Much like I did in my sophomore year of high school, I am back to spreading myself thin.

I believe I’ve mentioned that already but this is my blog, so I’ll say it as many times as needed.

(enter lol here to soften what was supposed to be a lighthearted taunt towards the reader, but reading it back now, sounds like the b*tchiest thing in the world.)

I’ve been doing a lot, but it’s a lot of what I love, so it hasn’t felt quite as physically exhausting as it used to.

But the weeks are still spinning. Days become blurs, and hours feel stretched like Chinese finger traps between my index fingers. And every once in a while, I’m able to remember how to escape and give my hands a rest.

But then my dumbass puts my fingers back in and I get lost in watching my fingers fight to be free again.

I haven’t spoken to you all in forever, mostly because each time I leave, my dread to come back and disappoint you all over again deepens down to the soles of my feet. But also because I’ve felt too exhausted to set aside the time to come and see you.

But here I am again, done with promises of weekly uploads and instead offering content when and where I can.

Along with, the most exciting bits of news and development in terms of the only thing I’ve been mentioning lately: my career!

First and foremost.

Hello, my name is Kate Santos. I’m an 18-year-old writer, actress, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles California. Taking one large step off risky career cliffs at least once a day, and learning to bandage myself up before the next faulty flight I decide to give a strong go.

Recently, I’ve been pursuing all avenues of my dream life: being the next Mindy Kaling, America Ferrera, media extraordinaire that can throw her weight in wit around from both sides of the camera.

I’ve spent the past few weeks driving myself all around Southern California, from Los Angeles to the Valley and the depths of Orange County (aka, hell. Go Kings Go.) Attempting and failing and succeeding again and again and again, at becoming an actress, a writer, and whatever else emulating powerful women of color in media should entail.

The most success I’ve had are things I haven’t been paid for, and gigs that require me to sit still and shut up. But, I’ve gotten great on-set experience, met the best and worst of people, and decided that this is all great fodder for a second run at Ricky Gervais’ “Extras”, which I didn’t know existed until two days after I had come up with a similar concept, and wanted to double check that no one had done something similar before, so it wouldn’t seem like I was stealing an idea, and I could go up to the Emmy Acceptance Speech Microphone with a clean conscious.

But alas, I’ll be cashing a check that Ricky Gervais already had in his account.

I’ve been working excessively at Place of Work, because anywhere and everywhere we are understaffed and overworked. Any time not spent on the 5 or on set (which, by the way, it is so cool that I can say that now. On Set. It makes me so happy I could giggle. Or scream. Or giggle-scream.) is spent at Place of Work.

Other than that, I have great developments ahead!

I have recently been cast to host a podcast about movies and t.v. shows. WHAT IS LIFE?!

By the time you all are reading this, I’ll have had the first few meetings and gotten more information about what this will even be, but for now, I have nothing in terms of information to offer and am asking that you just take my words in good faith. Or don’t.

Honestly, it probably won’t affect our reader-writer relationship at all.

Well, except for the fact that I’ll be banging down your (virtual) front door to let you know that THIS WEEK’S PODCAST EPISODE JUST CAME OUT AND IT’S REALLY GOOD SO YOU SHOULD COME AND GIVE IT A LISTEN, WE WORKED REALLY HARD ON IT!

But whatever’s chill!

Additionally, I’m heading back to school soon which is SO EXCITING.

I love learning and writing and reading and researching, and college is all of those things.

I’m majoring in English and fiddled with changing my major to screenwriting, but the transfer would be messy and my community college also just doesn’t offer a screenwriting major, but a film one. Which may be one and the same, I don’t know if I’m honest with you. I looked into it for about seven minutes before opening Disney+ and watching Starstruck.

But my major honestly doesn’t matter to me too much, because the only thing that does, is the school.

I’ve wanted to go to UCLA since I was 9 and was shown by many that it was the best school to go to. The bear and the palm trees and the buildings have all been excessively romanticized by me since I opened up the UCLA webpage in the fourth-grade computer lab.

Since then, I’ve spent hours researching and exploring the campus without ever having stepped foot on it, which I plan to change very soon.

Somewhere along the traumas of my sophomore year, of which literally just includes the drama in my drama/theatre classes – theatre kids are mean- I royally screwed myself over and entered an educational pattern that practically ruined my shot at joining a four-year straight away.

Goodbye theatre major, goodbye film school.

I shelved the university dream, took a gap year, and decided on Community College.

I also decided that there was no way in hell I was doing Community College anywhere near me.

So, very very very soon, I will be spending hours in zoom meetings and logging on to canvas for a school all the way in LA, that I picked solely for the promise that I wouldn’t be seeing the same faces that I did in high school.

I’ve been incredibly go-go-go lately, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. But this time around, I’m actually putting measures in place to keep myself sane.

I’ve changed my availability for work so that I’m not working until 2 in the morning anymore. I’ve started talking and texting more with the people I love, and have already filled up my academic and social calendars for the rest of the year, the prospects of which I am absolutely thrilled about.

I’m prioritizing my career (and have started calling it my career, at that), and I’m limiting the amount of time I’m allowed to spend on my phone, which began about a month ago when I deleted all social media apps and no longer had anything to gain but skills in Greek and Spanish from Duolingo, both of which I am excelling in!

I now know how to say “the carrot” in three different languages! Plus, a thirty-three-day streak. Not to brag but…to brag.

The closer that we get to the end of the summer, the closer I feel I’m returning to myself.

Summer me feels like an alter-ego, whose skin is way too tight and whose brain is far too melted and mishappen by the climate crisis’ new California sun.

Fall me gets to re-read Harry Potter (this is a very much “F*ck JK Rowling” page, but those little British guys have my childhood by the throat), light pumpkin-scented candles, and go to King’s games and Hollywood Horror Nights.

And this time around, she gets to do all those things as an Adult. WITH a license.

Upgrade!

Or, downgrade, considering that all these super-cool, uber-adult things are now self-funded.

But let’s not consider my ever-eroding savings account right now. It’s a real bummer.

Let’s instead discuss what all the sweet life-savings money bought!

First and foremost, my super late car registration and its A La Carte requirements. Incredibly irresponsible on my end, and a good laugh I’ll have in a couple years.

Hopefully.

Second, my trip to Seattle in November.

Thanks to the over-delayed-and-eventually-canceled return flight home from the last time I was in Seattle, the flight tickets, though still heartbreakingly expensive, were not as life-shattering as expected, and I got a pretty good deal on a hotel! The only other expenses I’ll have to worry about are public transport, food, and potentially adorable merch from the Lizzo concert I’m traveling all the way over there to see.

Could I have bought a ticket for her concert in Los Angeles, saved on hotels and flights and the trouble of Seattle’s torrential November rains, and just go home to my own free, soft bed afterward?

Yeah.

But where’s all the fun in that?

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I have a LOT of exciting stuff coming up, and I’m hoping that I’ll finally find some self-discipline and make the time to share it. I’ve always been horrible at personal, private diaries. But I exceed at oversharing on multiple media platforms across the internet, apparently.

And I want to be able to remember every single minute of all this.

Paying all these bucks, and getting so very little bang for them.

And eventually (hopefully), getting the bucks and bang back in return.

And then some.