I’ve been mildly cranky this whole week. Now I am officially cranky.
Let’s dive in to all the little things making me this way. We moved offices at work. I’m thankful to have such an amazing job. Even though I’m cranky about it, I’m cranky with perspective.
But now we’re all the way out in Burbank! (My head falls back in super cranky/helpless gesture.) For any of you who’ve lived in California, you know that every mile counts. A lot. Things are unbelievably spread out.
I have to leave my house an hour earlier than I used to (and I’m realizing that that hour of sleep makes a humongous difference in my life). Plus, Burbank feels hotter than the area where we used to work. And our whole ofiice configuration is different.
I used to work in a very dark edit bay where we all had our own work spaces. Now, we work in cubicles. Out in the light. With windows along every wall. Where I can see mountains. All day long.
As if it’s not enough to know I live here in L.A., I get it shoved in my face day after day now. I see mountains bathed in sun every time I look away from my computer screen!
And there are humans everywhere. I used to say what a bummer it was that I walked into a dark room, stared at a computer, and barely talked to other human beings day in and day out. But now that I’m out in the light among the humans, I feel weird not being a little mole person.
I’m not the only crankypants there. Many people are bummed about lengthy commutes and new (temporary) computers problems – lots of moving pains going on.
I still have one of the best jobs someone could ask for. I still work with amazing, fabulous people. But we are cranky this week.
Moving on, 2 boys are moving into my apartment to replace the one girl who left. On the one hand, this is cool. Rent is going down. Yee haw.
On the other hand, it is already starting to feel crowded. (And we have wildly different ideas of what our living room should look like. (Someone wants grey walls. That someone is not me.)) This is going to be a bit of an adjustment.
I still live in the greatest building in L.A. And I still deeply adore Taylor – one of my new roommates who’s been a friend of mine for a couple of years. No argument over paint, or air conditioning (he likes it super cold!), or anything silly like that is ever going to make me screm, or be all that super irritated or stressed. He’s Taylor. I could only ever be so annoyed by him (not all that much at all is the highest level of annoyed I could ever be with him).
I don’t even know my other new roommate. (Neither does Taylor, really.) I’m sure he’ll be fine. I’m sure we’ll all find our own space and figure it out. It’s gonna be like a modern day Three’s Company (in which I guess I’m John Ritter).
Then, obviously, always the hugest stress in my life – I’m at the Groundlings at least 4 nights a week improvising and writing. I love it. I love it a lot. But I live, and breathe, and drown in this world of “you should’ve said that. You should’ve written that. You should’ve made this choice. You should’ve tried this character.” On and on with “should’ves.” All night every night. I know, I know, I know you can’t do that to yourself. I still do.
(Photo Credit: Dealsurf.com)
I have midterms this week, so those will either relieve me, or stress me out way more. I’m going with stress me out beyond belief, but we’ll see…
So, as all of these barely-problem problems kept stressing me (wah, wah, wah, my awesome job moved to a nicer building; one of my great friends moved in with me; I get to play pretend four nights a week), I kept thinking, “Escaping to the east coast and running one of those humongous Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathons is gonna make it all better. It’s gonna take it all away.”
A super nice person gave me a buddy pass to get there. Free flight! How can it get any better? Not too surprisingly, I wasn’t able to get on any flights to Providence (or surrounding areas) today. It’s a weekend. There’s an event. I knew it might happen, but I couldn’t leave earlier. So, my big “this will erase all stress” day has now been taken away.
And I am a crankypants.