Last week, that rascal Winter came a-knockin’. It seems like we’d just gotten over his bullshit, when lo and behold he shows up again, much like that shitty ex-boyfriend you somehow convince yourself might not be as irritating as you remember. Only instead of being an emotional vampire who expects you to wash their dirty boxers, Old Man Winter came in the form of 15 inches of snow in Central Vermont. Which honestly, I’ll take the fucking boxers. Because at around 6pm, as I was attempting an ill-advised commute home in the middle of a winter storm warning, with it straight pissing ice and snow onto my Jeep, causing me to slap on my hazard lights like a geriatric, while white knuckling it down the highway at a top speed of around 35 mph, pledging an allegiance to Satan in order to keep me from skidding off the road and into a ravine and my death, that I realized that I did this to myself. I’ve got nobody but Morgan E Cline, Esquire to blame for this shit. Because for the first time in my adult life, I made a decision to stay someplace, not because of a job, or the promise of something better. I stayed just to “be”. And in that moment, I began to deeply regret my decision.

I’ve always known that at some point in this, my Vermont journey, the time would come - my “Robert Frost” moment. A time when two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I’d have to make a choice. In my case, one road stayed in Vermont, disappearing around a bend that meandered through the green hillsides and Hallmark channel backlot villages. I couldn't make out its final destination, but I could see that there were caution signs dotting the lane before I lost its path. The other road careened West, as I watched the Vermont roads turn into the 10, and then the 405, which turned into the 101 N, which would eventually lead me back in the land of the living, endless summer, and the lifestyle that I once knew.

I’d say that for the better part of 2019, I’ve been going through what the kids these day call, “some shit”. In my experience, “finding myself” has been a painful, long journey, which I would honestly not recommend. Nope. Just live in denial of what a garbage person you might be. Be blissfully unaware of all the time you’ve lost to bad decisions and people who didn’t love you or respect you. Just keep plugging ahead, baby. Because I can’t tell you what the benefit is from ripping off the scabs. For me it’s been fairly awful. Reliving past relationships, both working and otherwise, and accepting my culpability in the situations. Realizing all the opportunities and people I let slip away, not understanding what I had until it was gone. Trying to learn how to forgive myself, while still not really feeling as if my personal experiences warrant the amount of woe that I’ve felt over them. People assume the Harvey thing was the breaking point, but it wasn’t! Isn’t that wild and terrible?! But once people are aware of my résumé, something that is super fun and has happened at least ten times is that folks will ask me, point blank with no buffer, if “he hurt me” or say, “he didn’t rape you, did he?”. Just like, wow nice résumé, were you raped? When I try and laugh it off and say something like, “well he was an asshole but no, he didn’t rape me”, they seem… let down. Like they asked that question hoping for something salacious. Which is fucking gross. And then I find myself thinking, what the fuck am I upset about? I wasn’t raped. It was just a Lemony Snickett’s series of bad jobs for bad men. Other people have it way worse! Which leads me to start diminishing all of the negative, sexist, belittling experiences I’ve had, because I don’t feel like I’m worthy of the anger I’m feeling. WHAT FUN!! So would I suggest that someone else follow my weird-ass Nancy Meyers quest for the good life? No. Fucking. Way. I thought I’d be over here canning applesauce and banging the ruggedly handsome vet! Instead its more like a Jane Austen novel - you know when someone gets a cold and they decide to bleed them out in order to rid them of a fever. The past two years have been bleeding me out, just to the brink of death, in order to try and cure me of myself. The results have been iffy at best. But there have been pockets of the incredible! Lovely friends I’ve met along the way. I mean, I’ve got a pack of truly badass women in my orbit. Just wonderful moms and partners and friends, who have embraced me and try to include me in their Vermont life. I’m thankful. I’ve also had some of the most transformative experiences walking through the woods, driving into the unknown, stumbling across waterfalls and patches of wildflowers, swimming holes, horse farms, you name it, but it causes something wonderful to bubble up inside of me. Once I saw a black bear bounding across a back road, where it plopped down into the tall grass full of wildflowers at the woods edge, and then peeked its head up like a periscope!!! I had to pull over because it caused me to sob. It was just fucking sweet!! But I’ve also had moments where I’ve very openly questioned my own sanity, and I’ve said multiple times that I’m not sure if Vermont is the best or the absolute worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I really can’t tell, and any given day can cause the scales to tip in either direction.

And this year in particular has been tough. I’ve had quite a few medical set-backs that have thrown me for a loop. Asthma, two bouts of pneumonia, and then the whole shattered wrist and surgery shit. It’s really not been fun. And to top it off, my job was starting to wear thin. I was working seven days a week. And even though I was told I didn’t need to work seven days a week, it was very clear that if I didn’t, shit started to fall through the cracks. And it started to dawn on me that I was doing the same thing I’ve been known to do - martyr myself for someone else’s success and well being. There’s only so far “up” you can go, and I was realizing that the things I needed to do for ME, the reasons I came to Vermont - to sleep, attempt to be creative, and learn to have a life - weren’t happening because of the nature of the position. And then, in the middle of all that realization, a job lead popped-up out of the blue. A former coworker threw my contact info over to a head-hunter looking to fill an EA role supporting the matriarch of a family of very successful celebrities/business women. Like, you know the family I’m talking about. They’re a monster dynasty. And in my opinion, everything that's wrong with the current state of media. This was not a job that I would’ve ever, EVER, ever, have sought out on my own. But...there was something about the weird cosmic timing of the job that made it feel like I owed it to myself to find out a bit more. Her team kept telling me that we had to move fast. There was no time to second guess. Not even kidding, in the span of 45 min, I had learned about the job for the first time, had a call with the recruiters, and two calls scheduled with the team in LA. It was a whirlwind. The package wasn’t too bad. The salary to most would be considered quite high. The clout was certainly there. The recruiter and this woman’s team kept reminding me that it would be working for the best of the best. It would be a role I would be lucky to have. I’d never get another opportunity to work for someone so dynamic! Blah blah. What interested me most wasn’t the family, or the role - it was that it would afford me a chance to pay off some debt, and most importantly, be back among friends and people who “get” me. I of course immediately sent texts out to all my friends about the wild-ass job lead, assuming I would receive messages back with all caps “LOLS” and snarky responses about what a family of shit-goblins they are and how they knew I would never consider taking that sort of job ever again. But I didn’t. I would say, 97% of the people I messaged and spoke to about the job said, without hesitation: take the fucking job. Take it. Take the money. Get out of Vermont. Be back around friends. And few folks in the know even told me that they knew the family and that they are very kind and decent to their staff. Which shocked me a bit. Everyone’s confidence threw me for a loop. Because while they were gung-ho about relocating and getting me out of this haunted Maple Syrup forest, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was...off.

The recruiter was relentless. It was non-stop texts asking how quickly I could move if the job was offered to me. ASAP is what they required. I had zero time to process or to figure out if this was even something that would be a good fit for me. The train was leaving the station with me on it, whether I liked it or not. I was being called out of assistant retirement. Like some sleeper agent, just waiting to be reactivated so I could spring to life, booking private jets and screaming at Fed Ex agents in order to expedite the shipping of new Egyptian cotton sheets that HAVE to arrive by Tuesday, do you fucking hear me?! Because shit had been so off recently I googled, “how to know if there’s a hex upon you”, I definitely felt that maybe I was supposed to just take the job, even though I felt in my gut that it was going to be a bad move. On one hand, I’d cease being in self-made exile. Which, you know, would be awesome. Human interaction is rad! But on the other, I’d have to live and work in Calabasas. Which, Jesus. Going from Vermont’s green vistas to the dry, brown wasteland that is the Agoura Hills/Calabasas area, ravaged from wildfires and dotted with mansions, would be a real shift. And if you’ve ever lived in LA you know, I might as well live in San Francisco in relation to LA, being based there. It’s not like I could pop over for a quick drink with pals or a spontaneous bite in Silverlake. It would be a slog. Hours worth of driving. And, the most important part, the part that I know with every fiber of my being would be the real issue, is that when you take these jobs, your life is not yours anymore. They are true 24/7 positions. Not just working seven days a week and not having time to be creative. I mean, you’re on call and your needs do not matter at all. Its living and breathing and burning the midnight oil for someone else, while being told how lucky you are to have the job and reminded that there are people waiting to take it from you, if you need to take a weekend off, or go to a funeral, or have a sick day. And, what I’ve realized over these last two years in Vermont, taking stock of my career choices, is that I lost my thirties to work and the pretty intense depression that came along with choosing to work, and praying for the payoff that never came. And that’s fucking tough, and that’s on me. While my friends spent the decade falling in and out of love, eventually settling down, having kids, working their way up or at least into better situations in their respective fields, I spent that time working my ass off for people, and ignoring my own shit . I just gritted my teeth and kept going. Kept being belittled and condescended to - until my desire for the “payoff” was replaced with bitterness. And it created a shell - an exoskeleton made from bullshit and regret and embarrassment. Maybe other folks are made from stronger stock, but for me, being offered another job like that, when I’m almost 40, is the Universe testing me. Its offering up a poison apple on a silver platter. A supposed escape plan. But the thing is, I’d just be going back to more of the same. And these two years, and all that time I took ripping off scabs and wallowing in my own Morgan-ness would be negated. I would’ve taken this breather only to jump back into the fire for something I’d only be doing for money, and at the expense of my well-being. Which, yikes. There are some jobs you can do that with and it pays-off. But busting your ass, in a role you don’t want only ends in disaster. Look, my current reality is not, by any means, great - but its also not living that hell again, either. As fate would have it, while the Hollywood carrot was being dangled in front of my face, I got another offer from a local Vermont company. It was not an ideal salary. Or location. Or industry. But its fine. And it makes up for what it lacks in giving me a chance to extricate myself from another situation that was sucking the life from me, without having to make a pact with someone who might be a harbinger of the end times.

So, I accepted the Vermont job in the big city of Burlington, and took my hat out of the race for the other gig. The recruiter was not happy. She said I had “lead them on” and that it was unprofessional of me to back out of contention, and that I would never get an opportunity like that again. Her reaction was enough to reinforce that I had made the right decision. And so I chose the much less cool, less known path. The new job comes with a pay-cut that really, really sucks. I’m commuting an hour each direction. Which in good weather is amazing. I can get a cup of garbage coffee (what up, Dunken D!) and then listen to Kenny Loggins, while winding through Central Vermont! In the Winter its an actual nightmare. But its a choice I made for myself! The easy thing would’ve been to nail the interview, take the money, and move back to LA. To throw myself into a job I hated, losing more time. More chances at actual living. But I tromped down the other path. The rockier road. The fucking unknown. I decided to stay someplace that hasn’t been easy - but it has provided me with beautiful scenery and enough fodder to write 1,000 Hallmark holiday movies

Then again, this could’ve been the stupidest thing I’ve done yet! I mean, on Friday it did take me over 20 min to walk 2.5 blocks from the parking lot to the office through an ice gauntlet because, surprise! I’m terrified of slipping again! I’ve developed this horrid little wide-stance shuffle, where I tap my right foot in front of me, like a blind person’s walking stick, to see what sort of surface I’m dealing with. Tap! Tap! Tap! I look insane. And as I was creeping down the sidewalk, an elderly woman walked past me so quickly it kicked up a wind. I’m a mess! But I’m also the Pollyanna of Dumpster Fires! So I just keep shuffling ahead. Tapping my way down the street like a Whitesnake song! The Tawny Kitaen of icy sidewalks. Maybe I’ll shuffle myself towards a life that brings me contentment. Or maybe not. LIFE! But for now, I’m here in Vermont, on my terms. For better or worse.

Here I go again.