I’m in Los Angeles right now filming The Rebuild Your Life Project- Los Angeles. I am 11 months into my journey of documenting what it takes to start over in life in a new city. I wanted to do this project for women who were afraid to make a move somewhere new so they could watch me go through it under several handicaps, no friends, no family, no financial support and no car. I moved to Los Angeles with less than $200 and I’ve managed to survive despite having broken my foot which caused me to stop working as a waitress.
Today I am in Long Beach and I love it here! I can’t quite explain why I love it so much except, I feel happy when I walk down the street. I live in sober living housing which is basically the same as shared housing except there is no drinking or drug use allowed on the premises. The people here are like me, alone with no family and in need of a cheap place to stay. The biggest different is the people here are in their 40’s and 50’s and don’t have jobs or anything to do so they sit around all day watching TV.
I have not made any friends, I don’t have any boy or girlfriends and I pretty much stay inside all day trying to come up with creative ideas to pitch to editors to support myself as a freelance writer.
I’m looking for a roommate- again. I’ve had more than 70 roommates in total since I moved to Los Angeles because I’ve lived in various shared housing programs. This time I wanted to get my own place but I thought better of it since the apartments are very expensive and I still want a little wiggle room in my finances just in case I need to explore the city.
Today was an awesome day for me even though I woke up to an email from my editor stating that I wrote way too much last month and she went over budget! LOL
Then later tonight I got another email from her to our entire staff of writers announcing the winners of the monthly page visit contest. Whoever receives the most page views on their articles gets a $100 gift certificate to Amazon. This contest has been running for 3 months and the first month I won, the 2nd month I didn’t even place and the 3rd month- I WON AGAIN!
I guess the topics I write about are intriguing enough to get picked up my well known distributors like AOL so that contributes to my page views.
I’m thinking a lot about having my sons visit me this summer. My boys are so delightful. They really respect me and support my work so much so I HAVE to do this for them. I haven’t seen them since I moved to California nearly a year ago and although we speak everyday, I can’t wait to wrap my arms around them again. I miss it so much!
My sons asked if there is anything they could do to help me to be able to get them to visit and I told them about a technique that a woman named Helen Hadsell uses to win every contest that she enters. The technique is called SPEC; Select, Project, Expect, Collect.
She DECIDES what she wants (select), then she IMAGINES receiving it (project), then she PREPARES for it (expect) and finally she opens her hand to collect it. I asked my sons to do the same about visiting me in LA. They promised they would and I do spend a great deal of time researching fun places to take them that I haven’t already visited and pricing things even though I don’t have the money yet to buy them.
I even started my fundraising efforts at the suggestion of one of my Youtube viewers. So if you are reading this and you would like to donate to The Rebuild Your Life Project- Los Angeles, you will help fund a trip to California for my sons and The Rebuild Your Life Project grant that I give away to help women in need. This will be my second grant, the last one was $650.
I have decided to stay in LA until I can meet both of the goals that I set before I moved here. When things got rough, I wanted to quit and go home but I have changed my mind and I want to see this project to completion.
Anything can happen. Anything is possible.
