I used to work at a high-end seafood restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. When I wasn’t too exhausted at the end of my shift, I would text my then-boyfriend to ask if he wanted to get tacos. The taco truck we frequented wasn’t fancy or well-known, like Mariscos Jalisco, but it was good. It was always late when we got there—I don’t think we ever went during daylight hours—but it was packed with fellow night dwellers, other service industry folks, and people in between bars. I remember construction workers in neon vests, maybe getting off a late shift or clocking into an early one. I remember my exhaustion, the pungent rawness of the white onions, and the beautifully viscous salsa verde. That salsa verde was like liquid gold, so refreshing and tangy, it would practically quench your thirst. For a few minutes, I’d sit on the curb under the taco truck lights, thinking about how much my feet hurt.

Most of my time in Los Angeles after I graduated was about surviving. I desperately wanted to launch my career, to become a real adult. When I wasn’t able to do that, I decided to start working at a contemporary art museum. I wanted to be surrounded by art regularly, to get inspired by it. At first, I was close to the artwork, but only physically. I stood in the galleries, telling young children and adults of all ages to stop running and, “Please, don’t touch that!” When the museum asked if any staff were interested in giving tours, I quickly volunteered.

We got to design our tours, highlighting whatever we wanted in the collection. I would start outside, talking about the airy honeycomb structure made of 650 tons of steel. We’d eventually arrive on the main gallery floor via a gigantic tubular elevator reminiscent of the Discovery One spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’d wander around, talking about Jeff Koons, Glenn Ligon, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, or Mark Bradford, depending on who I felt like visiting that day. I’d include the art historical information as well as the juicy tidbits I’d picked up here and there from curators, the installation staff, even the artists when they came for after-hours talks. I loved seeing the lifted eyebrows and quick elbow jabs in the crowd; I wanted to give patrons something they could repeat to their friends and family, an endorsement that would hopefully pique their interest, also. Inevitably, we’d end the tour by Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room.

One day, when I was working the line outside, a woman came striding up to me, borderline frantic. “We have tickets for Koosahmay’s Reflection Room! Where do we go?” With patience and grace, I explained to her that she had tickets for a timed entry into the museum—you had to reserve slots for the Infinity Mirror Room once you were inside.

Now, at this point in the conversation, it would normally go one of three ways. Sometimes, people didn’t even know what they signed up for. They were at the museum because their significant other, sibling, or best friend wanted them to be. It was easy to differentiate these folks from the rest because you could’ve asked for anything from them. You could’ve said we need an interpretative dance as the cost of entry, and they wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. Cool, chill, whatever. The next group of folks were fibbing, seeing how much they could get away with. When I’d tell them it was impossible to book Infinity Mirror Room tickets ahead of time, they knew their cover was blown. We’d both giggle at the fact that they’d just told such a blatant and obvious lie, while I continued to explain other small details about entry procedures and timed passes. And for the others… you could practically see the red yarn forming a conspiracy wall in real time — full Charlie Kelly mode, muttering about secret plots and personal sabotage, as if I had been sent there that day to ruin their lives. Unfortunately, this particular woman was in this last group.

As she’s screaming in my face—“We came all the way from Santa Monica!” —I’m unfocusing my vision, trying to see if I can make out the brands she’s wearing while probably almost going cross-eyed. I can see sparkly Van Cleef clovers around her neck (those are obvious), some very thin, gold bangles which I assumed to be Cartier, and… was it a Birken? Or maybe it was a Saint Laurent Manhattan bag. I couldn’t be sure.

This was the effect of Kusama’s exhibit. A stopwatch was a necessary piece of equipment when you were working the Infinity Mirror Room. Every group got 60 seconds. The group of girls in line would strategize how to get the best group photos while not sacrificing any solo time. Their logic was that everyone should go in with everyone else, and then the girl whose turn it was would stay, while everyone else filtered out. This would repeat however many times there were women in the group. Maximum time equaled maximum shots for everyone, without losing the opportunity for their next dating profile pic. I felt bad when I had to tell them there was a limit on how many could go inside at once.

When we herded everyone out in the evenings, sometimes I would pop inside the exhibit to check on her. More realistically, it was to stare into the abyss for a minute. I was always struck by the dank, musty smell of stagnant water. Part of the “infinity” mirror in the Infinity Mirror Room came from the floor beneath the platform you were standing on. The floor had, I think, about an inch of water all around the tiny black room. When you turned the lights all the way up, the illusion was really lost.

There was exhaustion in this job—I was undoubtedly still in the service industry, which was obvious by my paychecks and the physical demands of the work. And so, I made the next logical step in my career ascension. I took a position at a shipping company in Long Beach — the founder happened to be a friend of my cousin’s husband; a quintessential and close-knit relationship, as you can imagine. The people at the shipping company were incredibly nice, if not incredibly confused, about my presence there.

I went on a field trip once with my boss to central California (hello, garlic capital of the world!) to offer our best cargo shipping rates to raisin producers, winemakers, and nut farmers. At least that’s what I thought we were doing, I’m not entirely sure looking back. My boss’ partner in London, and I suppose my co-boss, kept accidentally using my personal email address instead of my work one. I kept missing things—not that it mattered all that much. I was so unimportant to that place's daily operations that I should’ve just been a mascot. But in my infinite, twenty-something year-old wisdom, I once responded, “PLEASE ENSURE YOU ARE EMAILING THE CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS,” all caps, at the bottom of one of my emails to him, kind of like one of those huge paragraphs in tiny writing giving some warning about confidentiality or some other nonsense that no one cares about or reads. When he responded, rightfully asking if he thought it was appropriate for me to be yelling at him over email, it was only at that exact moment that it occurred to me… that was actually what I had been doing.

I quit the shipping job without having anything else lined up. I decided I’d be a Lyft driver until I figured something out. I spent a lot of time doing this or that. I spent a year and a half pursuing federal employment—a real job with a security clearance, international travel, and a way to legitimize myself as a serious professional™ in the eyes of myself. It ended in rejection and heartbreak, which, looking back on it, was for the best. But I decided to move to DC to try to throw my hat in the ring of real careerdom; one that would use my undergraduate degree in international relations. I moved in with my aunt and uncle outside Camp David in Maryland. I disconnected from big city life, spent time outside, and too much money on a shit personal trainer that I couldn’t afford, but that I needed in order to give my life some kind of routine and accountability.

Finally, I landed a job on a presidential campaign. My first “real” job. A serious job. I was going to be a communications manager. When I interviewed for the position, I walked into the basement of the congress member’s house in Capitol Hill, which would’ve been extraordinarily weird if it hadn’t also been the office for his campaign. This should’ve been my first red flag, but I was desperate to be taken seriously. Two weeks into the job, the campaign manager pulled me into his “office” (the room next to the basement bathroom) and asked me, point-blank, if I could do this job or not because currently, I was extremely shit at it. I cried on my way home. I cried a lot during that period of my life. Regularly, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat from a night terror involving a missed email or the big Monday group meeting.

A small group of us went to New Hampshire to help other down-ballot races and do a few meet-and-greets. The scheduling office set up an event for the presidential candidate to canvass with a current Congress member. Our team met at her office in a somewhat abandoned-looking strip mall. We had our normal greetings, lots of pleasantries and handshaking, and then right before everyone headed out, our candidate said he needed to use the restroom. Instead of awkwardly standing there, we headed out to the car to wait for him. Five minutes pass. Then 10 minutes, 15 minutes. The scheduler and I look at each other, confused about what’s taking so long. Then, our phones start to blow up.

Rapid-fire emails between our candidate and the rest of the campaign staff back in DC. So much had happened in a short period—our email was more like instant messenger. We were trying to read the thread as quickly as possible, but mostly it was a slurry of all caps (what I had learned was the equivalent of assault in the professional, digital world). The candidate was upset about a fundraising email that had gone out that morning, which was the first time he’d seen it. No, wait, he had seen it but hadn’t read it. Wait actually, the email draft had been sent through the normal approval channels maybe a week before, it had been approved by all the necessary people (including him), but he was still mad it had gone out this morning, as scheduled?

The subject line read, “Like an old shoe,” referring to him being comfortable, relatable, and well-known. He was furious. Everyone was weighing in, trying to give reassurances. He was still in the bathroom, furiously typing all these emails. The scheduler and I were at a complete loss. We let the email battle continue for a bit and then learned, from the email chain, he was actually on the canvassing trail already, and he’d need to discuss this later. We stepped on the gas, zig-zagging across various parts of the neighborhood, trying to find our candidate and the congress member he was canvassing with. It felt very much like we were in a real-life game of Frogger. Eventually, I was fired for inadequately performing the job of another team member who had called out sick one day.

I meandered around the politics and politics-adjacent job market for a bit, but then finally found my way into tech. A previous job paid for web design and development classes, and I used that as a springboard to apply for a job at a political tech company. I had one very short Zoom interview, where I was not asked anything about my knowledge of front-end development. I was invited to see the office and was really “sold” on the position by the team of two I’d most directly be working with. We went up to the rooftop, and I’m pretty sure we talked about the restaurants we liked in the DC area.

When I started working there, I asked my boss how I would progress. What were the criteria for getting a promotion? What was I aiming at? We worked out a rubric about the number of clients and projects I would need to have on my plate to receive a promotion. And then, private equity bought the company and merged it with four others. The rules changed. Guidance was extremely thin. After about a year of internal investigative work to create a clearer and more transparent pay scale (which was great!), they announced tiers and what constituted mastery of them. It didn’t matter in the end, as I was laid off in the fourth round of a “strategic restructuring.” This was the closest I came to a real job, I think.

I have been laid off for a year and three months now. I went to a college friend’s wedding back in Los Angeles in October of last year. My partner and I spent the week out there, staying at a friend’s house. We ate at Erewhon, Pine & Crane, and Bay Cities Deli. We walked around and sat on the benches in Echo Park Lake. We did some work out of the Santa Monica Proper Hotel. I showed him Stay on Main (previously the Cecil Hotel) because we are both fascinated with the Elisa Lam story, and true crime stories in general. We ate way too much at Grand Central Station. Finally, we went to LACMA one sunny afternoon, and I decided we needed tacos beforehand at Sonoratown. We sat down, and I was exhausted; we had been going and doing all week.

Looking around, I saw a lot of people on their lunch breaks, about to get back into construction trucks and drive home or drive back to their worksites. I saw kids in strollers with their nannies and moms. Maybe they were headed to the museum, like us, or maybe they were on their way to the bus to go across town. We saw some students with backpacks who might’ve been headed to class. A lot of people looked tired, working so they could make it to the next thing.

I’d been here before. Maybe not at Sonoratown specifically, but I’ve been tired, hungry, quietly observing the hum of other people’s lives, wondering if mine was heading anywhere I wanted to go. I used to think something should’ve clicked by now; I should’ve had more figured out, and I should have a career. But I don’t. I’m still looking. And in that process, I’m recognizing that meaning is most likely going to come from the inane and sometimes asinine details of everyday life. Maybe these are the events I should be striving toward instead.

A Real Job

On Writing & Design