AHHHH!!! What's Next?!

On January 1, 2012, I drove across country with my boyfriend, said 'goodbye for now' to my life in NYC, and arrived in the City of Angels, Los Angeles.

It was a journey of mixed emotions.  How could it not be?  I had pounded the pavement in New York for 8 years.  I had met extraordinary people.  I had walked the streets of Manhattan.  I had performed on New York stages.  I was paid to act.  I learned from the greatest teacher of my life.  I created a series inspired by the constant collision of people and array of communication, miscommunication, loneliness and love that one finds in "the greatest city on Earth."

And yet...I wasn't satisfied.  I felt complacent.  I hadn't accomplished what I wanted to accomplish in my life and in my career.  I had and still have dreams that need(ed) to come to fruition.

So here I am, 9 months in, beginning anew.  Though I am making progress, I still feel very much unhinged.  How do I start getting known by the people I seek to collaborate with?  How do establish myself as a valuable commodity as an actress and a creator?  Do I focus on continuing to produce my own work or put my energy into building the credits that will  steadily grow my acting career?  Can I do both at once?

I decided that Missed Connections Live was my love letter to NYC and to continue producing it here in LA would be forced and inorganic.  I know that I must continue to take the reigns of my career and create opportunity for myself, but if I am going to put time, energy, and resources into a project, the project must be motivating, exciting, challenging, and important.  It must penetrate.  It must make waves.  It must connect with an audience.  It must make a greater impact that I was able to accomplish with my Freshman series.

Though I have been working towards new content, I grapple with writing, with strategy, with feeling overwhelmed by the idea of raising money, with the fear that it will suck, with the loss of a creative partner, with the question if I'm on the right or wrong track, with the question, "why can't someone else just hire me to play a juicy, well-written, transformative character in their movie that will make waves at Sundance,Tribeca, Toronto, and maybe Cannes?"  Maybe they can...

Since I tend to operate under the m.o. that if you want to get shit done, the only person you can truly rely on is yourself, I am stuck in this frustrating place of 'what's next?'  I'm not really sure what'll happen or what exactly I'll do, though I have a pretty good idea, and maybe that's ok.  In the meanwhile, I will continue to make progress in LA, plug away on my next 'personal project,' and trust that everything I'm doing will lead to the realization of the vision I have in my mind.  Or better.