The Zen of the Bridesmaid

I don't know about you, but I read in bed almost every night before I go to sleep. So does Mrs. Word Player.

Several years ago, when the wife in a couple we were friends with discovered this about us, she could barely contain her jealousy. I had no idea... I thought every couple read in bed together. It was a strange exchange, in that from that point forward I looked at what I have as lucky rather than just the status quo. In life it's all about perspective, wouldn't you say?

So a few nights ago, MWP leans over and says "read this." I took the book she'd just started, Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein, M.D., and read the first sentence in the Forward, which was written by the Dalai Lama.

"The purpose of life is to be happy."

Whoa. The simplicity of that powerful statement packs an incredible wallop. It certainly goes against the Catholic upbringing I received, where suffering and deprivation are lionized and true happiness is deferred to the afterlife.

I bet the Lama is a big LOST fan. Maybe HE is this "Jacob" we keep hearing about...

Lately, my happiness has been yo-yoing quite a bit, but the biggest X factor has been my work life. When work is plentiful, I am practically exuberant. That sensation pervades the rest of my life quickly- I hadn't been happy with my "Development Guy" work in several years, so the 3+ years I've been relying on my copywriting work (which I genuinely enjoy) has been a boon to my overall mood.

I've also been on indefinite hiatus from my screenwriting projects since spring of '07, work that was often as torturous emotionally as it was fulfilling creatively. And I've been OK with that arrangement for a long while now... until recently.

First, work slowed down in December, and it's continued to be slow into January. My mood destabilized. Then, an odd confluence of events suddenly made me revisit my career path and the happiness factor attached to it. It started with LOST. We received Season 4 on DVD for Christmas, and since we already had Seasons 1 and 2, we went out and bought Season 3 to complete the collection. In watching it, for some reason, my eye kept catching on Jeffrey Lieber's name in the credits. He is a co-creator of the show, and someone I used to know. Even though he's had his own issues with LOST, for some reason seeing his name in the credits over and over had a different effect on me than it had in the past.

It wasn't schadenfreude, it was "why him and not me?" I came into (and then lost) contact with Jeffrey long before LOST. I was a newly hired development guy for Civilian (then known as Spoke Film) and I cast my net wide looking for submissions. Naturally, I hated most of the stuff that agents sent me, but when I read Jeff's scripts (one was called "Conspiracy of Weeds" and I can't remember the name of the second) I called and set up a meeting. Nothing ever came of my interest in the scripts ("Conspiracy" was later made with the far less interesting title TANGLED), but I became friends with Jeff and his wife Holly and for a while he even rented office space from Civilian.

Jeff was talented and a very nice guy, and remembering the clever twists and turns in his scripts that I read it's not hard to see how his contributions to LOST earned him a co-creator credit. "But aren't I ALSO a nice and talented guy who has clever twists of my own to share with the world?" that stubborn part of my brain kept saying every time I saw his name on the screen during our LOST-athon.

Try as I might, I couldn't silence that little voice. In fact, a rapid succession of similar events only made it more insufferable. I saw TWILIGHT and, lo and behold, one of the producers is I guy I used to work with at Wendy Finerman Productions. He was a junior development exec then (hey, kinda like I once was!) and LOOK AT HIM NOW. At the grocery store, I saw a girl I went to UNC with and was once friends with who is now producing Adam Sandler movies. We're the same age, and moved out to LA around the same time, but LOOK AT HER NOW. I watch an episode of GOSSIP GIRL and hey, I used to take meetings with the co-creator and occasionally go for drinks with our mutual friend. Damn, what did she have that I don't have?

Yeah, but would dealing with Chuck Bass' problems be any easier?

I know, of course, that it's an enormous oversimplification of the way lives and careers play out to compare myself to them, and I also know that the choices I've made have taken me out of the running for some of the successes that they are now enjoying.

BUT STILL!

Anyway, having all those things happen within a span of a few days really bummed me out for a while. But the more I thought of it, the more my mood improved. I've achieved a pretty damn high level of happiness without the industry success that I'd pursued for over a decade. I've indulged and explored my creative side and expanded and tested my business acumen while developing a personal life that I'm proud of.

And who knows, the best may be yet to come? But the biggest thing that came out of all this for me is the sensation that no matter what happens from this point forward, I was in the game. I played alongside some of the game's top players, even though I never won the big game myself. I've taken the sum of my experiences and spun them into a state of mind that, I feel, is at the very least prepared for any number of challenging paths the future may hold.

Should I happen to find my way back onto the industry path, I'll be ready. And if it doesn't ever "happen" the way I longed for it to? Well, I'll be ready for that too.

State of the Nation

Yesterday Mrs. Word Player and I took a walk in the park behind our house. It was about dusk, and there was a thick haze in the air that had been hanging around since I'd referred to it as fog in the morning. The setting sun looked beautiful, the hills mysterious. The horse running circles around its trainer in the Equestrian Center next door kicked up dust of its own, adding to the sense of early evening obfuscation.

I haven't been feeling myself lately. I missed a haircut appointment before going to SF two weekends ago, one that was already overdue, and my hair is too big and curly. I feel fat. I hurt my Achilles tendon playing tennis a month ago, slipping just so on the court after a match delay caused by scattered showers. I've been walking with a limpy hitch in my step ever since, and even though I haven't been on the court since and have stopped my morning walks, it hasn't healed properly. I miss the exercise, especially during the Halloween-Thanksgiving eating season. You make so many forward strides physically by playing tennis two or three times a week for a couple years, and then it feels like you lose it all with a month away.

Work has really slowed down after a pretty terrific year. Whenever this happens, my mood invariably turns darker. I've all but shelved the book, which is what I thought I would work on during the slow "paying work" times. It's not that I lost faith in the idea, it's that I lost faith in the possibility of it ever doing anything other than sitting on my shelf next to my screenplays. At my age, I feel like I need at least a fighting chance of remuneration if I'm going to invest thousands more solitary hours into a passion project.

And so, with all this in mind, we went for a walk.

Walking the labyrinth in St. George, UT

Solvitur Ambulando. "It is solved by walking." We've found this to be as true as any saying is, and yesterday was no exception. MWP is no dummy, and could see that I had little cartoon storm clouds roiling above my head. And off we went.

Just as the election was for the previous twelve months, the economy has now become the jumping off point for practically every conversation. We talked about what the dry period meant for us in the short term, and then the long term. Was it time for me to pursue full-time, on-site employment? I've been a stay-at-home freelancer since the end of 2000, and I've dodged plenty of bullets during that stretch. Maybe now, when I'm sitting relatively pretty and have amassed a decent-sized portfolio, is a good time to jump back into the office job fray? If there were any jobs available in my field these days this may have taken longer to discuss.

But then, we asked ourselves, where will we be in ten years? Let's say that we both have continued, sustained success as freelancers until 2018: will we still be hirable when we're not quite as cute or hip and our rates are exponentially higher than our less experienced but ever more cute and young and hip competition?

Will we ever be able to buy a house when the money we've invested to save for it is shrinking rather than growing?

How could anyone in their right mind start a family right now without a sizable safety net? And what kind of world will they grow up in where only the wealthy can afford to pay for college and masked gunmen roam freely?

F†®ƒ©¨ˆ∆˙©ç%$%#&^***CK!

And then we smiled. My foot was hurting a little, but we'd walked the circumference of the park and were on the road back home. There's never been any way to know what the future holds, and there's little wisdom in making long term plans with any expectations of seeing them play out as diagrammed. Hey, we've made it this far, haven't we? Our operating history; as individuals, as a couple, as wage-earners, as creatives; projects that we will continue to at least be competitive in our field, if not somewhat successful. Right?

Even though the majority of what came out of our mouths could be labeled as pessimistic, or at least moany-groany, the simple act of walking while we were talking took a great deal of the negative power of the words away.

When life gives you lemons, take a walk. Odds are you won't feel nearly as sour afterwards.

Prevorce?

The October 14 New York Times Magazine featured an extensive series of articles and polls that took a close look at what wealth means to the city's over 8 million residents. As a former, briefly-tenured, New Yorker my favorite stat was that only 51% of those polled "think that living in New York City is worth what it costs."

You only find out about the five months of winter AFTER you move there

Since I moved away from NYC, I've had to field many questions as to why I wanted to leave. My favorite answer is "New York is a city designed for the very young or the very wealthy, and by the time we left Mrs. Word Player and I were neither."

According to Mercer's 2007 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, NYC is the most expensive city in North America (and 15th in the world- shockingly, Moscow edged London for the top spot). I remember a NYTimes article from a few years ago that really took the wind out my sails about NY. It's premise was basically that a married couple with two kids and an annual household income of $1 million could only break even living in Manhattan.

Depressing, no? In 2001, we paid $2000 a month for a 450 sq.ft. apartment in Manhattan... I shudder to think what it's going for now.

Anyway, this Sunday's Magazine had an article on the "superspecialized workers who serve the supperrich" of NYC, such as nannies, party planners, etc. One guy's profession in particular caught my eye- William D. Zabel, Postnup Lawyer.

If you're a "nonmoneyed spouse", this man is the Angel of Death

"What the hell is a postnup?!" I wondered. Here's the blurb from the magazine:

“Postnups” — or postnuptial agreements — “are usually for couples without prenups,” says Zabel, a trusts and estates lawyer with Schulte, Roth & Zabel. Why people get postnups: “Either the nonmoneyed spouse — usually the wife — in a 30-to-40-year marriage wants to know what she’s worth and gain some financial security, or the moneyed spouse in a newer relationship — usually the husband, and these days, often a young hedge-fund manager — wants to see if the wife is in it for the money and wants to cap the assets paid out if the marriage were to end in divorce.” Do his postnup negotiations ever lead to divorce? They usually help a marriage, because “everybody knows where they stand.”

Although I'd never heard of such a thing, my gut was in instant disagreement with Zabel's assertion that postnups usually help a marriage. After discovering that "postnuptial agreement" isn't even in the dictionary (though "prenuptial agreement" is), I poked around a little more and found a Time article from 2001 that made more sense to me.

After shocking me (I'm easily shockable these days apparently) with the stat that 20% of newly married couples get prenups, the article lists other reasons that couples get a postnup, including dramatic changes in finances from an inheritance, protection from liabilities one of the spouses may be experiencing in business, and controlling inheritance paths in blended families.

Blake Edwards' films contained hilarious/terrifying perspectives of marriage

I am a happily married man, and admittedly naïve when it comes to marital ruthlessness , but I have been around the block enough to understand (to a certain degree, anyway) why a party with a sizeable amount of wealth wants to protect themselves from someone entering into marriage under false pretenses.

What I don't understand is how any spouse could feel anything but impending doom if, after their marriage partner inherited a big chunk of change, called in the lawyers to cap how much they could get in the event of a divorce. Wouldn't that signal something awful on the horizon if it happened to you? Or am I just being Mr. Sensitive Guy?