One Year In

Last month marked one year living in Los Angeles, so it seems like a good opportunity to look back and ask, “How’s it all going?”

I’m gonna give it a C+, but it’s trending in a higher direction.

Here, in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason, is my grade key for the previous twelve months:

Weather: D –

Los Angeles is, of course, famed for its beautiful, sunny weather. So imagine my surprise when it started raining in December and DIDN’T STOP FOR FOUR FREAKING MONTHS. Don’t get me wrong. The cooler, wetter weather was a nice reprieve from the onslaught of triple digit temperatures that roasted us from July through the end of September. But, my god, man. The seemingly endless barrage of cold, flooding rains was, shall we say, not as advertised. And I — a man who reaches for the thermals when the temperature drops below 72 degrees — was not happy. Never in my life would I have imagined I would move to southern California and then develop Seasonal Affective Disorder. But alas, here we are. I’d say we’ve had two months of nice weather this whole year: October and November. Know where else has nice weather in October and November? EVERY OTHER PLACE IN THE NORTHERN DAMN HEMISPHERE. So, yeah. Not impressed. The only reason I don’t give the weather an F is that the rains did alleviate a historic, multi-year drought, which, fine, okay, I guess that was good and all, but whatever. This is about me and I’m grumpy.

Hey! Speaking of those flooding rains …

Housing: C

Our plan was to rent an apartment our first year and hopefully buy a place when the lease was up. Pickings were slim when looking for that first rental, and we landed in a ground floor apartment that was perfectly serviceable but not exactly posh, if you know what I mean. Nor was it suited to those four months of punishing rain, as our living room flooded not once, not twice, not three times, but, yes, four damn times between December and March. It was also dark in there, which, when combined with the lack of sunshine, gave the whole atmosphere a wee bit of a tomblike quality. And the communal washers and dryers rarely worked. And maintenance was always shutting off the water at random times. And there was constant construction both in our building and the surrounding neighborhood, which was an issue for me as I was recording audiobooks from home, and the sounds of jackhammers in the background rarely fit the narrative.

Look, I’m not trying to complain here. We had a roof over our heads and all the necessities of life. It was fine. We were fine. But it wasn’t great. And again, this would have been graded even lower except that we ultimately did find a place to buy and we’ve been here a month now and we LOVE IT. If I do another report card in a year’s time, I suspect housing will be graded much, much higher.

Work: D –

I had high hopes for the audiobook narrator thing, but it didn’t quite get off to the start I had hoped for. Gigs were spotty at best, and I found myself taking on a lot of projects that didn’t pay a set rate, but rather offered a royalty share of all sales. That would’ve been awesome if I were narrating books by best selling authors with huge followings, but the most copies sold of any book I narrated was 73. I was, shall we say, in no danger of becoming rich. Add to that the challenge of having no more than an hour of uninterrupted quiet at any given time (plus some weird vocal issues that I think may be caused by the drier, more polluted air here in L.A.) and it just wasn’t working.

Also, I didn’t move out here to do voiceovers! I moved out here to write! (Okay, as a family, we didn’t really move out here for me, per se, but this is what I want to focus on while I’m here.) And guess what? I recently landed a full-time, creative writing job!

You did? That’s great, Geoff! So … why are you giving Work a D -?

Glad you asked. There are two reasons. Reason number one is that the company I’m working for has a ridiculous daily word count they want us writers to hit. It’s 6,000 words. For reference, Stephen King doesn’t write 6,000 words a day. He doesn’t even write half that. Stephen King averages about 2,000 words a day, which is in line with most professional authors. So we are being asked to triple the output of one of the most prolific writers in the history of words every damn day. (And as you may have surmised, I ain’t making Stephen King money here.) Not ideal. It’s like a goddamn writing sweatshop.

Reason number two? I’m about to enter my third month of employment and I have yet to be paid. Also not ideal. I’m assured the issue will be worked out by the end of this week, which would be great if I hadn’t been assured that very same thing numerous times over the past month.

Yeah, I’m sticking with D -.

Family: A

Seriously, they’re awesome. I’d give them an A+, but I’m also a part of this family, and as a writer I’m cursed with the whole self-loathing thing which drags down the average. But even with me as albatross, it’s a solid A. California seems to suit both wife and child quite well, and for that I’m hella grateful.

Social Life: A

Outside of career reasons, a major factor in wanting to move out here is that we have so many close friends in the area. And while we could always be better about getting together with folks, I think we’ve done a good job keeping in touch with friends and seeing them whether life is cooperating with us or not. Now we just have to cross our fingers that they don’t all start moving away in droves because that would suuuuuuuck.

So there you have it, folks! Some challenges along the way, but feeling like we’re on the right path. Hope you all are doing well wherever you are in this leg of the great journey!