The B-Side: How Things Are Going in L.A.

Part One: An Uber Eats Story

Preface

“Once I dreamt I was a butterfly… now I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man.” — Zhuangzi

I’ve been writing a lot lately about my life as a young man in New York City. And I haven’t been giving a lot of updates here about my current life in Los Angeles. The good news is, I’m not struggling. The bad news is, I’m not not struggling, either. Which is not to say I’m doing badly - the rent is paid, the utilities are up-to-date, the car-that old Alley Cat-still runs.

But I’m entering my final semester of my senior year at USC, at their film school, a very prestigious and very expensive institution. I recently had to leave a lucrative writing job, writing comedy videos for a trillion dollar corporation (their actual valuation - not a comical exaggeration). It saw me producing work I am proud of that is protected by an NDA I can’t afford to break, so you’ll never see any of it.

The job I liked, but the corporate world’s “drop ever…