I’m interviewing for jobs. At last. I have been going crazy with inactivity over the past months (actually, over the past years, if the truth be known). This has resulted in much moaning and gnashing of teeth, metaphorically that is. I’ve had a palpable urge for involvement, to be of use, to fulfill that messianic mission that is the birthright of every good Jew (or some such thing). So now, such a situation is possible, and–whew! am I ever scared. Of…of…

…the same thing that always scares me: finding out that involvement is entanglement. That I’m not really up to being of use, at least not in the way I, and others, expect me to be. The fantasy is so far removed from the reality, baby.

I can remember panicking in a similar way sitting in the HR department at Creative Artists Agency way back when. I was interviewing for an agent’s assistant job, the next to the bottom rung of agenting in Hollywood. I wanted to get out of writing for a living and of spending whole days and nights alone, just me and that typewriter. I figured as ballsy and obnoxious as so many people thought I was, being a Hollywood agent was a natural for me. The HR people thought so too, and they assigned me to a particularly obnoxious guy whose name I can’t, for the life of me, remember. As I sat in the CAA offices and signed employment forms, I practiced deep breathing and told myself, you can always quit; you’re not marrying this job. The guy was not really as obnoxious as other people thought, although he did lack a certain human touch. But that wasn’t why I quit some three weeks later. It’s that the fantasy was so removed from the reality. Having my own desk at CAA, hearing multi-mega buck deals go down, seeing stars wafting through–none of it held a patch to sitting at my typewriter, diddling out words and thoughts and ideas that–hey! people paid me for. Even if I did have to spend most of my time alone. And always seemed to be working on the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.

And that’s what I’m scared of here, now, again, this time. That fantasy thing and the reality thing–how do I know that I’m not doing it again? I won’t, until I do it. Until I pinch my nose, squeeze my eyes, and just jump in.