From Stuck to Unstuck Thanks to [redacted]

How I dug myself out of a low period in my life and career thanks to the writings of a surprising person.

I was riding high when the year 2000 began. New century. New decade. And I was a staff writer on a popular prime time drama where I was making good money, enjoying the new black Acura CL car with sun roof (and seat warmers for the leather seats!) that I just had to have and I truly felt like this was just the beginning of my career writing for TV.

But riding high means there can also be a pretty big drop and there was definitely one for me that my naive mind didn’t see coming.

Sometimes you relate much too well with lost and hopeless characters in films and TV. I could definitely relate to George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) in 1946’s It’s A Wonderful Life.

In 1999, I had been added to the original Beverly Hills 90210 series writing team at the staff writer level for its 10th season, I became a member of the Writers Guild of America, West (which I still am to this day) and in January 2000 I had my first-ever produced episode of television, the “Tainted Love” episode (S10, E13) air on the Fox network. But all good (and popular) things must come to an end so it was decided mid-season that the show would not continue beyond season 10. I was okay with that and was ready to sink my teeth into a new show since, of course, I would easily just effortlessly land on another show and keep things riding high, right? Wrong!

I tried to get meetings, pushed my literary agent to make something happen, even reached out to a television agent/friend at another firm to ask if she’d “hip-pocket” me, which essentially means I was asking her represent me to get work without officially being my agent. (She nicely said ‘I’m not doing that.’)

Suddenly I was unemployed, staffing season came and went and that next writing job didn’t happen. I thought about what I could’ve done differently. Should I have networked more? Probably. Should I have been writing new TV writing samples instead of spending time on a screenplay? Yes. Should I have been looking beyond the current job while still in that job to prepare myself for if/when it ended much sooner? Definitely.

But I was a newbie writer, only a year after I had left my job working as an executive assistant at Sony’s then-named Columbia Tristar Television drama development department, and I didn’t know how to be more active to make sure the work flow continued. I felt ashamed to be out of work so fast after ten glorious months of being able to say “I’m a writer for Beverly Hills 90210!” so I did what a lot of us would’ve done and probably have done - I got depressed.

From the opening credits of the “Tainted Love” episode of Beverly Hills 90210 in January 2000.

My agent told me to write a new sample since that was the easiest way for him to get me in doors. He’d already sent out my other writing samples which consisted of scripts for shows like ER, Felicity, Rescue Me, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and one of my favorite writing samples to this day, The West Wing. [Side Note: While today’s TV writer world typically submits original pilot scripts and writing samples, back in the last 90s/early 2000s, the practice was to write spec scripts for existing shows. You wouldn’t write a spec for a show you actually wanted to be on but write for similar shows to show your voice and how well you knew a particular show.]

The only problem with writing something new was, well, I was depressed. The creative well was dry and I honestly didn’t see the point given the message playing like a loop in my head was that my career as a writer of any kind was over. Now, I was functioning so if someone had asked I wouldn’t have admitted to being depressed. I was still going to the gym, seeing friends, enjoying life as a single guy living in West Hollywood. I had money in the bank but thanks to leasing a new car, taking some weekend trips and staying in nice hotels and dining out a lot over the past year, once that last paycheck came, that bank account dwindled considerably.

I’d watch TV to try to escape but instead I’d see names of people I knew writing the shows I wanted to be on. I tried not to get jealous but I did fall into the hole of thinking, again on a loop, ‘why isn’t that me?’ or ‘what did I do wrong?’ or, the usual one, ‘I guess I had my moment and now I’m stuck with my nothing of a life.’

Looking back, since I didn’t quite know what to do having never been in this situation before, I was waiting for someone to ‘fix’ the situation. I had already proven myself as a writer so why wasn’t anyone knocking on my door to write? Shouldn’t I have had the kind of agent who could snap his or her fingers and just keep me working? (I wish it worked that easily!) Unfortunately, what I learned then and still know today is that nobody is going to save you in most situations. Everyone is working hard to just make it through their own ups and downs in their lives and while I had friends and family I could talk to, instead, I just closed myself off, worried and said all the negative things to myself over and over and over.

Of course I still have the script for the single episode of Beverly Hills 90210!

Once my bank account shrunk to a certain point and I’d already borrowed money from friends and family to stay afloat, I realized I’d have to do the last thing I wanted to do - go back to my previous line of work as an executive assistant. I couldn’t fathom going back to my old job at Sony but in the mindset of starting over, I remembered that I had started my life in Los Angeles upon my 1995 arrival as an office temp so I went back to the same agency and since I did have a good amount of experience working in offices, I quickly started getting assignments. Looking back, I am so glad I had skills to fall back on even if I felt miserable at the time about having to go back in time to utilize them in order to pay the rent. Soon I was working at studios like Paramount and Fox (I even did a few gigs at Sony but not in the department where I had once worked) and at least was getting back on my feet financially.

But, shocker, my depression didn’t disappear. I was going through the motions but my self-worth had dwindled and I just told myself I was responsible for having fucked everything up and, well, I had probably reached the pinnacle of my life and it would be all downhill from there. (My mind at the time was a real laugh factory!) I was also self-aware enough to know none of this was healthy but I also couldn’t get it out of my head out of it. Also, it did cross my mind to get a therapist to work through some of this but given I was working as a temp and wasn’t insured at the time, that wasn’t really an option.

Being this was the early 2000s, bookstores were still a very big thing and when I did leave the house, one thing I could do for free is spend a lot of time wandering Barnes and Noble or Borders buying fiction and non-fiction books to keep myself occupied. Eventually I wandered to the SELF HELP area and the book Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out stood out to me. On the cover, was the smiling face of Dr. Phillip McGraw

I know what you’re thinking here in 2024 when McGraw has been a vocal supporter of that horrible orange guy running for the office of the President (I can’t bring myself to include his name here) but things were very different over twenty years ago in the early 2000s. Back then, anything Oprah Winfrey touched turned to gold since her iconic daytime talk show was still on the air and she was a big fan of Dr. Phil, frequently having him on her show to help people with problems in their lives. I remember seeing him on another Oprah appearance and thinking ‘he’s going to end up with his own show.’ Of course that happened and his daytime talk show started in the fall of 2002. (I just checked since I couldn’t remember how much of a real doctor McGraw was but turns out he did hold a doctorate in clinical psychology so he knew what he was talking about).

I had a few of his books, some of which I read, some that just gathered dust on my bookshelves but Self Matters came out in the fall of 2001 and since I hadn’t been writing, I began reading the book and had what Oprah would call my very own ‘a-ha moment.’

I don’t think a lot of what Dr. Phil talked about was anything he created or conjured up but just things he’d learned that he was passing on as any clinical psychologist would. And one of those things he talked about in this book is the idea that we repeatedly play tapes in our head that send messages that work against us and our self esteem. These are essentially the little voices we hear in our head that are encouraging at times but, when we’re feeling low, can just push us lower.

The point that resonated to me in his book was to make yourself aware of those tapes and as soon as you hear some of those more self-defeating messages start to play, hit that internal STOP button to keep that tape from playing again. That act in itself creates a new pattern that stops that negative voice from being the loudest one you hear. I do remember that this concept was easier said than done but the suggestion of this practice happened to hit me at the right time and made perfect sense to me. I saw this as a way to take back my own mind and feelings and have some control over it all instead of just wallowing. I realized my negative, depressed state was predominantly coming from me. Nobody had actually told me I was washed up as a writer, that I was not a good writer and nobody was telling me I was a bad person. All of that was coming from me and acknowledging that was a huge weight off my burdened shoulders.

The second thing that hit home in even a bigger way is how we define ourselves, especially in terms of our work. What do we do if one of the major things that defines us suddenly goes away? What does that do to our own perception of our self worth? I had seen myself as a writer for most of my life in that nobody told me to be a writer or to write down thoughts and stories. It was as close to a calling as I’ve ever had and I just knew I could do it so I did. I wrote short stories about my classmates while still in elementary school (“Scott, Kim and Jim” and it’s 10 hand written pages was a page turner!) and later I would write for my high school literary magazine as well as both newspapers at John Adams High School in South Bend, Indiana and Indiana University in Bloomington. Being a writer was ingrained in my self worth from the time I was able to write so it was important for me to reclaim that idea and not let negativity take it over.

I don’t remember the exact way McGraw put it in his book (and, obviously being less of a fan now than I was then, I don’t want to buy the book again just to quote it and to put a few more dollars in his pocket) but it was something that made me realize that even if someone wasn’t paying me to be a writer, I was, am and always will be a writer. As long as I can borrow a pen from someone and grab a napkin at Starbucks, I can put pen to paper and write my ideas down. Hell, I don’t even need a pen and paper since I can write ideas in my head to work through a story or figure out a kernel of an idea that could become a pilot script, novel or screenplay. Reclaiming my idea of being a writer was such a simple idea but one that had eluded me for well over a year. Suddenly, I felt like I had broken through this thing that had been weighing my entire being down.

So I did the best thing I could’ve done for myself - I started to write. I started thinking about new TV pilot ideas and even a book idea (with visions of a book adaptation becoming a series) but I approached it a little differently. Instead of writing what I thought would sell or what would make my agent happy, I started to write stories for me. I had gotten so wrapped up in the business of being a television writer that I realized I wasn’t enjoying writing unless I put myself first. My agent had previously told me to write a “Law & Order” since procedurals were everywhere so there were jobs out there but I knew that was not the kind of writing that would make me happy in the end. Yes, it might be lucrative and who knows where that would’ve lead me but I knew I had to write something I felt passionate about.

While I worked on some new writing ideas, I still needed to pay the bills but how to do it and still have a fairly loose schedule for writer meetings and just writing time? I decided the best thing I could do was start my own business and since one of my executive assistant strengths was organizing whomever I was working for, I began Mess No More, an organizing business. I could schedule organizing clients as I saw fit and still have control over my days. Win-win! Plus, I felt like I was back on a good path, wherever that path would lead. Well, in a case of how sometimes the darkest times lead you to something infinitely better, one particular organizing job lead me to one of my favorite and most fulfilling jobs - being a male nanny!

If we’re friends and you’re reading this, you know this part of the story more than likely but it’s a really fun chapter in my personal and professional life for so many reasons and I promise to continue the story in a future post.

But before I wrap this up, have you ever pulled yourself out of a depressive time in your life? Did you get help? Did you have your own ‘aha moment?’ Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear your journey.