I couldn’t even say what it had done to me. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be out here pretending to be something I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be continuing to chase a dream that had long since died. And I didn’t want to pick up any more lunch or cereal either. Naturally I talked to my friends about all of this and their advice ranged from useless to slightly less useless. But at least they were trying. Brian worked with me so he saw my general discomfort grow into a real dissatisfaction. It may have been a gradual transition, but since I wandered up to his office whenever I was bored, I suppose it was easy enough to see. He was the closest friend I had at the company but it was only after we started talking about this stuff did I realize how different we were. See, Brian was a girlfriend guy. For him security and familiarity were the most important things in
his professional and personal life. He had been at the company a lot longer than me and had been with the same girl for the last few years but that’s not to say he was complacent or lazy, as some girlfriend guys are. He recently got a job at a big time talent agency which means he’ll be well on his way to…something. Even he didn’t know what the future held, but he was confident he was on the right course. Brian didn’t understand my desire to leave anymore than I understood his willingness to stay and commit. I mean, how did he know this job was going to lead to anything? How did he know his girlfriend was even worth his time? Of course he had no idea but it didn’t matter to him. In truth I wish I were more like him. But I think the deeper problem was that he knew what he wanted and I didn’t. Tony understood what I was going through though. He and I had often discussed our growing disillusionment with the fact that we both just seemed to be getting by. Recently, he had even been talking about teaching English in another country, which I thought was a great idea. He was encouraging and enthusiastic about me getting out and doing something else but it surprised me to see he seemed to be resolved to stay in LA. I mean, I certainly didn’t expect him to pack up his own life and take off because I happened to be thinking about doing something different. In fact it would be kind of weird if he did. But based on our previous conversations I thought something like this would inspire him to do some of the things he had always talked about doing. That, however, wasn’t the sense I got from him and he even said going overseas was no longer in his plans. It might have had to do with the fact that things were going so well with his girlfriend. And she was really cool because she was easy to hang out with. She was the type of girl where if everything didn’t go exactly like she wanted or the way she planned she didn’t freak