Mmmmm.
I read a magazine article yesterday that contained an interview/brief biography of Jeremy Renner, (See the sexy hotness to the left). Yes, I know, reading a paper magazine. Crazy. But his yummyness was on the front cover of Esquire being..well..yummy, so I couldn't resist. And there were equally yummy pictures inside. (Plus a Gucci ad with Chris Evans that I had to stop and stare at for a few minutes (Five) before moving on. The Avengers assemble, haha. ANYWAY, back to my point. The article itself was incredibly inspirational to me. It basically told Renner's story as one of pure perseverance. He moved to Cali and started his acting career in his early twenties. After years of being cheaply paid for small parts, Renner is finally coming into his own, following his bang up job in Mission Impossible, The Avengers, and The Bourne Legacy. (Legacy was a fantastic movie, I don't care what the critics say. Better than all three of the original Borne movies in my opinion.)
In any event, Renner's story got me to thinking about my own lift path, and where it's taken me thus far. When I was young, all I wanted to do when I grew up was to be in the entertainment industry. I wanted to sing, I wanted to dance, I wanted to act, I wanted to write, I wanted all of it. I wanted the glory, fame, and riches. In all honesty, that's still where my head is. As I grew up, I realized that my not-size-zero frame would probably never allow me to be horribly successful in the movie industry, though I shoved myself in every school play that fanned a poster my way. Also, living about as far away from California as I am from China was another imposition. I often wonder what would've happened if I had simply traveled to California fresh out of high school and tried to pursue my dream then, like Renner had.
As it was, I ended up doing what everyone else in my graduating class did- I took one deep breath of freedom, and then plunged myself into seven years worth of college education, culminating in a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and $30,000.00 worth of student loan debt. (That degree is still sitting furled in it's little cardboard mailing tube by the way, nearly two years later.) My idea was to become a graphic designer, snag a high paying job and work my way over to California via Pixar or some other animation studio. Maybe I could get into voice acting at least. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the first cut into the graphic design program, and had to settle for fine arts instead, which left me with several large realistic paintings of food items on my walls, but not a whole lot of job prospects.
And so I find myself at present, working for a grocery store as a cake decorator and pursuing the path to management, simply so I can hope to make enough money to pay off all my debt and keep food on the table meanwhile. It saddens me at times, but I know that wherever this path may lead, eventually I'll figure out why things happened as they did, and that in the end it was all for the greater good. In the meantime, though, I will keep my frail grasp on the entertainment industry by continuing to write for you fine people in my sparse days off, and hope the grand hand of fate will look kindly on me instead of backhanding me across the face. It's good to know that there are prospects of fame after your mid-twenties, and hopefully by the time I'm 41 (and still as sexy as Renner) I'll be able to look back on this blog and laugh at my naivete, while I'm basking in the warm light of luxury in my large hot tub on the deck of a modern/historical home renovated by Jeremy Renner. (Yes, he does do that.)