You Have Potential

When I moved to LA I went just a little, itty bitty, teensy tiny bit nuts.  

I’d come to LA from New York where I’d been working as a personal assistant and a freelance line producer. I was good! I was getting more and more work and I figured I could bring that success with me to LA.  

I was wrong. 

With all my contacts in New York still I was forced to network and I was useless at networking. I despised “putting myself out there”. One time, at a stand up comedy show, my friend introduced me to one of the comedians by saying “This is my amazing producer friend who is looking for work,” and I followed this up with “Gross.”

And so, aimless and jobless, I took to sitting in my bedroom at home looking at dogs on the kill list at shelters and crying. It was the strangest form of masochism I had ever stumbled upon, and it obviously was feeding directly into my depression. I would sob looking at these dogs hopeful and smiling faces and know that they would surely be euthanized. Until I saw the white corgi. 

This idiot was a solid 15 lbs overweight, he struggled to hold his heft on his tiny stumps for legs and grinned into the camera. 

I waved my phone at my husband, “LOOK AT HIM!” I sobbed. 

“We can’t get a dog,” he calmly replied. 

“You’re a monster!” I yelled, throwing myself onto the bed. 

My husband shrugged and returned to work and I went and rescued the dog. 

I was not doing okay. 

In truth I could not have a dog. It was not allowed in our lease and while I grew up with a corgi and love them, they are not great dogs if you want to walk, run, or hike long distances. I called my sister in Virginia, pleaded my case and begged her to adopt him. Thankfully, she agreed. 

I scheduled a trip out to visit for the following month. In the meantime I had to get the dog’s weight down so it could fit in an airplane bag. 

Having this dog, of course, did not solve my loneliness. And so, when I got a text from an old college friend, who I’ll call Olivia, asking to see if I wanted to meet up to hear about a new project, I was thrilled. 

I responded enthusiastically, “Hell yes.”

Olivia had always been the go-getter type. I figured it was a project she was trying to get off the ground, or maybe a show she was working on. I was stoked. 

I showed up at our agreed upon meeting spot, the walking path by Echo Lake. We’d planned on getting breakfast sandwiches at the little snack stand there and sitting on the grass to people watch. 

“Tell me about your project!” I said maybe a little too desperately, the fat white corgi tugging on his leash to get my friend’s sandwich. 

“Okay,” she said, “Well ever since I’ve met you I’ve felt like you are a talented, competent, hard-working person. You’re, like, such a rock-star.”

This was unnecessary, but I do like a compliment, “Oh do go on,” I said waving my hand. 

“It’s just that,” Olivia paused, and to my utter embarrassment, her eyes filled with tears, “I just feel like you have so much more potential than what you’re achieving and I hate to see that happening to you.”

I watched as fat tears rolled down her cheeks and I wondered if I should cry too so she wouldn’t feel bad. ‘Wow,’ thought a tiny narcissistic voice in my head, ‘I am pretty great. Crying in the park over breakfast sandwiches great.’

“And I wanted to see you, obviously, but I also want to tell you about this new endeavor I’ve been working on.”

I wasn’t anticipating an “endeavor.” 

“It’s a place, and it’s so wonderful, where you go and you focus on your goals, and they help you figure out your goals and then they make a plan for you to achieve them,” she grinned at me expectantly.

“Okaaaaaay,” I said, actually elongating the ‘A’, I wasn’t sure what reaction she was expecting from me, “What is it though?”

“Masters In Technology Training!” she said, “Or M.I.T.T.” 

I stared at her, waiting for more. She continued to grin at me as though she’d just handed me a treasure map. 

“Well, where is it?”

“My sessions have all been in a big convention center out by the airport,” she said. I should have stopped her there, “So the first training is only $700 and they work with your schedule, it’s at night and it’s life changing.”

“I don’t have $700 though,” I told her. 

“Can you borrow it? From your boyfriend maybe? Can you put it on a credit card?” 

“I mean, yeah I guess.”

“So I can sign you up?” she said, pulling out a slip of paper. 

“Well, I think I want to look up more info on it,” I said, pulling out my phone. The white corgi had grown disinterested in my personal development and had fallen asleep at my feet.  

My friend put a hand over my phone and pushed it down, “But I have all the info you need, you don’t need to look up anything.”

The red flags that had been waving around her head were now accompanied by blazing alarm bells.

She pressed on, “What questions do you have?”

‘I DUNNO, SOUNDS LIKE A CULT,’ I wanted to scream but instead said, “Well, it just sounds too good to be true, like you’re promising me it will change my life but not really in any specific way. So, it’s confusing.”

She rolled her eyes jovially, “Well, so I can’t tell you specifically what you do there. You question your beliefs, it’s super uncomfortable but it’s like catharsis when you leave.”

This instilled no additional confidence but I was getting more uncomfortable, “Huh.”

My friend handed me the slip of paper, “You will not regret it. Just fill this out and they’ll contact you.”

I looked at the paper which had lines for me to fill out my name, email address, phone number, and finally my credit card number. 

“But I’m not sure I want to do it yet,” I said. 

“That’s okay! They won’t charge you yet, they will call you and chat with you about the whole thing. Don’t worry, you’ll want to do it once you’ve talked to them,” she said pressing a pen into my hand. 

At this point, more than anything, I wanted to go home, back to my bed where I could cuddle the corgi and peruse doomed dogs online. All the hope and promise the day once had evaporating before my eyes.

And so I caved. I put down my name, email, and phone number. I pulled out my credit card and began to jot it down, but then my logical brain who rarely bothers to lumber out of what cave it lives in piped in and said, “What the fuck are you doing. Stop that.” 

“I don’t know about this,” I said, “The credit card thing is weird.”

“You have to stop preventing your own success,” said Olivia, “Stop hindering yourself.”

She’s right, I am hindering myself, I thought. I lifted the pen again and wrote down a fake credit card number. 

I ended our meet up as quickly as I could. We made vague promises to see each other again soon so I could tell her all about my seminar. I raced to my car, lifted the fat white corgi into the back, and sped home.

I pulled out my computer and entered the words “Masters In Technology Training” into Google. 

It was a cult. 

Masters in Technology Training was an offshoot of Lifespring, a cultish organization which ran into controversy in the 80s when seminar attendees died, or experienced psychotic breaks due to adverse reactions during their trainings.

M.I.T.T. was developed by a former Lifespring devotee, a Dutch hairdresser, in Los Angeles. I’d had friends in New York involved in the East Coast equivalent, Landmark and had tried to get me involved there, but lack of funds had made it a non-issue. 

I wondered how much she had been instructed to do. To not allow me to use my phone to do research, forcing me to write my info down, crying because she was so worried about my potential. 

I immediately received an email from someone at M.I.T.T. My credit card wasn’t going through. They needed the correct number. I ignored them. 

My friend messaged me, “Hey, they said the credit card number isn’t right, can you call them and give them the correct number?”

“Oh, weird,” I responded before putting my phone away. 

I leashed up the fat white corgi for another dawdling walk. Still uncertain about my future. But, at least, I didn’t get sucked into a cult.