Marissa Flaxbart

Bang the Door Slowly (thoughts on career jealousy and finding my way)

I am afflicted. At some point this week – a week that I’d been thrilled about and looking forward to, one which felt full of possibility – something soured. I’ve caught some kind of jealousy disease. Emerald Fever.

I’ve noticed a few symptoms over the past months. On a recent trip to visit my dad, we watched an episode of Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter which he’d saved to rewatch with me. My dad tells me about this show all the time, rightly assuming that I’d find the topic interesting and the conversations enlightening. But I never watch it on my own. The episode he’d saved, “Comedy Showrunners”, was excellent and even a bit provocative. I was engaged and entertained, but toward the end, I heaved an involuntary sigh. My dad clocked this and asked what was up. I told him I’d tell him later. 

Later came that evening, when we watched “Drama Showrunners” episode. I spoke up, intending to simply share a curious personal discovery I’d had during the earlier episode, one that was proving itself again presently. But by the end of the sentence, absurdly, I was fighting back tears. “Instead of watching these people talk about writers’ rooms and industry experience and feeling excited about being there myself, all I feel is how impossible getting there seems.” The phrase I’ve been using for the past few months, the one that feels most apt, is “banging on a locked door.” That’s why I don’t watch the show at home. It makes me feel sorry for myself. Then that makes me feel small and petty.

Of course, I am not outside the industry. I have worked in the film and television industry for over five years; I went to one of the top film schools and learned the ropes from experts. I even helped develop a show that, god willing, will air on Netflix in 2020. And yet, the career I came out here seeking feels as distant as ever, if not (somehow, impossibly) more so. All I want is to be paid to do a thing that I’m really quite good at. But I simply cannot find the path forward. More and more, I worry that the path does not exist. 

The truth is that the path both does and does not exist. On the one hand, searching up and down for a tried-and-true “way in” to where I want to be has led me time and time again back to the starting point. On the other hand, any journeyway between two points is technically a path. Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean I’m not traveling on it.

This is the great irony, the one biggest way that real life is proving to be much different than the life we are prepared for in school: for most goals in life, you can’t make your way there by planning. 

In the meantime, while I second guess the existence of my destination, I grasp at straws thinking of other, clearer roads I might walk to somewhere else. I read. I become jealous of romance novelists. I think, “maybe I should write a romance novel.” I listen to podcasts that are not my podcast. I become jealous of other formats, of more successful podcasters. I think, “I have lots of ideas for other podcasts. Maybe I should make another podcast.” I walk the streets of Los Angeles, obsessed and enchanted by the art that covers so much of the city. I become jealous of muralists, jealous of big, blank walls. I think, “maybe I should paint a mural.” 

And all of this sounds great. What I want is to do all of it. But also, I want to be told I can. Also, I want time to crack wide open and allow me to live multiple lives at once.

What sucks the most about this Emerald Fever is that I know better. I know that I am blessed in many ways. I have things going on; I’m doing my best. And above all, the bittersweet, undeniable constant: I am an ambitious person, I love to learn and grow, and I will never be satisfied¹. There is no end to get to; it’s all path.

Emerald Fever and her sister maladies — burnout, impostor syndrome, self-pity – will come and go. And whenever they come, I will try to return to gratitude and the sure-fire exorcism technique of putting words on paper.

---

¹ I’m not even trying to quote Hamilton here, but that song makes me weep every time because of how deeply I feel it…it’s hard to distinguish from the general background weeping I do as soon as the soundtrack starts, but trust me, there’s another layer to it.

What I Read on Tuesday

Tuesday of this week was a crisp, blank sheet of paper. I cannot overstate how much I revel in the occasional day with no scheduled events in sight – emphasis on "occasional," as living every day like this would get old fast. 

When I say it was a day with nothing scheduled, I don't mean that there was nothing planned. I had two items written in my planner for the day: in large letters, the word "WRITE." In smaller script, just below: "read."

I spent a huge portion of the day writing, and it did my mind and soul a world of good. But also I read. A lot.

Here is what I read:

1. Several chapters of Ellie Kemper's memoir, My Squirrel Days. Instead of finishing it, I opted to save the final chapter for tomorrow. Ironically, as much as I relish being able to move on to the next book in my stack, I am rarely in a rush to turn a final page.

2. The second essay in Michiko Kakutani's The Poet at the Piano, a collection of reflective interviews with artists in their natural habitats. I read the first essay in the book months ago. It was about Saul Bellow. I had never read any Saul Bellow, so I stopped reading Poet at the Piano and got Seize the Day from the library. The essay I read today was about Jorge Luis Borges. I have not read much (any?) Borges. Any guesses what author's story collection I checked out from the library yesterday afternoon?

3. As an MFA graduation present, my dad got me a book called Daily Rituals by Mason Currey that documents the wildly varied habits and patters of hundreds of artists (as above, I use the term generally, to refer to writers, musicians, etc.). I feel by turns buffeted and devastated by this book. Sometimes it gives me ideas as to what rituals I could try; sometimes it makes me feel better about my own rituals; sometimes it makes me feel like a lazy asshole. This is why I have only read a quarter of the book. This day, though, something beautifully coincidental (if not marginally miraculous) happened. I opened the book to where I'd last left off, and one of the first passages I got to was about Toni Morrison, who just passed away at 88. 

1993 was the year that Morrison won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Just sayin'.

4. Toni Morrison's 1993 Nobel Prize speech.

5. All of issue No. 2 of a zine called Selfish. It was on a rack at the library and though I didn't know what it was, it called to me.

6. Half a chapter of Rainbow Rowell's Carry On. I was tempted to keep on, but this was getting ridiculous. I needed to eat dinner.

7. A chapter of the romance novel I'm currently reading, unfortunately titled The Husband Trap (book #1 in "The Trap Trilogy"!). Title aside, I'm quite enjoying this one, which I got from The Ripped Bodice's famous blind-read section (they wrap a book in colorful wrapping paper and slap on a cleverly worded enticement about the plot). I doubt that I would otherwise be reading a book called The Husband Trap. Then again, the titles of romance novels are, in my opinion, mostly terrible. Other romance novels I have read are called Wed Him Before You Bed Him, Any Duchess Will Do, and More than Seduction. I have only been reading romance novels for a year or two, so I have barely scratched the surface.

That's it! The other day I took a photo of my stack of recently acquired books that I'm excited to read ASAP. I thought it would make a fun, simple post. Almost none of these 7 items are a part of that stack. OH WELL!

Sounds Like a Fun Ride

It's quarter to 9pm on a Monday and I'm buying overpriced European butter and organic buttermilk from the fancy health food store. It's not that I need the buttermilk to be organic, or the butter to be European; it's just that this is the only grocery store on my direct route home.

The cashier, an affable man around my age in a short-sleeved black button down patterned with white sunglasses, asks me how my day is going. I decide to answer honestly. This is my way.

ME: It's been up and down, but it's pretty good now.

The day started well enough. 9am teleconference; my video feed didn't work, but that wasn't such a bad thing. I took a walk to a coffee shop and wrote a poem on the way. Then on to the office; it had been a bad-mood afternoon there, maybe a symptom of what a bad-feeling week it is to be an American. As I check out now, I have just left a 2-hour meeting that ended at 8:30pm, but it was a meeting I'd been looking forward to. I am going home to make late-night scones.

HIM: That's good. Most people spiral. Something goes wrong early, and the whole day is downhill from there.

ME: Huh. I guess you're right. But that's not me. I'm up and down --

Here, I gesture with my hands, indicating a bumpy ride. I don't realize until I'm saying this how true it is. Up and down, up and down. This is an improvement from more difficult past days. But I don't see that yet -- I'm too busy being comically self-deprecating.

ME: It's a real rollercoaster ride of emotions.

HIM: (A sincere smile on his face) Sounds like a fun ride!

ME: (taken aback) Yeah, sometimes. Yes.

I am about to leave when it occurs to me that I have forgotten something important.

ME: How was your day?

HIM: (thinking) Pretty good. I got a lot of compliments.

ME: On your shirt?

HIM: (Looking down at his shirt; realizing what he's wearing) Oh, ha. Maybe one.

ME: It's a great shirt. Hey, now that's two.

I left. I almost laughed walking to my car, buttermilk straining the worn straps of my shoulder bag.

It's so easy to forget this power we have to push one another up that next hill.

 

Do You Believe in Magic?

I already had my Friday more or less planned. Write, walk, coffee, walk, smoothie, write, movie, dinner, read, sleep. It was going to be a nice, quiet, solitary day.

And then I sent a friend a message. The message read, simply, “do you want to teach me more magic next week?”

He wrote back saying I should come over right away.

And that’s how I found myself sitting around a square dining room table with three young, straight, white dudes (my friend, his cousin, whom I’d heard of but never met, and his roommate, who did not remember me until the fourth time we were introduced) in West Hollywood. The table was covered with four neoprene placemats illustrated with fantasy-scapes of heroes and dragons, and the small dining room was overflowing with boxes and boxes of playing cards. But not the kind of cards sleight-of-hand magicians use. We were doing a different kind of magic.

This was my first Magic: the Gathering draft, and I was woefully unprepared. 

Just a few weeks back, on a routine hang-out with this same friend, we found ourselves in this same accidentally-Magic-the-Gathering-themed dining room, and because the topic of the game was unavoidable, he asked me (to his credit) if I had ever played. I hadn’t. But I knew this game.

There has never been a time in my life when I was not, in some respect, “one of the guys.” My father has a beautiful photograph, taken when I was just three years old, of me and three preschool chums sitting in a row in our classroom. One boy, Aaron, is preparing to attack the cameraperson. Two other boys look shy or disinterested. And then there’s me, smirking at the photographer. My father contends that this is a photo “of Marissa” and I am inclined to agree. This is my life story: sitting in a room full of dudes, smirking at the camera. 

The dudes in question have, by definition, always been the type that can have a female friend and not be too weird about it. They are smart, creative, typically kind-hearted, and almost always deeply nerdy in at least one way, but usually more like four or five. My high school class was famous in our day for being one where the choir nerds, theater nerds, and academic nerds were all more or less the same usual suspect group of nerds. The fact that speech and debate competition season overlapped with show choir competition season was an annual fiasco.

My point is, I knew about Magic: the Gathering. But I’d never played. So my buddy, who is an excellent teacher, taught me how. He taught me to pretend I was some kind of master magician standing on top of a hill across from another master magician, and we both had a bunch of spells at our disposal (these are listed on the cards). We were going to use our spells, many of which summoned some sort of magic creature that would attack the opponents’ magical creature. Whatever that sounds like to you, dear reader, you are probably about right. It’s a great metaphor for a very strange, exceedingly complex game. It is very silly, and yet it requires an immense amount of strategy and brainpower. 

It is the perfect game, I’m now realizing, for smart, nerdy dudes. But I enjoyed it, too, when I was being patiently taught the rules by my good buddy.

Back to this Friday, though. I showed up at my friend’s apartment and was immediately in a panic that took me by surprise. My friend and the other two guys were getting ready to start the draft. Not only did I not feel prepared for what we were about to do, but I also HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE ABOUT TO DO. What’s a draft? How do four people play this game at once? How do you play this game at all??  Look, I’m an intelligent, self-possessed woman in her mid-thirties. I was, in fact, the oldest person in the room. But all I could think was how I had unwittingly plopped myself into the position of annoying, casual, noob GIRL. 

“Girl” being the operative word. I hate to be seen as dumb in any setting (this intellectual vanity is one of my greatest character flaws, I’d say). But to be the dumb girl was a living nightmare.

First off, it was a mansplaining minefield. In this very apartment a year earlier, a new guy who I’d been having a great conversation with explained to me how the TV show I’d just named as my favorite was “actually anti-feminist propaganda” — and this after admitting that he had NEVER SEEN THE SHOW. At this point in my life as a woke woman, it’s honestly pretty hard to get off my high horse long enough for a man teach me almost anything — I’m primed to be rankled. It was different before, when my close friend was explaining a game I’d asked him to teach me about. Now, as he cleaned up excess cards, his cousin was gamely trying to teach me all over again from scratch, and I couldn’t even blame him. I mentioned that what I was struggling most with was “the etiquette of the game” and this was apparently funny to all present. As if! The game has a huge list of steps one must take, in a particular order, to properly execute one’s turn, but calling that rigamarole “etiquette” was apparently precious. And yet, that was what I needed a refresher on. What’s more, because I was openly ignorant of so much of the game, I also had to grit my teeth while familiar concepts were explained to me. Two 6-sided dice were rolled, and I was told that a 7 was “middle of the road.”

“What the highest number you can get when you roll?” I deadpanned, fully cognizant that 6 plus 6 equals 12. Alas, no one knew I was joking. 

Truth be told, I had a million questions, and I made the mistake of expressing my unease. Perhaps in an attempt to calm me with humor, one of the guys shouted at me that if I asked any more questions, I was going to have to leave. This strategy, alas, represents the thing I least like about trying to hang with guys: they give each other SO MUCH SHIT. For fun. If you don’t like having your flaws ridiculed, you have to take your ball and go home. Surely, no one likes having their flaws ridiculed. But this is what men do. I cannot explain it, and I doubt they can either. 

I thought about leaving before we began. I thought about crying. But I also thought about how bizarre this reaction was, especially considering the stakes (a game where, if you play your cards right, your vampires can fly up and kill your opponent’s flower-monsters). I had to push on. Plus, how would I explain my freakout to my friend? “I’m sorry I had to leave your Magic draft, I just couldn’t embarrass myself in front of the Magic bros!”

It was a good thing I stayed. Turns out, what I had signed up for was not some grand, four-way tournament of champions in a complex strategy game I’d barely learned some weeks earlier. A draft is when you open a bunch of Magic: the Gathering cards — think a pack of baseball cards, or the basketball cards I flipped through as a young Midwesterner. Each person picks a card from the pack, then passes it around the table. All we were doing was building the decks we'd play with. One of the rules is to only pick cards that are a particular color; another rule, apparently, is that you have to state aloud how much your deck is going to “own”, and do so frequently. After we built our decks — a lengthy, but enjoyable process — I played with my friend, who had built an unstoppable deck and carefully explained every step of my ass being handed to me. 

I learned a lot more Magic over the course of those three hours or so. But nothing taught me more that my reaction to the whole situation. When was the last time I was so ill at ease? Why did the prospect of being the least knowledgeable person in the room fill me with such anxiety? Gender dynamics were at play, sure, but above all, I think my discomfort was about being unprepared.

Of course, there had never been anything to be afraid of in the first place. There was no mega-Magic-showdown on the books for the afternoon. Just four people with an open afternoon, passing around freshly opened packages of lore-covered cards. I left with no anxiety (except that maybe I should have been writing during those 3 hours). Instead, I was filled with that intoxicating feeling of having experienced something entirely unfamiliar for the first time. Talk about magic.

ENJOYABLE

Did you know that IKEA now sells a small loom as a children’s toy? It’s sold under the name LUSTIGT, which is Swedish for “enjoyable” and, incidentally, is also the name for all the other cool toy-type-stuff at IKEA. Good luck with your google search for this loom. 

 

Anyway, I bought the loom. No brainer. And then I made this little...tapestry? as a (belated) 40th birthday gift for my cousin. I’m so pleased with how it turned out. I bought one skein of yarn for the project; the rest I just had in my closet. 

 

 

People (and online surveys, dating apps, what have you) sometimes ask this question that totally short-circuits my brain. The question is, “What are your interests?” How?...what?...I don’t...like, what AREN’T my interests? The world is very interesting. And yet, “everything” is a bad (and, I suppose, inaccurate) answer to the question. 

 

Any line of questioning focusing on the idea of “hobbies” is just as hard for me. I have long described myself as a “hobby-collector.” I come by it honestly; many people on both sides of my family have a huge array of arts & crafts skills or niche pastimes (off the top of my head: woodworking, pinball, photography, metallurgy, stained glass, cocktail crafting, beer-making...on and on). It’s not that I take on a new hobby and then lose interest, it’s that once I learn how to do something, continuing to do it feels like less of a pressing need than learning how to do an additional thing. It’s still fun to decorate cakes and embroider and decoupage, but the siren song of a new handicraft draws me back to Michaels...

 

I am considering using this space to talk a bit more about the new things I’m trying, and maybe even to document this discovery process more methodically. One wonderful thing about most crafts is that they provide solo entertainment, but for me, keeping the experience to myself feels like a shame. Why not bring the Internet along for the ride? Maybe you, reading this, will be inspired to try something new. Or, you know, to avoid a particular something new altogether. Either way. 😁