Hangers, Crashes, and Letting Go

Stephanie Arapian is on set in New York living her dream acting job — flying back and forth from LA, surrounded by real professionals, finally feeling like she's exactly where she's supposed to be. And then her phone buzzes. A guest wants to know where the hangers are.

A week later she's waking up at 3am to news that someone drove into one of her rental properties. Between takes. Before call time. It became very clear, very fast, that something had to go.

This is the story of the moment she knew.

00:00 Intro
00:32 On Set in New York
01:23 The Hangers Text
02:17 The 3AM Crash
04:44 The Decision
05:26 Until Next Time

Transcript

0:01

Hello, I'm Stephanie Arapian and this is The Centered Creator Podcast. I tell stories from my creative life, my travels, my many questionable decisions, and what I've learned about being human along the way. This one starts on a TV set in New York and ends with a very chill guest, a crashed car, and a decision I'd been avoiding for way too long. Okay, so I'm on set in New York, living my dream, and I get a text about hangers. I was running a business and I am living my dream life. I book a job, I live in Los Angeles that's taking me out to New York and I'm filming every week back and forth for five, six weeks in a row. And this is my first big booking and I'm surrounded by like. At the time, it felt like I was surrounded by real professionals, and I am a professional, but there's a certain level that you keep leveling up to. And this was a new level for me, let's say that. I was reaching my new level of acting and I was on set. And I'm in this role and I'm surrounded by so many amazing professionals who are working in their craft. And I am on camera and I'm in between takes and I'm answering my phone and my guest has a question about hangers. This sounds a little absurd, which it was. I, it was reasonable for them. They were like, where are the hangers in our rental? And I'm sitting there trying to go between takes and figure out Amazon deliver them fast enough, or can I go ahead and get into Walmart delivery? Or what do I need to do to get those hangers to them? Because the previous guests took the hangers and didn't realize, and my cleaners didn't turn over to do this thing. And that just felt like, why am I doing this? What? What? I am living my best life and leveling up and living the dream despite like some crazy exhaustion that I was happening, especially in that first day. This is not the experience I want for myself. And something about that just really scratched an itch. And a week later I am back in New York, getting ready to go on set. I'm waking up at six in the morning. My call time is like six thirty to make it to the pickup point, to get taken to set, and my business is still back in Los Angeles time. So it's 3:00 AM when I get up and I realize that I've only missed a text message five minutes ago, their time, I'm like, oh my God, somebody's texting me at three o'clock in the morning. Something's wrong. What's wrong? And it turns out that my guest was letting me know, Hey. Just so you know, I got woken up by a really loud noise. I was coming home late, so I was still kind of awake, but I woke up and I found that somebody had driven into the property. It's okay now, but I just wanted to let you know. I am sitting there panicking, or not panicking. I'm sitting there trying to do damage control and I've just woken up to this and I have to figure out how to get breakfast, my workout and everything in before I get to set, and I've got 40 minutes to get it done. And so I'm responding to him and ask, are you okay? Do I need to call the cops? Who do I need to notify? What's going on? He's like, oh, no, it's fine. I called the cops, California Highway Patrol has already gotten an incident report. Here's the number, and I'm like, great. Can you take some photos? Are you okay to stay in the house? I would totally understand if you wanna move. But he is like, oh no. Every day above ground is a good day. Like I aspire to that level of zen. After having that kind of thing happen to me, I would be like, wow, you're good. Aspirations goals, So he was actually really chill and very cool and I'm so grateful. I had some really awesome guests who have been so copacetic, who have been so cool and really great to work with. And so he gave me some more photos so I understood what had happened. And as it turns out, this is a corner property. There was a brick wall retaining wall and there is a public city lamppost. And this person, somebody who is either super tired or potentially intoxicated, had driven and plowed right into the retaining wall and taken out the city light pole. So there was no actual structured structural damage to the house. I could see why he would be totally fine to stay. I contacted the owner of the property, they got onto the city to know that the light got taken out to fix it. But I was dealing with that literally all morning, trying to continue with my routine to make sure that I was ready to bring my best to set, that I could be the actor that I wanted to be on set during all that crazy chaos of something that's really happening in my life. And it just showed me how much I needed to let that business go, that it was gonna keep distracting and pulling away my energy from what I really wanted to grow. So yeah, between hangers and a car, plowing into my property, it became very clear that I needed to let go of the business. ​Until next time, take care.