I have a loooooot of important updates for the team (that’s you guys).
THE BIG UPDATES
I have secured a full-time job doing social media for TV shows! YAY!!!!!!!!
This is exactly the kind of job that I envisioned myself doing when I moved to New York in 2018, but unlike in 2018, I’m now confident, proactive, invested, and I trust my own creative inclinations. It’s a weird moment in my life where my personal growth is meshing with my professional growth… But it feels really good.
This job is something I take extremely seriously, so I’m also figuring out how to balance my time and stop sweating the small stuff. (I spent almost 30 minutes drafting a small paragraph for a client Slack message last week and then realized maybe don’t set that precedent for yourself Karla.)
Anyways… it’s a bit of a self-actualization moment right now. I was honestly having a huge down moment the day before I was offered the job, and having sooo many parts of my life totally up in the air for the last 2-3 months has been quite destabilizing. But things are very yas in the Karl Ortegon career space now! We turned this ship around! It’s no longer blocking the Panama Canal (hilarious September 2021 reference).
I finally contracted cronova…
After 26 years and a month of maintaining a spotless COVID-19 record, I did, unfortunately, get that crazy little virus. It didn’t hit me too hard, shout-out triple Moderna, but my mojo was certainly shaken up for a bit.
I saw my (Charli) baby perform!
The CRASH tour was an instant classic and certainly belongs somewhere in the top 2-3 of my favorite concerts ever. If you ask me nicely I will send you a video from the show — unfortunately, in every single video, you cannot really hear Charli over me screaming every word at the top of my (impressive, enchanting) upper register. I also saw Lorde last week, which was pure magic. To get offered a dream job, see Charli and Lorde, and be fully recovered from COVID in the same week… It’s kind of the inverse of my worst week ever in February. Maybe there’s something to going with the flow…
THE SLIGHTLY SMALLER UPDATES
I was walking to the gym the other day and about to cross the street. That’s it! Just kidding, but I was about to cross and this car goes flying past me, running a red in the process. I made eye contact with an old woman on the other side of the road, and she chuckled disapprovingly while shaking her finger at the car, which made me laugh and shake my head, too. It was a cute, human moment — the kind that sometimes feels few and far between.
I wrote a folk/blues/country song with my friend Ally yesterday and here are the lyrics
walking down the little ole roooooooad
goin to play some tennisssss
that’s what I thought I knoooowThat’s it, it’s a cliffhanger.
My therapist said ANOTHER smart thing
OK I just spent 10 minutes trying to explain what he said and it was making ZERO sense. The gist of it is that if you are vulnerable and forthcoming about who you are, the world is likely to offer you people, opportunities, and moments that are tailor-made for your true self. Meanwhile, if you over-curate yourself and hide the parts you don’t like, you may end up constantly being disappointed with what you’re given because you have only communicated half the story to the universe (and you’ve probably also altered it).
‘I Blame Myself’ by Sky Ferreira is rly good
I am in the process of starting to write more stand-up material :P
Do you think it’s healthy to see Worst Person in the World for the third time in six months? Doesn’t matter because I’m doing it anyway on Wednesday, but wondering what you think.
Another question I have is how do you possibly get your brain to commit to reading books in a regular cadence? Feel free to answer these and take as much time as you need.
as for your last bullet point, I think reading borrowed books gets me to read books more quickly than I'd read them otherwise, however the burden still lies in regularly borrowing books from your friends (or from the library!) :/
anyways (and more importantly), congrats on your job and so many things lining up for you in general!!!!! really happy to read all that :,)