We begin, today, where it all began. With “Olive.”
Nicknames are polarizing. Some find them patronizing, others charming. I’m a validation-seeking word-lover, so naturally fall into the latter camp. CALL ME SOMETHING SPECIAL.
In 2014, all I wanted was a nickname. I’d just started a job at a talent agency in Los Angeles, California. This was my first post-college gig, and I was terrified. Woefully unprepared, I spent the first couple of months developing a stomach ulcer and trying to learn how to record the perfect voicemail.
I also had very few friends. This was kind of my own fault. I wasn’t trying to make friends, fearing I would fail and be proven unlikable. So I spent a lot of time alone or dating. More on that in a future post.
Part of the problem was I was out of practice. You might relate to this: I’d always been privileged with “spillover” friends. From each formative experience a trickle of pals followed: elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college. I’d never lived anywhere but Washington state, and here I was, in Hollywood, baby! A fast-moving industry with few discernible ties to my old life. I could be anyone! I chose to remain pretty much the same.
Which is probably a good thing, in hindsight. I didn’t know how to be anyone but myself, meaning that, over time, the other assistant who I worked with, Kate, really got to know me. I was the girl who carried a wide-toothed comb with her everywhere she went, who brought gin to the bar in a flask to save money, and who doodled rather than attending to paperwork.
Kate was an authentic person, too, and because of that, we were drawn to each other. She drank a plain glass of milk every day like an absolute serial killer, played flag football on the weekends, and calmly put out fires all day long in simple, no-nonsense ballet flats. We were bonded by the rigors of our job— the long hours and truly mind-boggling requests from our boss. The Celebrity Sightings and subsequent Celebrity-Falls-From-Grace. Every Friday, we split a breakfast burrito.
Kate started calling me Olive.
I realize now, to speak about nicknames is actually to speak about friendship. People I don’t know call me Olive all of the time, because they mistakenly think that’s my real name. Every time it happens my brain skips a beat. I hear “Olive” and immediately assume “this person knows about my Shaved Arms phase” (the phase in which I shaved my arms). Or, more simply, “this person KNOWS me.” Then, I self-correct. They don’t know me yet. Nicknames have an earned quality.
A few years later, in 2016, I was super depressed. So was everyone, I think. The world was more fraught than ever, I wasn’t sure if any of the stuff I was working for– my romantic relationship, my job– were actually what I wanted. Kate and I met at a vine-covered restaurant equidistant from our apartments. She saw how bad I was, and comforted me. She was going through some tough shit, too. We openly wept in the broad daylight over yet another split breakfast burrito. Friendship.
Kate encouraged me to share my drawings. “All those doodles you made when you were supposed to be scanning client money?…put them online.”
So, I did. I gathered up what I’d drawn and just threw it all on Instagram. My other friend, Shelby, who lived in San Francisco at the time, and to whom I would often email those drawings, helped me come up with the name for the account– Drawing Olive.
Eventually, I quit my job and started doing illustration and writing full time. I slowly emerged from the dark hole into a brighter place. I owe it all to the people who chose to know me and believe in me.
Some folks come into this world and don’t require a push. They hit the ground running, lock eyes on the target, and never look back. That’s not me. I really, really need people.
Kate started Olive, and everyone I’ve met through her knows me that way, too. It’s a new kind of “spillover.” One that makes me really happy. You can’t give yourself a nickname, much like you can’t always see the things your friends see in you.
This is so wonderful!