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VIV Extras

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Giveaways

Enter to Win a Copy of 'Handmade Chic'!
One lucky reader will win a copy of this new book by Laura Bennett.

Playlists

Lauren Bowles' Balance With Sara Ivanhoe
As featured in the January/February 2012 issue of VIVmag, for 10 years Lauren Bowles, from HBO’s hot series True

Recipes

Golden Rice with Cauliflower, Nuts, Dried Fruit and Indian Spices
Take a trip to India with this fragrant rice dish, a perfect pairing of sweet and savory.

Events

VIVmag wins two int'l magazine awards

VIVmag, the all digital luxury magazine for women earns two international awards. The tradition of creating excellence in digital magazine publishing continues as VIVmag has won the Digital Magazine Awards 2010 - Silver Award for Lifestyle Magazine of the Year while also sharing in Photographer of the Year for their - March/ April VIV cover shot by Alexx Henry. DIGITAL MAGAZINE AWARDS - SILVER
VIV Moments

Vanessa Taylor




vanessa-taylor

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.

One Reader Comment:

09.23.2011 at 12:07 pm
Posted by Heidi Harger

That was an inspiring story. Thank you for sharing it. And now you have a screenplay being shot in Stonington, CT! And I am looking forward to doing a day of background work on it!

Enjoy your movie shoot. :)
Heidi Harger
actor, writer

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