This is it.

This is really happening.

Just breathe in and go.

You work and you work and you work some more at this whole show business thing, right?

You go out there and you audition and you make YouTube videos and you stalk the people you think might be able to help you get your foot in the door.

You work shitty, soul sucking jobs in customer service, or worse, retail or even worse—food service, just to make enough money to pay your bills, maybe eat, and pay for the headshots you took all while keeping you two cents away from poverty.

Every day you hear the stories of people who made it big who used to be in the same position as you and you think, “If they can do it, I can too.”

But with every rejection you get you get a little sadder. Every time you perform and you don’t hear any laughs you start thinking about how you can work your way up the corporate ladder at your nine to five job. Every time you see someone get famous off a sex tape you start thinking it might not be a bad idea, except you would need to hire someone to be in it with you since you don’t even have a boyfriend and that just makes you even more depressed.

And then comes the day when someone who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone else, happened to see you perform at a tiny hole in the wall in Andersonville and they thought you were hilarious.

They told that someone to tell that someone else to tell that other person that you were “hilarious. A modern Lucille Ball, but without trying to be.” They say, “find this girl before someone else does.”

And you get the call.

They heard about you, they found your YouTube videos. That guy was right, you’re funny. They have a role you might be good for. It’s a starring role on a sitcom. They’re looking for “fresh faces”. Could you come in and audition?

You freak out.

Don’t freak out! You keep telling yourself. They tell you to have a piece prepared.

You choose Patsy from Little Murders. It’s your best piece to date.

Can you be in L.A. on Monday, they ask.

Yes! You say immediately.

You freak out again.

You have three days to find a ticket and find a place to stay and you only have $14.78 in your bank account and you don’t have any more days off from work.

But it doesn’t matter. You don’t care if you have to turn tricks by Midway, you’re going.

You don’t end up turning tricks, but you do use the credit card with the high interest rate you’ve been trying to pay off since your freshman year of college and you buy a one-way ticket on faith. Faith that you’ll need to stay a few days as they tell you about your new life in L.A.

You don’t book a hotel, because you don’t have that much faith and you don’t have any more credit on that card anyway.

You step out of LAX and you see palm trees and you think, I could live here. I can move here and wear sunglasses all the time and dodge paparazzi and maybe date George Clooney at some point, because everyone does, don’t they? Or at least you want to catch him before he gets too old to be a ruggedly handsome older man and becomes an older man who was once ruggedly handsome.

You walk into the offices where they’ve scheduled the auditions and a secretary shows you to a little waiting area.

A door opens. They call your name.

You start to sweat and pray they can’t tell that your armpits are wet and you feel like you’re going to puke.

An hour later you walk out of the room.

They asked you how long you were staying in L.A.

You asked how long they needed you to stay.

They said they’d call you in an hour.

You have no money and you have nothing to do. You find a coffee shop with outdoor seating across the street and wait.

They call you 20 minutes later. “We like you. You’ve got something special. We’re offering you the part. Production starts in one month.”

Is it too soon to say you’ve made it?

 

5. Inspired by the following quote: “Imitation is suicide” Ralph Waldo Emerson

5a. inspired by my boo, Phylli