Part 3

Post date: Dec 05, 2011 7:56:12 PM

I had three goals going into 2011: I wanted to upgrade my living situation, I wanted my job to end and I wanted to launch a writing career.

The only one of the three that was in my control at the time was upgrading my living situation. I was living in a studio apartment three blocks east of Sunset and Highland and found a one-bedroom apartment near the foot of Runyon Canyon hiking trail that constitutes the majority of my exercise.

Ending the job was just as easy but I had already left two jobs already in my career – CBS in November of 2005 (bonehead move) and in June of 2009 from an ad agency in Massachusetts (necessary move). At a certain point, leaving or being left was of no matter to me so I set an end date and said “come hell or high water, I’m outta here”.

Fortunately, I got laid off instead. I can only imagine the flack I would have gotten otherwise. People thought I was crazy to quit a job back in ’09, they would have sent me to a sanitarium if I left one in the middle of this current economic shit show.

But I’ve ultimately been about my own happiness and I wasn’t happy at CBS at the time of my departure. This had more to do with what was going on personally (parents divorcing and newly out as gay) than what was going on professionally. I could have handled one or the other but not both – and not at the age of 25.

I was paranoid, scared and mistrustful. If I was in a better state of mind I would have actually spoken to my manager about what was going on. I took me about four years after leaving to realize that he actually would have had my back. He would have been an ear. He may not have taken it any easier on me but he would have known and understood and helped out however he could. I firmly believe that. But I was working in a corporate environment and assumed that anyone in management was the enemy.

So I left, moved to New York (bonehead move), returned to LA, got a job at an ad agency and was transferred to their sister office in Massachusetts less than a year later after my department was shut down.

After a year, I wasn’t happy at the ad agency in Massachusetts. I missed Los Angeles and was living in the suburbs between Boston and Providence, so I was not all that socially active in either even though I had friends in both. Many of my co-workers were either married, in the process of getting married or had kids. Those that didn’t lived largely in and around Boston with their own social lives.

The depression didn’t help. I blamed it on living in New York but it started before I left LA (the first time), which is why I moved to New York in the first place. New York just cultivated it. That depression continued when I returned to LA and is part of the reason I accepted that job transfer to Massachusetts. I just didn’t have the strength of mind to go interviewing.