Featured LA blog-LA Observed

LA Observed

I used to like this blog better when it was just the editor who is writing the stories, but I can understand why he has featured writers from other blogs, magazines, etc, helping out. There is always so much going on in this city; culturally, politically, education-wise, etc.

This blog, which is updated several times daily is probably one of if not the best blogs for Los Angeles news. Not the sensationalized who is sleeping with who, whether or not Paris really deserves to go to jail, but the shake ups and break ups of the LA Times, city hall and studios among other stories that pertain angeleno daily life. (Glad they caught that alligator)

Want to see who else is blogging about this great city? Check out LAobserves ample section on fellow L.A. Bloggers.

Finding a job

I think one of the hardest things about Los Angeles is finding a job. I think this for two reasons.

1) The constant sun. Where I am from sunny gorgeous cloudless days are in the minority. At first when I was here I would run to get outside, because I always thought that the sun would go away. It is so easy to just want to go to the beach and do nothing.
2) You have to be proactive. Not just proactive like you are used to, but basically you have to be a stalker out here if you want to get a job. It is frustrating and disheartening.

Remember this one thing if you want to work out here in any capacity. Calling and leaving a message does not work. You have to call at random times to actually get in touch with the person you want to talk to, because if you don’t get them physically you are left to the whim that they will call you back. Which they wont, because you are one of 50 people who have left messages about a job at the same place.

My Los Angeles job story, might not be typical, but here it is:
I already had an in at a temp agency, which I was really excited about. She assured me that I would have no problem finding a job through her agency because jobs were coming up like crazy.

In a month and a half I had only two jobs.

The first doing random office tasks for a Persian family. My jobs included writing a letter of eviction for one of the tenants living at one of their properties, writing a letter to their clients and trying desperately to help a 40 year old woman set up a mail merge who had never even used word before. For 4 hours I sat in this disorganized back room with a two women who chain smoked with a yippy dog.

The second I worked an evening at UCLA for a magazine that teamed up with a sports company for a collaborative event that they were having for students. When they wanted to know my sizes I was a bit leery. I thought at the most I would get a pair of shoes and a t-shirt.

Well, in addition to rep-ing this magazine, I was also rep-ing the new danceline for the sports company as well. So instead of a pair of shoes, I had to wear tight spandex bell bottom dance pants, a see through tank top with a gypsy-esque crop-top.

So, I had to prance around getting people to sign up for a magazine in these super tight clothes. The thing was that I was never told that I would be wearing these clothes and I began to wonder what I had ever done to my friend at the temp agency to deserve this evening of looking like a pussycat doll for a measly $50.

Go ahead and laugh, I give you permission.

All and all I got $200 worth of sports apparel out of the deal. The girl I worked with said that she was going to try to return it to a store to see if she could get some money out of it to pay her bills.

I on the other hand have kept the clothes as a reminder of how far I have come in the last year and a half that I have been here.

Email

I have email, feel free to write me and tell me I need to get over myself.

fadeinmail@gmail.com

Why?

California, I couldn’t understand why on earth people wanted to live here. If there weren’t earthquakes there were mudslides, if there weren’t fires there was an intense drought. In fact in grade school social studies class I learned that it was predicted that there would be an earthquake so fierce that California would eventually fall into the Pacific. (Maybe Porfirio Diaz knew that when he sold the land to the U.S. for a million dollars.)

Why am I here in this state destined to fall into the sea?

Minneapolis to me was like that person you know that you should really break up with but you don’t because it is was too comfortable and you do not think that you will ever have the strength to start over again.

Minneapolis is a great city, being farther away has really allowed me to see that. I will sing its praises in posts to come, but I was so tired of the Minnesota Can’t Do Attitude.

I was in this horrible rut. Get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleep, get up, go to work eat sleep. When the non-profit I had worked at for seven long and arduous years sank into the red and there was get up, go to work, go to job number 2, eat perhaps, sleep barely enough I new that it was time to go.

I honestly have not done anything outside of my comfort zone since going to an arts based high school. Not since sixteen, that is way too long to go without risking something big. I didn’t want to be on my deathbed in the Powderhorn, Cochran or Hale Page neighborhood and think to myself “Wow, I haven’t done anything risky since I was a teenager. Who is going to feed all of my cats?”

I moved here too because I fell in a Norah Ephron-like love with a former high school mate. Like how I saved the real sappy reason for last?

So that is how I found myself here.

(If you read Smog Life you might have read this post already, mostly)

Exposition

This is my second attempt at my Los Angeles blog.

Why?

• It is hard not to feel pressure writing a new blog when your old blog had a corp group of readers. You are always wondering if it will be as good. (Don't read Smog Life, I don't like it as much)
• I wanted to move seamlessly from Minnesota me and Los Angeles me. It didn't work out. This city is a lot to take in.
• Sometimes you walk that fine line of wanting and not wanting to be internet famous. Sad but true.

I write this blog knowing that no one will probably read it.

This blog will not be a love letter or a hate letter about Los Angeles.
This blog will not be a love letter or a hate letter about Minneapolis.

This will be a combination of all the things I liked about my old blog, sometimes emulating blogs that I like and a blog about all the ideas I hear that other people say that they are going to blog about but they never do.

I hope you like it.