CALIFORNIA DREAMING, PART 2
When you have a full time job, you develop a jaded sense of time. Days pass and you often have no idea what month or even year it is. You just wake up and go to work- stay there till you are too tired to function. Go home and sleep. Or go out, and pretend you are having fun.
My first week in LA was weird as fuck. In fact, even my first 24 hours felt like a lot. I had no idea what to do with myself. I spent a substantial amount of time working out. I spent a few hours a day at Target and Trader Joe’s trying to get familiar with all the new products and to understand what the fuck is gluten and why it is so bad for me. I walked a lot. I watched people going to work in the morning and I envied them. They were so grumpy and annoyed and I wanted to stop them and say if only you knew…
In LA I realized how small I was. In Cairo I am considered such a dreamer. But in LA I am a nobody. It was refreshing. Everyone had better dreams, and what’s more important is they believe they could achieve them… They believe in their dreams and themselves so much that eventually they would become it. They act the part. Everyone already behaves like the celebrity, chairman, famous artist, they think they will be years from now.
These people weren’t sad, they weren’t depressed. I saw lines of actors waiting for auditions they know there’s only a one percent chance of getting, and they were happy. I saw street performers who begged people to stand and listen for a second, and they were happy. I saw bartenders studying their lines for auditions while serving drinks, waiters practicing their acting skills in pretending to like asshole customers. Everyone believes they will make it one day. Everyone is happy.
I have come to learn one or two things myself. I learned that you refer to anything as a meeting. For example, if you are unemployed and you are spending your day binge-watching Veep with a friend, you call that a meeting. I learned that you never admit you are unemployed. You are always “working on the next project” even if that project is doing laundry later in the day. I learned that you should consider everyone you meet as a potential employer. Don’t sell yourself short though, you don’t need them, they don’t need to know that. Remember, you are not unemployed…
I learned a lot of things actually. I met people who should be running the world instead of spending their mornings running on Santa Monica beach. I saw potential in ambitious Uber drivers and ambition in Starbucks baristas who insist on getting my very difficult name right.
I saw happiness. I never thought I would see it again. As the days went by, I wasn’t unemployed anymore. I assigned myself as the ambassador of happiness. I would take all the happiness I get in LA and transfer it to Cairo. I wanted to give them a whiff of what I got to see and experience. They still don’t get it. But I don’t care. I am busy being NOT unemployed.
