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  Then the meeting would end, and I’d take my overstuffed backpack (I still hadn’t broken my New York City habit of traveling with everything I could possibly need at any possible moment) and either wait for the bus or drive my friend Erica’s car back to where I was staying, depending on the day. Entertainment!Hannah wasn’t glamorous, really. Except for the fancy lunches. People seemed very interested in meeting me over meals, and that really rocked.

  But above all else what really got me down about LA was the city’s lack of walkability. That had a real effect on my mental health. I missed walking around the city observing lives outside my own. Long story short, I missed New York.

  APRIL/MAY 2012

  I will have a deeper and personal relationship with my life. I will not have a casual fling with my life. I need to work for a purpose greater than myself. I will find peace in that. I want to contribute to the world around me. Casual debauchery is not fulfilling. I want to send good messages and meanings along the way. The journey is about spreading love and understanding. Not using each other. Not distraction. Tools for presence in life. I want to bond with like-minded people who echo my appreciation and awareness for them. It’s hard making friends when everyone sees you as something useful to them. I want partners, not products. I’m just protective. I don’t think I work well in groups. This is all so weird. It’s my name and my life . . . but I’m selling it? Is that what I’m doing? I hope that’s not what I’m doing. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  In 2012 I was navigating ambition and isolation.

  I’d always had a close group of friends growing up. Emotional support, financial support, you name it, we were there for each other. But I had a cardinal rule about group projects: I didn’t do them. I don’t work well in groups because I’m insecure about my own abilities and I don’t want to drag anybody down. I had always kept friendship and work separate, and it was all good.

  Then I arrived in Los Angeles, a town that functions on nepotism: to survive, you had to believe that your ideas were better than everyone else’s ideas, and you had to rely on an inner circle of people who could help you make things happen. But I didn’t have an inner circle in LA yet, and the people around me were encouraging me to change my ideas to fit into theirs. Not to mention the constant pressure to “strike while the iron is hot”4 because time was running out and opportunities were fleeting. It was being hammered into my head from all sides that I had one chance to turn my small screens into a bigger project, which felt to me like my one chance to make a big mistake. I was being told that my online success with My Drunk Kitchen was a fluke and that if I didn’t move on it NOW I was a failure. And I believed it.

  (Additionally, LA was super hot. Which I hate. Bleh.)

  All I wanted was time and space, a private learning curve to make mistakes and process them. However, it didn’t feel as though that was an option. I had moved out to LA and taken another big risk, and who was I to ruminate about it? But I couldn’t help myself. When I get scared, my instincts aren’t fight or flight; I just want to lie on the floor and stare up at the ceiling.

  Fortunately in those foggy months I was blessed to be living with some really good people. My roommates, Pearl and Hillary, were incredibly kind as I adjusted to LA life and asked questions that I realize now must have been incredibly amateur. We met through a producer I had dinner with who was moving out of her place and into one with her boyfriend. The apartment had three bedrooms, and I moved into the one she had recently vacated. They introduced me to their group of friends, who had all met at Emerson College, a talented group with a passion for media and experience in the realities of “the biz.” I often felt sort of embarrassed to be getting all these meetings and all this attention for my channel when I had no idea what I was doing and they were all working so hard. I felt as though I didn’t deserve any of it. I was carrying around a lot of shame about the value of my work, especially in a space where there were so many deserving stories that should be shared.5

  Outside of that group, trying to meet people was tough. I found myself being scoffed at across tables in bars by independent filmmakers who would lean in close to my face and ask in a slow, drunken slur why the Internet was ruining art. I wanted to reply, “I’m not trying to ruin art! I’m trying to build a small business.” But instead I would just sip my drink and slink away. Slink. Drink. Repeat. That was 2012 for me.

  Things started to get a little better when fellow up-and-coming Internet kid Grace Helbig moved to LA. We had met in New York, and I had seen her do improv. It was awesome. She rocked. And she was one of the hardest-working people I had ever met. She came from a traditional entertainment background so she understood how to straddle the two worlds of old and new media. She helped me to deal with my disillusionment about the entertainment industry. She explained to me how things worked in a way that didn’t make me feel inadequate.

  Professional life aside, I was still processing personal life as well, trying to shake off the last of my latent homophobic tensions. I actually remember a lesbian asking me at some point that year, “Oh no, you’re not one of those self-hating gays, are you?” And it stung because . . . well, I totally was.

  So by the end of 2012, I was exhausted, depleted, and desperate to leave Hollywood to regain a sense of who I was. Maybe I could still get a real job back in New York. There weren’t that many videos of me drunk on the Internet. I could get a job at Google! Or work in social media! I loved apps and tech stuff . . . that could be a nice life.

  But when I thought about giving up on YouTube, I knew I would miss my connection with my 400K subscriber community. A connection that had formed for almost two years. When I first started making videos, I got a public PO box and would periodically get letters from people who felt I was someone they could open up to, or who just wanted to put some thoughts down on paper and send them my way. I would write back to everyone and seal it with a cute little H-shaped wax stamp, thanking them for watching and offering my own thoughts and advice if they asked me for it. It all felt very manageable and small and safe. However, the more discouraged I got about my time in LA, the less I felt able to reply. How could I offer those people guidance on their lives when I so clearly didn’t know what I was doing with my own?

  Not only that . . . but these people thought they knew me, but none of them knew that I was gay. And was that something I was hiding? I couldn’t be sure.

  Earlier that year, Anderson Cooper came out. It was a big deal. Everybody talked about it for months and months. People questioned why he had stayed in the closet for so long and frankly . . . I kind of felt bad for him. I didn’t think it was something that people had the right to judge or question. At the same time, as a silent member of the LGBT+ community, I felt connected to him in a way I hadn’t before. And I wondered if I was denying myself that same connection.

  So before leaving the public eye completely, I wanted to make something to make sure I moved past that “self-hating gay” phase. I wanted to be out and proud. So I posted a coming-out video on YouTube. Nine unedited minutes of me awkwardly trying to condense my journey into video form.

  The influx of support and compassion from my community was unbelievably re-invigorating.6 I felt encouraged and inspired and energized and free. It didn’t matter what the people of the city of Los Angeles believed about my career choices or my mistakes or even my triumphs. What mattered was that I was sharing a version of myself that was authentic, making entertainment for a group of people that understood me. Feeling like we understood each other. They were my company in the Kitchen in the House Party of Life. They were the ones I was cooking for.

  After that coming-out video I was able to finally sell that cookbook I’d been dreaming of and I had more confidence about my sense of purpose and accountability. I decided to launch a crowdfunded tour across the country to meet the people who’d made my journey possible. A tour that launched at $50K but eventually received $220K of support. A tour that was originally slated for ten cities but g
rew into twenty-two. A tour that actually left me a little bit in the red financially but rich beyond my wildest dreams emotionally.

  My roommate Pearl was the one who made it happen. Through Pearl’s diligence and hard work we were able to run a campaign and launch a tour that would have three elements in each city where we stopped: an episode of My Drunk Kitchen shot in the home of someone who’d donated; an episode of Hello, Harto!, a mockumentary style show documenting our attempts to make a show on the road; and a “live event.”

  The “live event” was the thing we couldn’t quite get a grip on. Until a conversation that went something like this:

  HANNAH: “We should do something nice at meetups. Like a donation drive.”

  PEARL: “Why don’t we host the meetups at food banks?”

  HANNAH: “OH, MY GOD, AND WE CAN ALL VOLUNTEER TOGETHER!”

  PEARL: “THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! A WAY OF GIVING BACK TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY!!”

  HANNAH: “IT WILL FEEL SO GOOD FOR THE SOUL!!!!”

  Then I’m pretty sure we high-fived and hugged a bunch.

  So the tour began, and not only did we film an episode of Kitchen and an episode of Hello, Harto! in each city, but we also hosted events at local food banks, encouraging people to join us for three to four hours of volunteering. We called this piece of the tour “Have a Hart Day”!

  Visiting food banks while on the road gave us a bird’s-eye view of the different food resources available in each of the twenty-two cities. For instance, Second Harvest Food Bank in Oregon makes its own almond butter for distribution. Whereas at the food bank in Detroit, volunteers spent the day chipping frozen meat out of giant blocks of ice. It was a fascinating (and sometimes devastating) view of America. Or rather, a view of the many different “Americas” that exist in our shared land.

  The tour was both exhausting and exhilarating. We hit high-highs (Board & Brew, I’m lookin’ at you!) and low-lows (Toronto, I know I had a fever and flu and should forgive myself, but I will forever be sorry that I called you Portland), and it was worth every moment. We7 traveled the country in an RV and all worked ourselves into the ground. I got to meet and hug so many cool and impressive people, from a low-income defense lawyer helping survivors of domestic violence to SparkFun, a company dedicated to making at-home electronics projects possible, to a woman working with special-needs adolescents who was hurled across the room (she was okay!) by one of her clients to a teenager who was struggling to overcome self-harm and taking the steps to get there. Old people, young people, LGBTQA+++++ people, straight people, all sorts of people came out to volunteer with us. It was sweaty work, and sometimes I would be tired, but by the end of the day I was always restored by the positivity of those around me.

  And the best part? Even after the tour ended, “Have a Hart Day” kept going strong. Today we even have membership cards!

  At this point, there have been “Have a Hart Day” volunteer events in fifteen different countries: Australia, Singapore, Canada, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Brazil, England, Wales, Netherlands, Sweden, Malaysia, Philippines, Scotland, and in cities across the United States! Shout out to all our awestome City Captains!8

  I’m so proud of “Have a Hart Day” and what it accomplishes. I love seeing the kinship that forms between volunteers and the relief that is found in spending a day thinking of things other than yourself. Sometimes it’s the only thing that comforts me on dark days when my brain is in a downward spiral of negativity. What makes me especially happy is that it’s not something I did. It’s something we did. It’s the biggest group project I’ve ever participated in, and I couldn’t be happier.

  When I used to think back on 2012, and picture my confused, sweaty self trying to figure things out in LA, I would view it as a failed year. But failure and success are not so simply defined. That year may have been a failure in terms of tangible career growth, but the self-knowledge and acceptance was the success. Every time I stood up for myself, that was a success. Every time I realized my limitations, that was a success. It wasn’t a year of external gain, but of internal growth.

  Now when I think about it, I realize that without the events of 2012, I would never have launched the tour in 2013.

  Milton says, “The mind can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.” I try remind myself daily that success and failure have less to do with actual results but rather how we choose to respond to the results. You can squander success and you can overcome failure. You can flourish or you can flounder. Sometimes it’s about choosing which feelings to fight and which feelings to follow.

  1 A “general” is a sit-down meeting with a producer or another form of creative exec that basically feels like going on a blind date over coffee during the day. It can be a pleasant enough way to spend an hour, but unless there’s a spark and the timing is right, there’s not much incentive to meet again. Then, if you ever see that person walking down the street, you both smile and try to remember where you met.

  2 I’ve always been a big believer in sharing ideas. The magic is not in the “what” of the idea, it’s in the “how.” Because honestly, no one can steal your ability to come up with new thoughts.

  3 A couple years later I sold that idea to Nerdist, which sold it to Legendary Entertainment, and we turned it into a modern reboot of Sid and Marty Krofft’s Electra Woman and Dyna Girl! It was great. Kicked-butt to make it. I mean, who doesn’t wanna be a superhero?

  4 I like to say “Make the iron hot by continually striking.”

  5 Spoiler alert: The Internet creates a space for that!! Hurray!!

  6 There is one e-mail I often reference when talking about what changed after the coming-out video. It came from a dad in Nebraska who told me that he and his family had watched videos on my channel not knowing that I was gay—and that they hadn’t approved of homosexuality in the past, but now I’d given them something to think about.

  7 Pearl as producer, our friend Sam as director, and Pearl’s boyfriend, Nick, as the driver.

  8 Check out have-a-hart-day.tumblr.com for more info.

  THAT SUMMER FEELING

  It’s 3 p.m. on a Sunday, and I’m sitting with my laptop in a café near my house. This is the first time I’ve left the house all day because today the fog is winning.

  The fog is what I call my depressive downswings. If you’re someone who also has “major depressive disorder,” you know what the fog can feel like. If you don’t, I’ll try to describe it below.

  Depression feels like:

  * A low hum in your head, just loud enough to make you aware of it but not loud enough for you to act out against it. It gets louder when you move toward things you normally enjoy (friends, family, coffee, work, movement) but don’t any longer. Which is why you then find yourself walking toward the couch and lying down to stare at the ceiling.

  * A lead fog that surrounds you, obscuring your vision only slightly but making every movement ten times harder. It’s at its thickest when you get back into bed in the middle of the day. You could reward yourself for getting up in the first place, but now that you’re back in bed you know you’ve failed, so why celebrate at all?

  * A wordless whisperer telling you that this feeling is the true feeling and that every other feeling you’ve had was only temporary. This is your lasting reality. Those moments you called happiness or peace were just distraction, but this is you at your most real. Don’t bother to fight against it, because you’re always fighting against it, and since you’re fighting against your own nature, you’ll never fully win.

  Depression is the evangelist for emptiness.

  For me, compassion and companionship are the enemies of depression, the best ways to fight it. Compassion for myself because I know I’m struggling. Companionship because I can’t fight it alone.

  I started taking my depression seriously earlier this year. As a result, I’m learning about things I can do to combat it, I’m also learning to identify my triggers. Loneliness feeds my downswings. That and the heat. For me th
e feeling of depression is sticky and sweltering. Like a hot summer air that makes it hard to breathe. That’s why long before I knew what depression was, I just called those low moods and moments “that summer feeling.”

  Summertime was the most dreaded time of the year for me as a kid. Like most children of single mothers, we were left home alone a lot. My earliest memories of being home alone start in the summer after first grade. But those early years were better because Naomi was around and she would dig holes with me in the backyard and we would take mud baths. Once when we were digging, we found a rusted antique toy race car. Mom said it was from the 1920s and it was true treasure. I wish I still had that race car. Those times playing together in the backyard are some of my happiest memories. We’d pretend that we were on “away missions” like the characters from Star Trek. Naomi was three years older and braver, and she would show me how to pick lemons and loquats off the trees to eat. Once we ate some lemons when they were still green (Naomi told me that green lemons were okay to eat because they were called “limes”) and had terrible diarrhea afterward. Still a happy memory though.

  Then Naomi got to the age of sleepovers and trips with friends’ families, and I was left to spend those long summer days in our house by myself, trying to get the TV antenna to pick up anything I could watch. Our TV was from a thrift store, and some of the buttons had fallen off the front (to be honest, I may have been the one who had broken them off), and so to channel surf I’d have to stick my finger through the slot to poke the small black disk that connected the wires to change the station. We only got two channels more often than not, 2 and 44, and I’d spend my time clicking through all forty-two channels of static to be sure that nothing had changed. I watched so much daytime television and so many reruns that I had memorized the character arcs and even the commercials.