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Hometown

Santa Monica, CA

Joie de VIVre

My friends and godson, my surfboard when I have the nerve to use it, gardening, the cat who wandered into my life not knowing I hate cats and never left, Spinning, yoga, chocolate, wine, oh and did I mention my friends...

VIV Moment

I was 25 years old and living in San Francisco. (After college I had lived for a year in Europe, on scholarship, then had worked for another year for a women’s human rights foundation, traveling the world working on women’s issues, but it wasn’t my calling.)

I didn’t know what my true calling was or even if I had one. I ended up in a “temp” job that turned permanent as a research assistant for an investment bank. (“Fiddling while Rome burns” was how one artistic friend instantly summarized it.)

I worked from before sunrise to after sunset every day (we were on East Coast financial market hours); it was fast-paced, high pressure, all about money — and I hated it. But I wouldn’t quit. I even applied to law school. My life was all about doing things to achieve things other people thought I should want.

Then one day, as I was walking my daily route home up over the hill through Chinatown, it began to rain, really rain. I stopped in a Banana Republic store, of all places. I stood there, sopping and exhausted, and thought to myself, “I am miserable. And I have done this to myself.”

I realized then and there, for the first time, that the responsibility to find happiness and meaning in my life was entirely in my hands. I was in control. At the Banana Republic cash register, they were selling postcards with pictures of skyscrapers and clouds on the front, along with this phrase: “Allow your daydreams to become your plans.”

I bought a postcard, quit my job, moved to Los Angeles and never looked back. I now have a writing career. I am doing what I love to do — all because for one moment, I could see outside the tiny box of a life I had fashioned for myself. And in that instant, I realized that the possibility of failure is infinitely less terrible than settling for anything just to get by.

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