing for."

Yesterday, those were the words I used to explain what I was going to do with my Sunday night. They came out of my mouth, and a moment later, I realized that they had come out of my mouth, and then I realized that the words were true.

Yes. I got a job.

I'm not even sure where to begin.

When we last left off, our young hero was facing a dark future as a graveyard-shift transcriber for the Dr. Phil show. The interview had originally been scheduled for Friday morning, but in his reluctance to surrender to the machine of the mustachioed self help guru, the plucky young lad rescheduled the interview for Monday. He then set about doing everything in his power he could to line up another job, any kind of job, before that dread interview 72 hours hence.

I'm going to cool it with the third person stuff now.

So, right. Like I said in that last entry, I didn't want to go to Dr. Phil. After I posted, I was on the phone like a madman that early Friday morning, going through my old business cards, making calls, leaving messages, talking to people in Chicago who know people in Los Angeles, emailing resumes to new leads and ancient contacts. I was making sure I did absolutely everything I could to set up a job for myself, in one last, desperate, clawing attempt to keep myself from taking a horrible job I was going to have no choice but to take.

I utterly failed.

My contacts didn't contact me back, my connections had changed their numbers, and my emails, save for one or two, went unnoticed.

And that's when it happened.

You remember the ever lovely Heather, of course. I haven't seen her in forever, as she's very busy, but we still talk every now and then. In the midst of all this emailing, she wrote to me and asked me if I'd sent in a cover letter and resume for a job she had told me about a few days before.

I hadn't, and I wrote to her that I didn't know how to apply for this job, wouldn't know how to craft a cover letter for it. She offered some advice, told me what I might want to say. Thinking that I didn't really have a chance at it, I did some copying and pasting, rearranging her words into a cover letter that her friend would hand off to the right people.

Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang.

Forty five minutes later, I was at an interview.

Three hours after that, my phone rang again, and I had a job.

I'm a story associate now. A writer for a reality tv show. I am getting paid to write.

I don't believe this either.

Along with the elation (Heather will tell you that my giggling bordered on near madness when I called her after I was offered the job), I'm feeling some very human stuff right now. All these writers books tell you that, when you start getting paid to do something like this, you can't help but wonder how soon they're going to discover that you're a phony. Even though I believe right down to my core that I can do this, there's that little bit of sniggling doubt that wants to tell you that they're going to say "Wait, what? We hired you? You're no writer!"

I think I'll ignore all that.

But this is the first job to which I've ever had that I have to rise up. I'm not a production assistant now. Instead of scrambling to make sure that there's pop in the fridge, I'm in a position to be annoyed because there isn't.

I am so glad to be working again. Especially at a job like this. And I'm so happy to have come to known good people who were kind enough to open the industry door a crack for me.

This job proves a few of those old maxims. Right place, right time: If I had gone to that Dr. Phil interview, I probably wouldn't have been home to get that email from Heather suggesting I apply for the job. Also, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Again, if I hadn't known Heather and Jessica, I'd be at this moment less than twelve hours away from an interview for a job that would have had me begging for a one way ticket home in no time.

I've already promised to take the two of them out to dinner.

They're just going to have to wait a week or two until I collect a check and get myself some of that 'money' stuff.

Ah, employment.

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