Spirit Sick: On Dreaming, Grief, and Los Angeles Weather

Yesterday, A Dream. Today, A Thunk.

Every other city I’ve lived in would kill for a day like this.

Clear sky. Perfect temperature. 1.5 miles of joy between me and my favorite coffee shop. That easy hum of LA — where even on a random Wednesday, the patios are full, the lattes are $8 (cause it’s made with their in-house vanilla syrup, obviously), and someone’s quietly revising a pilot in the corner. I was buzzing with gratitude.

A job description in hand. A follow-up interview on the calendar. My mom shared my writing with our 100-year-old family company and apparently they liked it. Someone from LA clicked on my “Work With Me” page for twenty whole minutes. Obsessed much? Friday jazz at LACMA plans confirmed. jazz hands for my jazz plans

I felt like a dreamer in a dreamer’s city.

I felt alive.

And then today — thunk.

I didn’t expect to wake up so low. I didn’t expect to be sitting in my tears. I didn’t expect the hollow ache of “just me in my apartment again.” But here I am. Me and my cat and the strange, shapeless weight of it all.

What am I supposed to focus on, if not my own emotions? There’s no inbox full of affirmations. No partner to crack jokes with in the kitchen. No team Slack. No big purpose looming. Just me and the silence and the distant sound of someone else’s life speeding by.

The Dreamer’s Dilemma

I dreamt again last night — not in pictures, really, but in feelings. That’s how they come lately. A flash of place, a trace of emotion, a single still image — and then the rest is sensation.

I was back at my old job. Oof.

Everyone running around, trying to make themselves important. And I just stood there.

Which is what I’ve been doing in my waking life, too.

Standing still.

Trying to get caught being incredible.

And I’m getting tired.

Because when the view out the window feels bleak, when the city of dreams shows you its shadow, it’s hard to keep believing. It breaks your spirit, if you’re paying attention.

Andrew Garfield once said, in an interview with A24, that when you cut the arts, people get soul sick. And I think we’re living in a nation that’s spirit sick.

We’ve forgotten what lights us up.

What connects us.

What jolts us into joy.

Spirit is a cartwheel on a hillside.

Spirit is ice cream melting just right on a hot day.

Spirit is a child laughing for no reason in a grocery store.

It’s a spark plug.

It’s electricity.

It’s connection.

And God, do we need connection.

We need our Spirit back.

The City That Let Me Scheme

Los Angeles is not a balanced city. But it is a fertile one.

It’s given me the freedom to dream in spirals, not straight lines.

To imagine a future where I become a child advocate on film sets — the next evolution after intimacy coordinators, protecting the hearts of young actors before anyone asks them to perform their pain.

To walk past a crumbling old theater and see it — reborn as a multi-use cultural salon. Velvet seats. Curated screenings. Bookstore by day, salon by night. A stage. A café. A place where wonder is designed into the architecture.

This city has never asked me to pick one dream.

It just asks how many I have.

And it doesn’t mind if they’re ridiculous.

But here’s the thing about a city built on desire:

When the desire stops moving, it can collapse in on itself.

When the City Turns Grey

You spend $20 on a smoothie and walk past someone in deep need of housing.

You sit in a coffee shop scheming your third space revolution, then step outside into a city where the word revolution feels either naïve or too late.

This is LA too.

The same hillsides that inspire cartwheels could be burning by October.

The same bougainvillea that spills over fences in July watches over tents on the freeway in January.

And sometimes, in moments of stillness, I feel ridiculous for dreaming.

Ridiculous for wanting more when others need so much.

Ridiculous for thinking I could buy a historic theater when I still Google “free Adobe Illustrator alternatives.”

But the point of this city — its paradox, its peril, its promise — is that it never told us the dream had to be reasonable. It only asked that we try.

Still, when the clouds roll in, even metaphorically, the crash hurts. LA doesn’t soften the lows. When it’s grey, it’s grey. When the dream stutters, the silence echoes. And when your sense of purpose flickers, it’s not just a bad day — it’s a full-body existential monologue whispered into a mirror.

And yet, despite it all…

What Spirit Might Still Mean

I stay.

Because something here still says yes.

Because even on the days I cry quietly into my tea, I know I’m crying through something, not just because of something.

Because Spirit hasn’t left — it’s just gone underground for a bit.

I keep imagining myself as a seed, getting ready to sprout into a new life any day now (eye twitch) — but maybe instead of me being buried, let’s let it be Spirit. Let’s plant a few Spirit seeds — alongside soul, discernment, creativity, imagination.

Let’s all give special attention to Spirit, especially.

The rest of those are more individual — Spirit is collective.

Spirit moves.

It shocks, it pulses, it whispers keep going.

It makes you show up to jazz at LACMA on a Friday night even when your job hunt is silent.

It lets your mom forward your essay to a 100-year-old company and say, “They were impressed.”

It lets you walk 1.5 miles through a city that makes no sense and still say, God, I love it here.

Spirit is not just a feeling — it’s the jolt that gets you back to the page.

Even after a “thunk” day.

Even after your old coworkers show up in a dream.

Even when your brilliant “Work With Me” page goes untouched for a week.

We are spirit-sick as a country.

But that only means we’re still wired to want Spirit back.

And maybe, just maybe, dreaming — even delusionally — is how we recover.

The Last Yes

So here I am. Still walking. Still dreaming. Still making eye contact with the city that confuses me, cracks me open, and reminds me to keep planting. Because even if Spirit’s gone underground, I trust it’ll rise again — maybe through me, maybe through you, maybe through all of us at once.

That’s the kind of revolution I still believe in.