One second shots of New York City, ending on a shot of a guy in a SF Giants hat. This video was made for me.
NYC: One Sec Shots from SDP on Vimeo.
One second shots of New York City, ending on a shot of a guy in a SF Giants hat. This video was made for me.
NYC: One Sec Shots from SDP on Vimeo.
This is pretty incredible. Plus, it features a cameo of my street (52nd)!
“We Are Made In NY” from WeAreMadeInNY on Vimeo.
One of the many reasons I love this place: the silly, amazing, and motivated startups & the cool work that is happening all around me. #nyc #inspiring
the Scared is scared from Bianca Giaever on Vimeo.
Things like this are why I love (read: am obsessed with) video. And there’s also something about the way kids tell stories that just warms the heart. Discovery Channel, I’m pretty sure I found your next Planet Earth narrator: this kid.
Great short film by Rebecca Davis. My favorite part is when the dog pops its head out of a purse.
(Via BoingBoing.)
“Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing, than a long life spent in a miserable way.”
This video is incredible.
August 1st, 2011. I packed up a weeks worth of clothes, got on the coldest Bolt bus in existence, and geared up for the 5 hour bus ride from Washington DC to New York City, where I was starting my first real world job. I got off at Penn Station at 11:30PM, unsure which direction ‘Fashion Avenue’ would take me, my knuckles turning white from how tightly I was clutching my phone, begging it to lead me in the right direction. It was all very “Don’t Stop Believing.” But it was also one of the most frightening moments in my entire life. And this is coming from a girl who once thought it was a good idea to dye the bottom layer of my hair goth black. So, not to brag, but I’ve got a pretty good scope of “scary life moments”.
That was one year ago. I can’t believe it was that was an entire year ago, and yet that it was only a year ago. And what’s even crazier is that up until a week before I got on that bus, New York was never a realistic part of my life plan. Gasp! Are you just shocked that I’m not one of those people who knew at 5 years old that I wanted to make it in the Big Apple? But it’s true. After a sheltered childhood in the California burbs, I was sure I would do what most people did when they graduated from college: I would stay in California. Because no one was drinking the Cali Kool Aid more than me. Up until my senior year of college, my plan was to move to Los Angeles and Make! It! Big! in television. But after a freeway accident left me car-less, that part of my plan became less intriguing.
So I did the responsible thing after I graduated: I decided to up and move to Washington DC with no real plan in place and enough money to barely make it to October, in the hopes that a drastic post-college move would just sort my life out for me. I know, I’m like the model citizen of Smart Life Decisions. And as a reward for one of the most irresponsible things I’ve ever done in my life, it actually worked out. God knows why. For the longest time, I chalked up my success to surviving on my own on the East Coast as sheer dumb luck. But after a year of living here, I’ve become slightly less irresponsible enough to realize that it wasn’t just luck that got me to a year. I made it because I wanted to. Because I had to.
This inspiration for this blogpost came from a pattern I’ve noticed more recently. The strange pattern exists in the outlook people have of living in New York. For those who were bored, or just ended up here not really wanting to be, New York finds a way to push them out. For those who need to be here, want to be here, New York finds a way to make it work for them. It’s very you get what you give. And for me, I gave it my all. Although I knew I was only one crying phone call away from having my parents bail me out and fly me back to California, to give me my childhood room back and reassure me that New York just “wasn’t meant to be”, I was unwilling to accept defeat. My stubbornness causes a lot of issues, but it also saves me from accepting anything but my best. And now after a year I can say that beyond being in the right place at the right time, my stubbornness is the reason I made it a year in New York. Because for me, there was no other option.
Now having been here 11 months longer than most of my friends and family (and I, honestly) thought I would, I come across a lot of people who ask me why I like it here, why I’m still here. For the longest time it felt like everyone was collectively waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen to me, like a homeless person coughing on me, for me to be like: “THAT’S IT! YOU WIN, NEW YORK. I’M LEAVING. CALIFORNIA, TAKE ME BACK!” But that moment never happened. And honestly, I don’t think it will, at least not until I’m really ready to leave on my own accord. I am madly in love with this city for a lot of reasons (a huge one being I can spend $1 on a slice of pizza for a meal, which is essentially my success story to affording NY), but the biggest reason is that I am surrounded by likeminded individuals who are unwilling to settle for anything less than their best. This is the same reason two of my best friends are Kelsey Finnegan and Chris Tung, who, I’m sure of it, will both be running the universe in a few years.
It is really hard to live in a city like New York. You have to be okay with feeling dirty all the time. With putting your paycheck in your bank account on the 30th of the month, and seeing it disappear two days later on the 1st of the next month. With standing extremely close to strangers on the 6 train and not feeling uncomfortable that their chest hair is a slight subway move away from touching your nose. But the cool thing about it being hard to live here is that not every can or wants to do it. So the people who can do it relate at least on that level. High fives that we are all okay with standing on crowded subway trains in a collective cloud of strange people’s BO!
I’m sure 50 years from now after I’ve lived in a place longer than the average lab rat’s lifespan, I will look back on this ~serious blog post~ and think how silly it was that I felt I knew so much after one year of living in New York. But I still hold strong that I have learned and lived more in this one year of living on my own, in one of the biggest cities in the world, than I did for a large chunk of my life prior. And for that, I will be forever grateful. Because whatever happens, wherever I end up, I have the peace of mind to know that I made it a year in the place that was the inspiration to the line: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!”
Alright, that’s enough cheesiness for the day. I’m going to go hug my cat and listen to the theme song from The Jeffersons.
Okay, Disclaimer: this blog is mainly going to be my musings and thoughts on television and pop culture happenings. You know, really deep important stuff. But every so often a straggler post will sneak in, when the inspiration strikes. This is going to be one of those posts, and is about my thoughts on the ever elusive concept of The Dream Job.
A while back, I had an informational interview with someone I had met at a conference. At this point in my life, I was struggling to figure out my path and what direction to take in television. I expressed in the interview that I wanted to meet with other people working in my industry, to learn from them about what they do in the hopes that it would help me figure out what path I could see myself taking. Because from promos, to development, to production, there’s a whole lotta shit happenin’ in the TV world. So after essentially revealing the musings of my quarter life crisis, the person I was interviewing responded with a stern: “No. Don’t waste people’s time. Figure out what you want to do, and pursue it. Don’t drag people along with you, and don’t ask someone to put their neck out for you and make connections only to not do anything with them.” I was caught off guard by his response and embarrassed that I had caused such a reaction. The interview lasted a few moments longer, I graciously thanked him for taking time to talk to me, and hung up the phone, hands still shaking. I was unsure how to process what had just happened. All I could think was: How the hell am I supposed to figure out what I want to do, if I can’t ask people and learn about my options?
The experience stuck with me, and after processing it all I realized he was right [Editor’s Note: Duh, of course he was right. He is a professional who has been working for 10+ years, I am a recent college grad tryna get my shit together. Let’s all pause for a moment to appreciate my genius realization]. There was no reason that I couldn’t take the time and do the research and figure out what I wanted. I was just scared and anxious to have to figure it out by myself.
That interview, as awkward as it was, pushed me to discover what I knew all along, and that was: where in television I wanted to work, for what show, and in what position. It was only recently that someone actually asked me what my dream job is (the nerve of that person!) and for the first time since realizing it, I vocalized it to someone other than my cat, and made it official: My dream job is to work as a Segment Producer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Now, after a long winded and strangely personal introduction (oops), we get to the real point of this blog post: Defining The Dream Job. Since acknowledging it and telling that one person, it feels like my dream job has become my tagline. People who know what it is introduce me to others, like: “This is Megan, she wants to work at Late Night!” It’s weird, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. But mainly, it’s allowed me to be able to define for myself what having a dream job means to me. And if you’ve been rolling your eyes through the majority of this blog post, here’s the real takeaway:
My dream job is my North Star.
Okay, I will allow for one more eye roll, but now, we get to business!
What I mean by North Star is that it’s a direction in which to focus my energy towards. I am perfectly fine with telling people what my dream job is, because I can also acknowledge that I know I might not get it, and I’m okay with that. And I also know that calling it my dream job doesn’t mean it’s the perfect and ONLY job for me. But being able to tell people I have a dream job is cathartic, because it gives me purpose. And if nothing else happens, I hope having a sense of direction puts me on the path to discover something else, a different show, a different position, that is more perfect than any dream job because it’s real.
For those struggling to figure it out for themselves, the advice I can give is to do your research. Find others who work in the industry, company, or position you think you’d enjoy. Read about their experience, what they’ve worked on, where they came from. Do things in your own time–volunteer, write, attend events–that get you closer to figuring it out. Because if all else fails, it’s one more thing you can cross off the long list of potential Dream Jobs.
And finally, don’t dwell on it. You don’t need to have a dream job. Dreams change. And at the end of the day, despite whatever realization you come to, you dream job may not be at a specific company, doing exactly what you think you want to do. It could be a different company, and it’s your dream job because you’re happy. Prioritize that, because if you have to do it for 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the next decade, you should love what you do. If you can do that, the rest of that stuff, it just won’t matter.
Also posted on nycreativeinterns.com
Hello! My name is Megan Frantz. I'm a pop culture nerd, passionate about entertainment and the internet. I live in New York City. Welcome to my website.
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Email me at mafrantz16@gmail.com to say hello, to get in touch about working with me, or to ask me if this is my natural hair color (spoiler alert: it is.)
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