According to a statistic I thought sounded great and didn’t bother to verify, of the annual one million freshly minted Los Angeles transplants looking for entry into the entertainment business, only 5,000 stick it out past year one. We’re talking about point-five-percent — only half a percent stay in Los Angeles past their first year.
The possibly made-up statistic arose after I tried reaching out to former co-interns who moved to Los Angeles at the same time as I did, only to discover via awkward text conversation they moved home weeks ago.
ME:Hey we’re playing poker this Friday if you’re avail.
FORMER CO-INTERN: I left LA like two months ago, bro.
ME: Oh.
ME: So you can’t make it?
Hearing about their departures and knowing full well every few months, word will trickle through the grapevine that so-and-so went back to Alabama or New Jersey churns a mixed bag of emotion. It’s not smugness, which I think is a repulsive behavior (and self-satisfaction is its distant, ugly cousin.) But to put my emotion in the vicinity of “sympathy” is giving myself too much credit. I think if you came out here with any other perceived notion than “this is going to be hard,” then you were ill-prepared, and that may have played into your departure.
The closest definition I can place on the emotion is “grim acceptance” — I’m neither thrilled nor disappointed to hear there’s one less angry, disgruntled entertainment employee choking up the 405. The only thing their departure brings is a validation to the struggle that is making it in entertainment in Los Angeles. So when my “mean-well-but-far-cry-from-helpful” relatives remind me I’ve been writing for a “really long time” and ask why I’m still unsuccessful and poor, I can say: “Look, this is hard. Most people do not make it. I read in the LA Times (note: I did not read this in the LA Times) that only .5 percent of LA transplants last longer than a year.”
They’ll listen and nod, as if digesting this information, before they recommend I write something like those “Twilight” books by that “Stephanie Meyer-girl.” They heard she was doing well.
Photo Credit: Pooyan Ranj
