Since You Asked

When people ask why we're moving to Los Angeles, it's always a complicated answer. We could just say, "We want to work in the entertainment industry," which is technically true. But it feels like there's a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, so we inevitably end up talking for an hour about a hundred different things that all culminate in our moving to the West Coast. And since Rhianwen and I don't necessarily have hours and hours to spare every day, we figured we'd write up the whole story here and just be like, "Check out our blog" when people ask. It will be a time saver for both parties. Trust us.

First, a little background on me. I've wanted to write scripts since I was a kid. I used to write Simpsons episodes in a spiral notebook when I was about 11 or 12. They were formatted wrong, came with crude character illustrations and were invariably given up on halfway through, but still I would write them. I grew up loving to write and even became a film major in college with the intentions of writing films and directing them. I soon gave up on that when I realized I would have to spend four years with other film majors and I switched to journalism, which has served me fairly well so far. But I still had that yearning to write for film and TV, as far off and unattainable as that seemed in my head.

Then, in January 2007, our pastor at our church (Steve Weed, who's knowledge of baseball trivia ranks just below God's) did a series of sermons on prayer. In the opener, he challenged everyone in the congregation in asking God to lay something on their hearts to pray for. Somehow, completely independently of each other, both Rhianwen and I began feeling like Los Angeles was what we needed to pray about, even though it wasn't something we were pursuing in any way, shape or form back at that point. Los Angeles kept coming up in conversations, people we knew were moving there, I suddenly had a desperate need to write the scripts that for years I had been putting off and we both felt God drawing us out there for some unknown reason.

For months we prayed about it, spurred on by Pastor Steve's weekly reminders to do so, and last May we decided to go out and check out the city. We somehow found two non-stop, round-trip tickets to LA from Philly for $115 each (seriously, how insane is that?). Our friend Johnny, who was living in LA at that point, said he was going to be in Chicago for work and we could stay in his apartment and use his car. We were going to help Rhianwen's sister Sarah and her husband Steve look for apartments that weekend because they were going to be moving to Pasadena. The timing and provision for everything was working out immaculately.

Then, we landed in Los Angeles and I called Johnny to find out where we can pick up his apartment and house keys. No answer. He texts me later: "Hey. I accidentally brought my keys with me. I'm trying to figure out a place for you to stay."

For a moment, things didn't seem so great anymore. We were in a city 3,000 miles away from home, carrying ten days' worth of luggage and had no place to live for that span of time. But eventually Johnny worked something out with his friend Sean, who Rhi and I instantly clicked with. Through him, we met so many people and learned so much about Los Angeles, we quickly realized that staying with Sean was probably part of God's plan all along. And when Johnny came back from Chicago, we got to hang out with his son, eat In & Out Burger, drive all over the city and check out Act One, which helped him get connected when he was first out there. Save for the shaky start, the whole trip turned out pretty great and we left feeling like God was probably doing something there.

So, a couple of weeks later we're back in Philly and I get an email from Johnny asking me if I'm going to apply to the Disney-ABC Writers Fellowship. I didn't really know what that was, and Johnny explained it to me: basically, they pay you a decent salary, train you to become a better writer and try to plug you into the writing staffs of one of their shows. I thought it sounded awesome, but then Johnny told me that the deadline was in a couple weeks, meaning I would have to write an entire spec script, a couple of essays, fill out an application, get it notarized and have it in the mail all within fourteen days. (In case you're wondering, a spec script is an episode of an existing TV series that a writer writes as an example of their work.) The odds were against me, but I churned out a spec script of "the Office," completed the application and had it in the mail at the absolute last minute. Rhi and I said a couple of prayers for it, and then we kind of forgot about the whole thing for a few months.


Things were going well otherwise; we were busy with jobs, we moved to a new apartment, our social lives were nice and full. In the fall, Rhianwen left her high-stress job to pursue work in her chosen field of children's media, which we were both surprisingly happy about. Things were going well, and Los Angeles was firmly shoved to the back of our minds.

Then, in November, I got an email telling me I was a semi-finalist for the Disney-ABC Writing Fellowship. I really wasn't expecting it, since I had pretty much forgotten that I even applied for the thing. But it turns out that I was 1 of 60 applicants chosen out of more than 1,000 people who applied and that my script scored "very highly." I don't know what that means really, but an older, wiser friend in the business told me that it means I can write. And I'll take his word for it.

Of course, I bombed the subsequent phone interview and didn't make it to the next round of face-to-face meetings. But I took the fact that I was chosen from that big of a field as God's way of saying, "You do have some talent, buddy. Maybe you should keep looking into this Los Angeles place I keep telling you about."

So Rhianwen and I were back to thinking about Los Angeles full-time. And it wasn't just me who saw opportunity out there. Despite a number of connections and recommendations, Rhianwen was failing to catch on at PBS-Sprout (the Philly-operated kids network and the only game in town in her field). If she wanted a better shot at working in kids entertainment, she would have to be in Hollywood where 99 percent of it is made.

Over the next few months, we planned and prayed, we look on craigslist for apartments, we researched neighborhoods in LA and I wrote obsessively. But by the time January came around, frustrations were kind of riding high. We felt like Los Angeles was the place where we were supposed to be, but didn't really see how we were supposed to get there. We had a good life here in Philadelphia, and we weren't sure how we could leave it behind that easily. In particular, I felt kind of lost in my job: I loved being a journalist, I felt like I was good at it and that I could easily keep going on doing it forever. But it wasn't what I thought I was meant to be doing or even necessarily what I wanted to be doing. It was just an agreeable job with a decent paycheck Rhi and I had come to depend on. But it wasn't reason enough for us to stay here forever, so we prayed that night and I remember distinctly telling God to "open some doors or close some doors, but do something because I don't know what we're supposed to do."

The next day, I got laid off from my job unexpectedly. I instantly regretted telling God to close doors. I should have only asked for open ones. Stupid.

So we started trying to figure out what to do, not yet realizing that we should just go to Los Angeles. We applied for jobs franticly, failing to rustle up any serious prospects or interviews. Our amazing friends the Chandlers invited us to come live with them in St. Augustine, Florida, while we figured out our lives. Rhianwen had missed living near them for years since they moved south, and we were both excited by the prospect of living at the beach, near a state park and in the same house as Jenny's amazing cooking. As amazingly generous and tempting as that offer was, opportunities out in Hollywood began presenting themselves and we knew it wasn't wasn't what we were meant to do.

And when I mean "began presenting themselves," I mean they started coming fast. People we barely knew were calling in connections to try and help us. Even strangers were getting in on it: A young woman who bought a dresser off of us through craigslist and it turned out she just moved back from LA. She had worked as an assistant to a famous actor and insisted (demanded, almost) that we send her our resumes so she could try to help us out. Literally the next morning she emailed to let us know a friend at a network could hook us up with job interviews. An old co-worker (and very good friend, more importantly) emailed a friend who is married to the head writer of a network sitcom and scored me a valuable connection. One of Rhianwen's former employers is writing her a letter of recommendation that could help her land an executive training program with a major network.

On paper, there's more job opportunities for Rhi and I out there than there is here. But even with minimal prospects for paychecks, we have much worth staying for. There's a mountain of uncertainty and risk that we are taking on in terms of leaving what we hold most dear-- our friends, our family, our church, our community. We wouldn't just choose to leave such a life behind for an impulsive whim. We feel that there is something bigger than ourselves that is ordaining this whole thing and we are compelled to follow. Some call it "fate" but we know it as God's call. And as scary it might be to say that we feel "called" somewhere--because that sounds pompous or can serve as a guarantee that we will be successful by certain measures--it could not be more opposite. We feel our lives are not our own and we may end up living there with the homeless for some reason. Who knows.

There are many more details to tis story but this is our attempt at a good summary without keeping you in front of the computer for hours. Thanks for your love and support and interest in our lives.

Staff writers Rhi and Benner both contributed to this report.