post grad
18 months in the real world
My boyfriend and I drove into Los Angeles on a 72-degree day in June. The longer we lived in LA, I found myself often saying, “the weather’s so nice”. It became automatic, something to fill stale air. It became an expectation that the weather would be nice, the same as the previous day and the day before that. Entire seasons could elapse without me noticing.
We moved to Los Angeles to pursue careers in the entertainment industry, having studied screenwriting in New York City. The blueprint was already laid out for us: we would move to Hollywood soon after graduation, do grunt work at a talent agency in order to prove our worth. After a few years there, we would try to get staffed as writers assistants on a TV show and eventually, hopefully, become TV writers ourselves. We graduated in the midst of the pandemic and, since our graduation ceremony was virtual, we got a head start on the move in May.
While applying to endless assistant positions within traditional media, I found a particularly interesting role on an industry job board. It was at an influencer management company with 11 employees, and had been founded less than two years prior. I vaguely recognized one of their clients, a controversial beauty YouTuber. I sent my resume on a Saturday, somewhat out of curiosity, somewhat as a joke. They emailed me on Tuesday to set up a call the same day. My second and third interviews were both on Wednesday.
The subject line “Congratulations!” appeared in my inbox 30 minutes after my final interview ended. The job offered the bare minimum: health insurance, a 401K, $35,000 a year, and maybe an interesting story.
I took less than an hour to email back: Thank you so much for this opportunity! I would love to accept your offer.
On my first day at the office, I passed the parking entrance several times and had to circle around to another gate. This other entrance turned out to be an exit. I was buzzed in and drove the wrong way into the parking lot, doing a seven-point turn to maneuver into a spot angled in the opposite direction.
I talked to a receptionist at the front desk of the first floor. She worked for my new employer’s parent company, a modeling agency. She was supermodel-pretty and I wondered if she was repped by her employer.
My office was on the second floor. The receptionist stood up to point me in the correct direction, which was apparently back into the parking lot and through a different door. I was surprised by how tall she was and forgot the instructions.
I managed to find my way to the second floor. I would work out of the front office there. The CEO’s corner suite was on the opposite side of the building from my desk. Talent managers’ offices, a YouTube studio, and storage rooms flanked the long hallway that led there.
My new workplace was a twenty-minute drive from my apartment but I consulted Google Maps every morning for the first two weeks. I’d often forget which desk belonged to which manager, or which manager represented which client. The old assistant had put together an onboarding document for me, and I’d consult it religiously, particularly when I would open the office.
Every morning, I’d walk through the space, unlocking and opening doors. I’d turn on lights, central air, the neon sign with our company name glowing in cyan. I’d throw out trash and dead leaves from the plants I was failing to keep alive. I’d turn on the space heater that sat next to my desk (to offset the frigid central air, which was offsetting the balmy LA weather outside). I’d empty the dishwasher and check the fridge to see if it needed restocks. It held prebiotic soda and energy drinks and ionized alkaline bottled water that I’d arrange in neat rows, making sure the labels always faced outward. I’d restock K-cups, the cereal dispenser, bags of potato chips, mini chocolates. My goal was to make everything look camera-ready and bountiful.
I tried to make the city feel like my new home. I sent endless “We should grab coffee!” texts in an attempt to make more friends, with the majority of those coffee dates losing steam. I was desperate to find my new routine, hopeful that a new friend, restaurant, or hobby would resolve my ennui. I would smile and eat my $25 salad, hike up Runyon Canyon under a blistering sun, and explore new neighborhoods (spending 30 minutes searching for parking). As I attempted to squeeze myself into this new life, it felt like I was wearing an ill-fitting outfit borrowed from a well-meaning friend. Maybe this is a life I could learn to want, I thought, meanwhile tugging at the neckline and pulling at the hem.
At one party, I watched a foosball game while another transplant shared how long she’d lived in the city. She advised me that it would take a few years before I started to enjoy living there. I wondered if that would come as a result of resignation, of forgetting how it felt to actually like where you live.
I could feel myself slowly sinking into this new existence. Professionally, I slipped further away from my screenwriting aspirations and tried to embrace my role. I went to swanky industry parties and made small talk with content creators and employees from Meta. I exchanged work emails with someone at a birthday party, after realizing our professional synergy (his studio was looking to work with more influencers for film marketing). I knew my daily commute and each manager’s roster by heart. I joined conversations about whatever celebrity’s new brand launch (and how much they might pay our clients to promote it). Whenever I began to doubt my professional trajectory, I reminded myself that I should be grateful - there were some Hollywood assistants who regularly worked 12-hour days, who were treated like shit, who had been assistants for five years without any hint of upward mobility. My boss regularly sang my praises and asked how I wanted to grow at the company (he often spoke of wanting to “groom” me, a regrettable choice of words). I felt lucky that I wasn’t being verbally abused at work, a low bar to clear in employee satisfaction.
The 75-ish degree spring weather turned to the 80-something degree summer and I found myself receiving a promotion. I was now a Creative Executive, a title with amorphous responsibilities and a nominal pay raise. I wondered why I wasn’t more excited. I gave a ring of freshly-copied office keys to the new assistant I had hired to replace me. She had moved to LA after graduating college, and seemed to be genuinely happy. I wondered what she saw in this city that I didn’t.
I found even less purpose in my new role. I was originally told that, with my promotion, I’d be responsible for bridging the gap between new and traditional media by helping our clients enter the TV and film industry. But now, the company was veering towards music, Web3 (whatever that meant), and chat show podcasts. As a so-called Creative Executive, I produced photoshoots for C-list celebrities. I organized a listening party for a D-list celebrity’s child who was now pursuing music. I took meeting notes for companies building NFTs and the metaverse, not understanding any of it. I sent endless pitch emails to podcast companies, knowing I was crowding their inbox with half-baked ideas, selling what simply amounted to another income stream for talent they probably didn’t recognize. I wondered whether, in my own small way, I was making the world a worse place.
At the same time, my company seemed to be falling apart. Managers and coordinators would close their office doors and lower their voices before telling me about the CEO stealing deals from other managers for his own clients. Managers were starting to quit (and take their clients with them). Others were planning their own departures.
The CEO had privately told talent managers about cutting costs, while publicly sharing his plans for office renovations with other team members. He announced that we’d be hosting a three-year anniversary party, a party that I knew would cost at least $10,000 (I had planned the one the year prior). We wondered why that money couldn’t have been spent elsewhere, why we needed to host an anniversary party every year since the company’s founding.
During the CEO’s three-year anniversary party speech, a talent manager leaned in close to my ear: “I’ve been working here since the company started, and he’s never once thanked his employees during one of these”. I remembered all of the times I had stayed at the office until 12am for events and photoshoots, of the weekends I’d come into the office without overtime. He thanked his business partners (who led our parent company, and approved the budget for this party) and the night went on.
I was told to be cautious about what I said around certain coworkers, as they might parrot whatever I shared to the CEO. I began working in the far corner of my office, as far as I could get from the door, to minimize my interactions with others. It was exhausting to be on high alert while putting on a smile.
I did not want to be there but didn’t know where I’d rather be instead. With my promotion and newfound lack of ambition, I had a lot more free time; instead of waiting to clock out to spiral, I could do it all day. I would Google things like “is it bad to leave your job after getting promoted?”, “entertainment jobs Los Angeles”, and “quitting a job without another lined up”. I sat in my office browsing career sites and emailing former professors for advice. I began interviewing for yet another assistant job in Hollywood, which paid less and seemed worse - one of their talent managers FaceTimed me for an interview with a few minutes notice and another one of their execs called to convince me to take a pay cut to work for them. I was offered this newer, shittier job and turned it down. The tiny bit of novelty it might provide would not get me unstuck.
I’d often complain to friends that this was not the life we were promised to lead out of college. It felt like a successful adulthood was a lie - used to trick us into going into expensive schools and niche academic programs with little hope except to become email monkeys and paper-pushers. I was filled with the angst of a teenager with only enough agency to be pissed off at how little agency she had. My boyfriend would want to spend time with me after I’d arrive home from work; I only had enough energy to lay in bed, alone, with a screen to entertain me. My pent-up irritation from the workday meant I had little patience for anyone. In hindsight, it’s very possible that I was depressed. My boyfriend had gone on his own “I hate LA” arc, though it was much shorter than mine. He was already making plans to pivot industries entirely, and was lining up the pieces for his future. In order to solidify his plans, he needed to know what I wanted to do. When would we be moving back to New York? We always knew we’d go back, but the plan was on fast-forward. He wanted to go back to the East Coast as soon as possible. Would I join him or should we break up so I could stay in LA?
We walked around our neighborhood after dinner one night and discussed. Tears streamed down my face. I didn’t know what I wanted; both decisions seemed equally difficult. Because of the potential bad optics (me crying next to a man at night, in full view of our neighbors), we moved to his car and I continued to cry there (a friend was staying with us, so our apartment was off-limits).
In the car, I decided I would quit my job without another one lined up. We would take a trip to Europe using our savings, just like we’d been talking about for months before. And then we would move back to New York. My boyfriend would help cover my expenses in the interim. It almost felt too good to be true. When we decided on this plan, a sense of relief washed over me. It was the first time in a long time that I felt excited about the future.
I thought that quitting my job - my first real, full-time job - would lead to a seismic shift. But my last day was surprisingly ordinary. I wrote out the list of projects that were in-progress and offloaded documents from my personal hard drive. We ate donuts for my goodbye party. The CEO only stayed for part of it. I learned that he’d left abruptly because a manager had given notice that same day (the third manager in quick succession to leave), and he was handling the impending fallout.
I hugged my coworkers goodbye. In a few weeks, almost all of them would be giving their own notices and moving onto new jobs. In a few weeks, the CEO would begin combining goodbye parties into one, the same way that staff birthdays might be merged into a single celebration.
I walked outside into the parking lot for the last time. It was November but the air felt the same as on my first day. I got into my car and turned my key in the ignition. It felt like I had been asleep at the wheel and had finally woken up.
Related reading
This is one of my favorite books. I’ve reread it a few times and returned to it during the (embarrassingly long) time it took me to publish this essay. Anna Weiner wrote this memoir about her pivot from book publishing to the tech industry in the early-mid 2010s - she details the wave of excitement and growth around Silicon Valley during this time while exploring the moral trepidation she felt about the industry and its impact on the larger world. A great memoir that captures a snapshot in time from the inside.
“I still clung to the belief that I could find meaning and fulfillment in work—the result of over two decades of educational affirmation, parental encouragement, socioeconomic privilege, and generational mythology.”
Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz
Eve Babitz was inevitably going to appear in this section. The famous Los Angeles essayist writes about her life in (natch) LA. I don’t feel a particular need to summarize Eve Babitz’s bio or this book of essays, so I will instead provide some out-of-context quotes:
“… I thought that whole sector of society Jack was in was flimsy because no one had any real style: They had Porsches and were skinny and took cocaine and weren’t even in the movie business— they were all in peripheral situations like advertising and magazines. Lots of art directors. (The only good art director is a retired art director.)”
“People nowadays get upset at the idea of being in love with a city, especially Los Angeles. People think you should be in love with other people or your work or justice. I’ve been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I’ve loved and the ideas I’ve embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do to be able to stand it.”
I don’t want to be a girlboss anymore (by me!)
Um, sorry to cite myself, but I’ve explored this topic before if you want to read more of my writing. I talk about my disillusionment with my career and the diminishing returns of working so hard for a job that will never love you back.
“Our time and energy are finite— when we devote so much of it to labor, we allow other parts of our lives to wither away. We spend less time cultivating our relationships because we view it as a distraction rather than a respite.”
That is all from me for now :)
xoxo,
Mia
Cover image: New York (1961) by Garry Winogrand