Welcome to LA

6 years ago, I was living in Los Angeles with the Oscar world at my feet.

It was early November 2013, and I had just published my first major Awards piece since moving to California. It was an essay on my experience attending the premiere and interviewing the cast, director and writer - of “Kill Your Darlings.”

I had also recently interviewed Julie Delpy for a wonderful hour at the Beverly Hills Hotel for her “Before Midnight” Oscar campaign and seen “12 Years a Slave” at the Warner Brothers lot.

I had even acted in a hilarious web series called, “Office Problems.”

But I was dying inside. Little did anyone know…including myself, that I was battling drug addiction. I started to cancel screening rsvps. I never published that Julie Delpy interview. And I eventually gave up, not only my day job, but also my home.

In a matter of months, it was all over. A dream, crushed.

In July of 2014 I came back to Mississippi, a place I swore never to return, a shell of the man I was. Defeated and devastated

I began to slowly rebuild my life in my home state. I got clean…got a job, moved into my own place…settled into a “regular” life.

I continued to write about the Oscars and I eventually started acting again. I became a programmer of LGBTQ films for the Oxford Film Festival. I even started to direct - first theatre and then a short film.

But something wasn’t right.

I wasn’t happy anymore and didn’t know what to do about it.

After years of plugging away at Awards Wiz, my decade old Oscars website, I hadn’t fully accepted how much the Awards coverage landscape had changed.

My love for “Call Me By Your Name” in 2017/18 kept me in the dark a bit longer, but last year, with no real loves in contention, I saw the writing on the wall. I couldn’t hold off the inevitable any longer.

I finished out the season completely drained, disillusioned and knowing that Awards Wiz, as we knew it was over.

That wasn’t all that was over. My time in Mississippi was coming to and end. I just didn’t quite know it yet.

I had wanted to come back to California for years, talked about It with periodic incessancy, but I was beginning to think it was too late.

For several years, people asked…”why not just go back to visit…? See if you even like it anymore?”

Visit? I didn’t want to visit. I wanted to rip my newly grown roots out of Mississippi and replant in Los Angeles in cement.

The path just didn’t seem possible anymore.

And then I thought. Maybe they’re right? Why not take a chance?

I booked a flight…a 4 day mini vacation to check things out. See what the Golden Coast had in store for a new, improved me.

Within weeks of booking that trip, an opportunity presented itself…a transfer with my current job. After what seemed like an eternity of negotiations, it was done. Suddenly that vacation was an apartment finding trip.

Three months after booking that visit, I had moved.

The moment I arrived it was like I could finally let go the giant breath I had taken from the moment I moved back to the South. I am grateful for my time there. But it’s nice to breathe again.

There is work to do here. I have amends to make from that very short year I was here before. I have films to watch…and make, and dare I say, Oscars to consider.

But most importantly, I have dreams to dream.

Welcome to LA.