*2 I recently bought a vacuum cleaner that has NO filter to avoid this grimy situation.
I
THE MIND RITUALS
It's Not Too Late to Heal Your Thoughts
Be the Best at the Worst
Start Where You Are
AT COMEDY CENTRAL, WHERE I have worked for the past ten years, we have an intern lunch during which our group of hardworking, sweet, so-clueless-I-have-become-embarrassed-that-I-was-ever-that-young interns can ask us executives for advice. The questions are usually the same.
Q: How do you deal with being a woman in Hollywood?
A: Um…Do you have ten hours to talk and not in this room full of my dude colleagues?
Q: How do you make a “good” TV show?
A: No idea. All I do is find the most talented people I can, say a prayer, and get out of the way. Anyone who tells you differently, or that they have some secret sauce, is probably an egomaniac.
Q: How did you get your first big break?
A: I was at my own intern lunch at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart when a fellow intern asked that very same question. I had never worked in television before, and I was in awe of the rigor of that show. Jon*1 was there every day, the entire day, overseeing everything. And the people around him were just so smart. They were the adults you wanted to be: single-minded in their dedication to their work, rushing about in a manner that screamed importance, and totally uninterested in us, the lowly interns. When we finally had our official time to sit with Jon, another intern asked him what his first “big break” was. Jon very quickly, very firmly responded: “There are no big breaks. There are only a series of tiny, little breaks. The key is to work your hardest and do your best at every little break.” Jon Stewart is/was/will forever be my hero, and so I took his words, swallowed them, and tried to make them part of me.
That entire semester at The Daily Show I made it my mission to be the best at the worst of jobs, with the hope that I might find my own little break. When I noticed that a correspondent wanted oatmeal every day but by the time he got into the office it had all been eaten,*2 I saved him packets and put them on his desk with a bowl and a spoon. When I saw that the permanent staff was genuinely annoyed by the interns who constantly did “bits,” trying to out-funny one another in a misguided attempt to “get discovered,” I decided to be quiet and polite. My greatest contribution, however, was cleaning the capsule coffee machine.
Every afternoon after rehearsal, Jon would make himself an iced coffee in a little kitchen nook outside the studio door. I noticed that the machine was often dirty, out of water, or—even worse—broken, and I imagined how annoyed that must make Jon. Here he was trying to get one of the funniest, most important shows on the air, and he couldn’t even get a mediocre capsule coffee? Not on my watch! I saw my first little break.
I treated that machine like a precious object, cleaning it, refilling it, pulling it apart, putting it back together, making sure it was perfect. I read online how to fix the machine and practiced at home by buying a similar model. I spent a good part of my day making sure the thing was in order so there would never be a time when Jon couldn’t have a little coffee. It didn’t occur to me then that I was being pretty intense-bordering-on-psychotic about the machine; instead, I saw this as my way to make a contribution to a show I loved. If I wasn’t going to be a writer on the show, if I was just a lowly intern, at least I could be the lowly intern who could be called upon at any point to fix the single most important item in any creative environment: the coffee machine. I don’t know if it was cleaning the coffee machine or my polite quietness that impressed the producers, but at the end of the semester, they helped me get an entry-level job at Comedy Central. The rest of my career sprung directly from that decision to be the best at something that seemed like the worst.
Today, I tell young people who ask for professional advice to be the best at the worst. Take whatever weird little opportunity you have and maximize the fuck out of it. In a best-case scenario, someone cool will notice. In a worst-case scenario, you will notice and feel pride knowing you are doing a good job, even if the task sucks. Simply put: Start where you are without worrying too much about how far you have to go.
After my twenty-fifth birthday, on my floral duvet, I decided to start where I was. I knew that when it came to healing my own mind, I would have to apply the same persistence, care, and attention I brought to that coffee machine. I would have to show up, figure out what was wrong with the water tank, and work like hell to fix it. I would have to be vigilant and patient, knowing that for no reason at all, sometimes the machine would have a total meltdown and refuse to work, and I’d be left with an ominous red light staring me in the face. While I didn’t have an owner’s manual to my own mind, I did have a quote from Jay-Z to guide me: “Only thing to stop me is me, and I’ma stop when the hook start.” I ardently believe in the first part; I don’t totally know what he means about the hook starting.
Start where you are. Wherever you are. Be the best at the worst.
*1 I do not know Jon Stewart as “Jon.” That would be insane.
*2 Probably by we, the servile, free-food-greedy interns. I gained at least fifteen pounds in bagel weight during this internship.
Writing It Down Saved My Life
Connect to Your Innermost Self
BY TWENTY-FIVE, I KNEW I was damaged, but I wasn’t totally sure how. Just what exactly was my problem? That shameful drunk-dial to my therapist was just one of many “not okay,” “Are you even being a real fucking person right now?” ways I had acted recently. Many days at work, where I was kicking ass at my entry-level job, I would find myself uncontrollably weeping in my cubicle. I would be in the middle of logging stand-up videos when I would feel tears well up from an inexplicable pit of sadness within me. I would look at my snotty, sobbing reflection in the computer monitor and think, What are you doing? The walls of my cubicle insulated me from outsiders just long enough for me to make my way to the personal call room and have a proper cry.
These meltdowns followed me through the office and into the streets of Manhattan, where I often played the role of “girl mysteriously crying on your stoop.” I also played the part of “girl encumbered by too many bags about to burst into tears because the train is slightly delayed/there is a long line to buy a sandwich/any little thing has gone wrong.” I was raw with feelings of extreme unease that manifested into a persistent, slightly dizzy feeling, like I was living outside my body. Was I sick? I seemed to have a permanent headache that throbbed at the base of my cervical spine, then crawled up my neck, wrapped itself around my skull, and finally settled its claws into two painful points above my ears. I had no clue what to do about all of the tears, the sadness, the headaches, the physical and mental pain. I didn’t understand any of it or where it was coming from.