Happy New Year
I
want to say it's that time of the year again, but that's kind of a
double entendre considering it's a new year. Point is that around
this time every year, people reflect on what they went through and
have this urge to throw it away just to start new. I wish it would be
that easy. My question is why are we so eager to change? Do we really
need to be so hard on ourselves by setting a goal that may never happen
because they don't fall into our routine and then, later on, beating
ourselves up about it? Or maybe you made choices that changed your
life and you find yourself reflecting on why did I do that. Why are
people so determined to change when we don't like change in the
first place?
Many
people on the spectrum love to keep a routine. Change that routine and
all hell breaks loose for us and everything falls apart. For a very long time, that is how it was for me. For 12 long years, I had a
routine that was set up for me by my parents and the school system. I
wake up in the morning eat breakfast go to school, take the same
classes at the same set time, eat lunch at a set time then go home
watch tv then do homework.
Then
there is a sudden change that no one prepares you for and yet expects
you to be prepared for it, and that is Life after graduation. Your
daily routine drops right underneath you just like that. For the
first time ever I had no goals. It took me a few years of soul-searching to find what I wanted to do with my life. Eventually, I set
my heart on becoming a film director and began to attend
university. After many years of battling through classes, I graduated
with a bachelors. Then the following year 2021 began working as a
Production Assistant and worked for the entire year on three
different projects. I was living the dream!
For
an entire year, I found myself surrounded by professionals that have
years of experience working on projects such as Black Panther, John
Wick, and Avengers. Samuel Jackson was one of the main actors and producers who led the first project I worked on. My first major
gig as a PA was on a project starring Samuel Jackson. It was the
coolest thing in the world, but it was also the strangest thing in
the world. I show up on my first day, and they tell me, “do not talk to Mr. Jackson, do not disturb him in any way.”
My wanting to be professional was not even considered to be
disruptive to Mr. Jackson thought that it was strange to be told to
not at least be great to someone that I was working with. In my previous job
at Office Max, I had the freedom to shake hands with the district
Manager while working as a cashier. Due to these new rules and the Autism part of me didn't know how to behave which made me feel even
more awkward than I already am. I did however wave to him and
his team whenever I saw them passing by me on his golf cart. It
didn't take me long to august to my new job and figure out who I was
allowed to talk to and who I was not. I mainly just stuck to my
responsibilities and the people in my department who half the time
didn't want to be bothered with one another. The whole covid team did
not work well together. There were only a few of us that got along
and even then it was hard to tell who to hang out with. One minute
I'll have a nice conversation with someone and then the next they are
crawling up my butt, just because I walking into the supply room to
get supplies or to sit down to eat lunch. Let's just say I was
relieved when the project was finally over. Way too much-unwanted drama.
Two
weeks later I got another gig as a Locations PA. Then two days after
I had another lined up. I worked as an office PA then later on as a
set PA the office still claimed me as an office PA even though
I was scheduled as a Set PA. During my time in the office, my main
responsibilities were keeping up with snack food and lunches. There
was no specific way that they provided me with to go about doing anything.
They just expected me to already know how and just do it. At first, I
waited until 11 am to start ordering lunches. It took me an hour or two to finally get everyone's orders. Then as I am making the call
to the restaurant I get notified that my boss expects lunch at 1 pm when the time is already 12:50 and the restaurant tells me it's going
to take an hour before it's ready. Afterward, I came up with the
method to take everyone's orders through email sending it out the day
before, then ordering the food the next morning as soon as the
restaurants opened. The office coordinator who was also my boss told me
I did a great job with the orders then a few minutes after the UPM my
other boss calls out and says that they want someone else to do the
orders while the new PA was starting his first day. It felt like an
odd game of tug of war with the two of my bosses, except the
coordinator seemed more supportive and the UPM didn't care long as
she got what she wanted when she wanted to counteract what the
coordinator tells me. For example, the coordinator sends me to
deliver papers to sign and water to a location where the UPM was
working and told me to just bring this and nothing else and that we
don't have the budget for anything extra. The UPM then texts me I
want Gatorade, bananas, and chips, that they were an absolute must.
So I find myself going to the store spending money that they couldn't
afford to spend because both of my bosses were not on the same page.
There was also the whole ordeal with the snacks. They gave me a
budget of $700 a week but then send me out to get $1000 worth of food twice a week because the carpenters would come in and take the
snacks in the bulk. I eventually found a way to hide and stock the
snacks so that they didn't disappear so quickly. I tried to stick
with the budget that they provided me but they made it impossible.
Part two will be coming to you in February
Thank you,
Lena Ezell
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