Fortune Smiles On Children And Fools

My luck has always been much, MUCH better than I actually deserve.

When it comes to job hunting, it’s never really been much of hunt, so much as a call from the blue, with a nice job all prepared and tied up in a shiny red ribbon, left at my door with an R.S.V.P. Usually this happens when I’m on the brink of starvation (Again…) and wondering what the hell I’m going to do next.

Well, guess what happened today?

Yep. Another call. Though this wasn’t quite a total surprise, as previous experience had taught me that this was a possible outcome. And in this instance, it was.

A few days ago, I got an SMS message from, of all people, Nadya Hutagalung.

It would seem she’s about to become my new boss.

For non-locals who don’t know who Nadya is, you can check her out here.

I don’t know what the hell it is with me and these Beautiful People–particularly from the MTV crowd–but there you go.

The way that this particular job seems to be going is that Nadya has put together a production company, and she’s going to be throwing out a bunch’a shows on the airwaves. She was talking to her friend Audrey (Who is married to my friend James, and who I met, along with James during my stint with other MTV-ers at the ill-fated Interruption Television) and was asking about people who knew anything about writing. I seem to have accrued some kind of reputation around here as the MacGuyver of the English language, whether it’s ad-copy, corporate videos, television scripts, magazine articles, or business reports, and so Audrey threw my name at her, and the next thing I know, the wet dream of millions of males across the region is asking me to help her out.

So I thought it might just be a little one-shot thing (She needs help with some kind of concept proposal/treatment for a show she’s putting together) and she sent me a document someone else had wrote which or more less needs to be trashed and rewritten from the ground up. I told her so, and she agreed with me on the phone earlier today, then switched gears and asked me if I’d like to write for a show that’s already going into production. When I said that we could either work out a per episode payment plan, or she could just put me on monthly salary/retainer, I could pretty much hear the grin in her voice when she asked, “Hey, if we put you on retainer, does that mean you could do more projects with us?”

I said something like non-commital, and I think we’ll probably have to discuss this later.

Will someone please explain to me how I end up hanging out with these people? It’s not like I go looking for them, it’s not like I want to hang out at the clubs and be part of the in-crowd, so what’s with this vortex that keeps drawing me in with the inevitability of gravity?

To be fair, I’m probably just prejudiced. There’s still the alienated geek within that reflexively regards anyone popular as The Enemy, but of late, I find myself working for/with them more often over the last few years. Admittedly, it’s kind of satisfying that the same fixations and skills that made me such a pariah in my youth with these people is now eagerly sought, but it’s still a bit disquieting, and gives me rather unpleasant, vaguely whore-ish feelings when the cycle starts up again.

Then again there’s the mercenary part of my brain that reminds me, “Your girlfriend paid the rent this month.”

So I find myself in the curious position of about to embark on a job that most people would pay to get, and my sole motivation is that I want to be able to pull my own weight at home and not have to feel bad about knowing that I’m living off the understanding and compassion of the girlfriend. The beautiful model and all the time I’ll be spending with her is just an occupational hazard. Been there. Done that. Got a free t-shirt out of it.