Ask Joaquin: How are Things Going in California?

From a lot of people:  How are things going in California? (or a similar variant of the question)

I figured the best way to end this month was to give you a recap of our fabulous success here in the bustling city of Los Angeles!  Scratch that.  Our moderate good fortune in the L.A. area!  No… still a bit misleading.  Okay.  I thought I would end this month by recapping our thus far unsuccessful move to Littlerock (even though we wanted to be in L.A. and told everybody that was where we were moving to and yet here we are). 

Let’s look back week by week and see where we went wrong.

Week One

After such a horrendous drive out here, I think we were just excited to be in California finally.  We were like kids in a candy store, running around oohing and awing over every little thing.  “Let’s drive to L.A. today and look at apartments!  That’s fun!” or “After your audition, Brian, we should stop by Hollywood Boulevard and check out the Walk of Fame and stuff.  You know, be tourists!”  Yay!  Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun!

Week Two

By this point we realized that if we ever wanted to actually rent any of the apartments we were drooling over, we would have to obtain employment.  So the job search began.  We went to Starbucks to use the free wi-fi to fill out muchos online applications and sent our resumes pretty much everywhere.  Of course, we still found time to play around at our favorite store, Charlie Brown Farms.  I mean, after a while Starbucks does kick you out, you know.

Week Three

Somebody actually wanted to interview me!  Hooray!  It was DialogueDirect and I thought, “Hey, sounds like a poopy job but it’s for a good cause.  And the pay is pretty decent, so why not?”  So we drove to Culver City for the interview, and I was hired!  That’s progress!  I went to training, had my first day out on the streets of downtown Los Angeles… and then quit.  Yep.  Wasn’t for me.  So Brian and I went to temp agencies and are hoping to be placed into a job soon.

Week Four

Got an email from Eva and our long-anticipated animation project “Tenny” has finally gotten all the legal approval necessary for funding.  Which means that we can finally—finally!—start in February.  Brian had to do some tests on Excel and Word to see if he qualifies for a certain job that came up… so let’s cross our fingers that he gets it!  Because if he has that job and I’m working on “Tenny,” we should be okay money-wise.  We are also awaiting his liquidated mutual fund (which is in the mail according to Edward Jones) which will put some much-needed dinero into our bank account.  Oh, I should also mention that we toured The Art Institute of California - Hollywood, although I seriously doubt I’ll ever be able to afford it…

So where did we go wrong?  Let’s see. We should have started looking for jobs sooner.  This wasn’t supposed to be a vacation to Hollywood.  And we should have hit up the temp agencies first, rather than relying on Craigslist and stuff.  My Aunt Rachel has always had success with temp agencies (and it was her prompting that led us to go that route).  We also should have been more frugal with the money we brought with us, because we wasted a lot of it that first week or two on frivolities.

Sigh.  Lessons learned.  Let’s move on to February, shall we?

Have a question?  Ask Joaquin!