CH.5: A COMPLETE UNKNOWN: WHAT HAPPENED TO ME IN HOLLYWOOD—AND WHY YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ME
when it rains, it pours
CHAPTER 5: WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS.
my romantic life took a turn the same week I lost my job. I had met someone who unequivocally felt like a soulmate, and we had both decided to go our separate ways right after I got the letter. If I was a race car driver standing on the first place podium with a medal around my neck before I lost my job…losing my job felt like the judges had rescinded my medal, and then not having this person in my life anymore, was like getting my beautiful shiny race car taken away from me too.
I had a trip to Paris and Ibiza clocked on the calendar in June, except when I booked it earlier in the year, I didn’t know i’d be walking around Paris by myself crying into cheeseburgers (best cheeseburger I’ve ever had btw is at DUMBO in Paris). I got paid out those last 2 months and cried my way through Paris, Ibiza, back to LA for a day, and then left again because I couldn’t stand being in the city not knowing who I was without this job or this person in my life, and headed to my home away from home - The Palmwood: a bed + breakfast nestled in the mountains of the north shore of Kauai and cried in her oceans.
a funny thing happens when you stop working and hustling - you begin to really notice all the shit you’ve ignored forever. i’ve had chronic bloating for as long as I could remember. the worse my stress and anxiety got from the last 2 years at my job, the worse my gut and womb health got. it’s almost comical because when I look back on it, me not following my gut, is probably what made my gut health start to deteriorate. i’ve also always had endometriosis and fibroids, and now in my funemployment (very important side note: when you’re an independent contractor, you can’t collect unemployment), I finally had time to take tests and see a doctor to get to the root of my gut + womb issues which I found out were SIBO/IMO in the gut which i’m still in the middle of curing, and estrogen dominance. chatgpt the symptoms of that one. super fun. in the midst of my travels, I had a reading with my friend molly jane who is an oracle, and she told me I needed to get out of LA to heal my womb. I ended up on an insane adventure to Tepotzlan, Mexico to heal my womb which included hiking this mountain that’s in the shape of a womb, getting gifted Colombian plant medicine by a witch, 2 healers squeezing my bones…it was the most insane trip that I promise to share about in it’s own post one day because it felt like I was starring in the season finale of “naz” if “naz” was a show like “dave” is. I now have a witch in dubai I zoom with for womb maintenance and I wear castor oil packs and do herbal yoni steam’s once a week. it’s a whole fucking protocol. i’m also on a supplement regiment obvs. i’m not that woo-woo ;).
to top it all off, since i’ve always financially supported myself, I was now living off savings and as much as I forced and efforted to get back to work, nothing was clicking because I was no longer a contractor at this digital media company. it felt like every conversation I had when it came to getting work felt like me trying to get back into this baby crib I had outgrown. I still got to keep up with some of my gigs like being a contributor on The Today Show, which I went to NY a couple times to shoot, but here’s the thing that most people are shocked to hear when it comes out of my mouth (mostly my parents): the today show doesn’t pay contributors. so me appearing on the show which I love doing - technically costs me time + money. It’s of course worth it to me, I love that show and the people that work there are made up of the best stuff, but to every family member who thinks i’m killing it, it’s important that I share here that’s an unpaid gig.
I realized I was in a dark night of the soul. when every category of your life - career, finances, romance, and health all hit “E” on the gas meter, you either fill your tank up with gas and start driving down a new road, or you keep trying to drive down the same road on E.
because i’m an artist, a 4 on the enneagram scale, and often live within the confines of my own theatrics, I drove down the same road on E for the rest of 2024. I was so depressed. I lost all my energy. I lost all my life force. I cried almost every day. I actually think I cried every single day. I didn’t know who I was in my body anymore. I started smoking tobacco (I love that I can roll my own blend now it makes me feel cool and I actually love smoking - sorry not sorry). there was a part of “naz” I could no longer access because I wasn’t interviewing and doing what I love most. I felt like my creativity was gone and that there was no way out. I was seeing all my peers on social media share their interview clips and gain all these followers from it and would wallow in the fact that I was sitting on so much of my work that I would never be allowed to share on my page. my new narrative was i’ll just continue losing followers, be forgotten, become irrelevant, and then die on that hill.
I spent the last 6 months of last year in victim mode.
I gave all my power away to external circumstance. and I forgot who the fuck I am.
stay tuned for the final post + podcast which will publish sunday, february 23rd at 9:30am et / 6:30am pt
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