Cassandra "Caz" Stark

It’s done. The full series bible, treatment, beat sheet, and application for the Episodic TV Series Screenwriting program… is done. Now, to complete writing, rewriting, rewriting again, and otherwise improving the pilot titled There’s No Place Like No Home for the 8-week comprehensive pilot class I want to take in April.

Before this rather drastic pivot in my life and creative space, I was happily studying for photography, filters, and the art of creating and releasing an international-friendly cookbook either through physical publication, as an ebook, or as an app. For Christmas I received a lighting kit I needed to get started. And for my birthday, I bought myself a collection of backgrounds and shopped second-hand stores for decorative dishes. I had a notebook and was well on my way to drawing out over two dozen countries with 2-3 dishes, a drink pairing recipe, and a full-page history of the relevance of the meals to the culture.

Needless to say, I was well on my way and also deep into accepting that at the very least, this would be a year long project.

Knowing the time it would take and then threat of losing my own kitchen to pending renovations, I also began rapidly studying psychology, meditation, eastern philosophy, business, and celebrity personas for a motivational book series I have been planning to write. I wanted to be fully prepared with information and direction so I could draft the entire concept during NaNoWriMo 2020. I have to give myself due credit for thinking so far ahead.

A lot has happened since, starting with upending my creative filter and hitting the books hard to learn how to write episodic screenplays. I’ve read and studied more fervently than I have in over a decade, and what I’ve produced is likely the most polished, thought-over work of my life thus far. I am grateful for the experience, regardless of how it turns out for no other reason than I have practiced a presence in my confidence, a presence in my discipline, and a complete sense of presence in my ability to receives feedback without defense and with full consideration. Stark has been my tireless supporter in this, and I don’t imagine I could be at this point without his equal excitement and input.

While today isn’t the last day of this creativity, it is the return to a broader focus. It is a whole sense of gratitude for having the space in my life to discover this and focus on this, and the gratitude to know I can move forward with a new thought pattern and consideration of what balance will mean to me in my professional life.

Creativity is key.

However, this writing process has been unexpectedly deep and therapeutic. Stark and I have placed so much of ourselves into the work in a way that really allowed us to find a neutral space to admit so many things about ourselves, and celebrate our journey.

The concept of home has been a weird one for us in the last year and a half since returning to the United States. For starters, once you’ve been an expat – home is no longer an address you once lived or a radius around family members, it’s an entire country. Just stepping foot in Los Angeles on our layover, was home. We celebrated America instantaneously. While others were weary of the political climate, we remained somewhat silent in the understanding that it is like that everywhere. So we didn’t concern ourselves with country-wide drama, and instead, we were both mortified and thrilled by the country-wide availability of expectedly crappy, homey and glutinous foods. We reveled in it, and began eating immediately. To us, that’s all that really mattered at the time. It was the familiarity we seeked.

Like a frog beginning to wonder if the water is actually boiling, we experienced an unknown feeling of culture shock as we realized how much we didn’t belong in or relate to our former life, the life that was once so routine, or what our American life had become. One size does not fit all, as advertised. And while the American Dream felt more apparent and customizable than ever before, sensing our own emigration, we waited for the shoe to fall when we couldn’t find the one that fits.

All in all, even today, our actual and literal home is one of the least comfortable spots we’ve experienced in our new, yet returned life. We’ve experienced a great deal of emotion in realizing the layers of why we feel it isn’t ours anymore; it isn’t home. Are we rejecting it? Or is it rejecting us?

Either way, our previously praised routines have turned to flinging ourselves through the motions to find a balance between beloved familiarity and what we need now in our lives.

I hike much more often. It’s easier now.

We walk anywhere in an eight mile radius. Everything feels closer.

The cities are small and the buildings still seem gigantic inside.

The sense of waste still renders me guilty enough to have nightmares although I’ve somehow let go of the weight of responsibility I felt in being an American.

I tried to release myself of an unnecessary apathy and instead have would-be conversations with my mom who moved to the United States from Germany at 21 years old. I tried to hear what she would say, and I felt the awakening smack she’d give me to be grateful for my life. So, I moved on from that. But I’m still not “here” per se.

This has led Stark and I to a mostly nomadic nature since returning to the states. We’ve lived in over a dozen Airbnb and hotel rooms, not even bothering to return to our literal home until July of this last year – over a year from when we landed back on American soil.

I spent most of my last big career project, despite being in Utah, commuting from a hotel we were living in. I never felt sorry for myself. I never even felt it was worth mentioning. I didn’t think much about it except to immediately say, “Oh we aren’t here-here,” in response to anyone that made the mistake of introducing me with an added, “she’s back.”

I’m not.

I don’t know where I’m at.

I’m looking to land – putting all my feelers out to the universe to show me a sign. I’m kicking up dust in a previously loved and even more home-like New York City. We’re tentatively expecting possibilities in Dallas. We are purposefully making no specific decisions. Our careers will be our guide. The stars will continue to align in various directions and as they do, we will follow.

Until then, we try not to feel foreign in our own land. We go through the motions of what we might do or say in certain surroundings without falling prey to becoming our former selves. And we find ways to still grow.

All in all, life is an adventure and the only choices we consciously make is to leave it that way.