Thirty Day LA

Giovanni: "I still have a postcard you sent me from ’66
It said everything that exists is beautiful with three exclamation points
Do you Still Believe that?"
Niccolai: "I don't believe in exclamation points anymore"

I've been thinking back to this scene from The Best of Youth. Lately, in my life there have been no exclamation points. I am kind of just coasting by. No challenges, no obstacles, just repetition. I have a job which used to challenge me but now allows me to watch youtube videos for half of the day, sit on aim a third of the day, and still appear to be productive and impress my bosses. My afternoons are spent vegetating, watching whatever my tivo has decided to record. Although I have huge plans and ideas for my life, when I look back to my actions lately, they do not exactly resound with the word ambition.

So, I have spent the last few days reevaluating my life and where I think it should be going. It didn't take me long to realize that it's pretty much not really going anywhere because I never take any risks. I find myself constantly over-thinking situations to the point where I do nothing. I only act on sure things and let my fears prevent me from taking action in pursuit of my interests. Sadly, my life has been driven mostly be my biggest fears: of failure and the way other people perceive who I am. For the most part my fears and inability to take risks have driven the excitement out of my life.

The bottom line is: things need to change. I plan to push myself to spend the next 30 days taking risks, moving away from shyness and inaction, reinventing myself and confronting my fears. With this in mind, I want to make my project more about change and taking risk and less about exploring Los Angeles (although I plan to spend some days doing that). For the most part Los Angeles will be the setting, rather than a major player.

A big component of this project is going to be visual. I want to videotape and heavily photograph a lot of my days. I would also like to get people from people I do not know. I want this to feel as interactive as possible.

While there are certain things I need to do myself, I want to invite other people to get involved. Some of the projects I have planned simply can't happen unless I get others involved. At the same time though I don’t want to stay in my comfort zone and rely on the same 5 people for 30 days to get involved in all of these projects. So whether I have met you or not, I'm hoping there is some part of the next 30 days you want to be a part of. I will be posting in advance to give everyone a heads up on my plans.

Some of the ideas I have to bring a challenging aspect back into my life are:
- Taking a bus ride across Los Angeles while taking pictures and having
conversations with the random people I meet
- Demanding a Pay Raise
- Enroll in Scratch DJ Academy
- Organizing a street performance on Hollywood blvd (it has to be videotaped and put on youtube).
- Working for a political campaign
- Graffiti/Street Art Project
- Open Mic night at standup club
- learning to break/pop
- taking an improve class
- going to an open audition (I should clarify that I am not an actor)
- performing spoken word
- day trip to vegas where I eat 3 buffet meals (the city kind of defines
risk)
- living a day completely honest and unfiltered (meaning that I don’t overthink things and simply just say the first thing that pops in my head for a day)

On the website for this improv class I signed up for, it ends with the statement "You will GO BIG—not go home. Because you already know what’s at home, and it’s just not that interesting." Yeah the quote is pretty cheesy, but it’s how I hope to live these next 30 days. I hope by the end of this that my actions are as grand as my ambitions.