My new producer was mean, and that’s honestly how I felt. She made comments to me about my personality.”Why do you have to be friends with everyone?” “Why are you so nice?” I didn’t know how to answer the questions. I was just being me. She was from the east coast and felt strongly that the people from the west coast were fake. She said my job was to finish the work and not be everyone’s best friend. If I was done early, then I can work on getting ahead. She would check my scripts for the cases and critique my writing. I am not the best writer, but I would have appreciated guidance more than this isn’t good..do it again. My producer was a professional writer, and I wanted to learn from her, but my anxiety got the best of me. I quickly became the opposite of my former self. I avoided everyone and stayed in my office. My work wall was decorated with things that inspired me, like horror movie posters and the cases that went well. My producer thought my side of the room was very “loud” looking. I never got visitors anymore because everyone got the vibe that I wasn’t allowed to socialize. I had a production assistant under me whom I guided as best as possible. I had her back and gave her tasks to do. She had many things going on in her personal life and health.

A little while later, the teams changed again for the show. Instead of teams of three, we were teams of 9 now. They combined the groups. Each group now had a senior producer, and my producer had become the producer. The show was trying to figure out what worked best, and production assistants were quitting. The pitch meetings took all day to get through. Some groups were stronger than others. Everyone was exhausted. We started to have to work on the weekend because of certain judges’ schedules. The hours were so long. It would be like 6 am to 10 pm some nights. I lived in the valley, and my job was in Culver City. The drive was terrible, but not as bad as some previous jobs. It didn’t take two hours but around an hour and a half. I made some friends at this job, but by the end of this job, those had ended. I was under so must stress that I didn’t want friendships from that job anymore. There was so much drama and gossip, mainly because everyone was burnt out and spent too much time there. I would stay later than needed because I wanted to wait out the traffic. So, I would have dinner out there or take a walk but after a couple of months. I started to feel empty. I had forgotten who I was, and I felt lost. I missed my family and my friends. I missed my best friends. I made a point to spend less time with my coworkers. I stopped staying late and instead sat in traffic. I stopped going to the hangouts after work or on Fridays. One of the few I attended was when Dean invited everyone out, and I went because he vouched for me to get this job. Dean was always kind and told me to come watch him direct when I had time. He told me he was proud of me and the work that I had accomplished thus far.

My friends made an effort to come out and visit me at my job. We hiked the Culver City stairs and had some dinner. It’s a pleasant memory that I have, but honestly, I was over the job. I was ready to move on, but how was the questions.

Cheers,

Frshta