Exactly four years ago I visited New York City for the first time. I had just quit on my soul-draining engineering program (a four year long endeavor in itself), and decided to follow my dreams – a career in entertainment. After experiencing New York, I wanted to do it there. I had created my blog website over a year earlier, but barely touched it (RIP Gibberrishi – a great pun that was just too confusing to explain in person). I was already long in the tooth at 22 years old (I know, but it’s how I felt at the time) and trying to reverse the course of my life. So I got to work.

The next 2 years served me straight L’s. I was tearing through my school’s journalism curriculum as fast as possible to escape with a degree, and not getting any run from jobs or internships. I’m talking about over 150 applications without a single call back, to the point where I almost had to defer graduation. Did I forget to mention the global pandemic? Since nobody was giving me a shot, I began filling the empty space on my resume by making my own stuff. The first such project literally came to me in a dream – in it, I was hosting an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix show Patriot Act about North Carolina’s 9^th District election fraud (Super normal dream to have). Not knowing anyone in the production space, I recruited a few family members, and our web series Fakeriot Act was born. I’m proud of what we created, but it was undeniably amateur. Despite that, the Patriot Act twitter account actually reposted our first episode! It was just the validation I needed to keep going.

Over the course of those 2 years, I made anything and everything. News packages, interviews, unofficial commercials and movie trailers, music videos, screenplays, podcasts, comedy shorts… just shoveling content into the void, focusing on the process, and (Hopefully) getting better every time around. Eventually, I caught a break. Shout out to Rydholm Projects for giving me my first look (And more importantly, my first paycheck) in the industry. Seeing what everyone is up to now, I couldn’t be more proud of our intern class.

In 2021 I kept grinding, scraping together the meagre production jobs I could find in central Ohio and driving Doordash to pay my bills, while still working on personal projects. This is where I thank my circle for keeping me sane while I was locked in my 240sqft studio apartment, providing unwavering faith in my ability to make it through, and in many instances doing these projects with me.

My lease was up that July, and I strongly considered taking my remaining savings and pulling the trigger on New York without a job. I instead left Ohio to move in with two of my cousins in… Cherry Hill, New Jersey? The timing was perfect – Ashwin had just graduated college, and Prashant was in graduate school in the area. The freelance opportunities in nearby Philadelphia became steady enough that I could quit my warehouse job at UPS (Okay fine. I got fired from my warehouse job at UPS). I worked on mostly reality TV shows across Discovery, HGTV, CNBC, History, Animal Planet, etc. but the highlight was PA’ing on my first short film, “Swerve”.

Through it all, I still kept pushing on the personal projects. We rebooted and rebranded Fakeriot Act as The Riot Act (Fakeriot was another great pun I just couldn’t explain quickly in person – lesson learned on branding). I began making music again for the first time since high school, releasing a single, our EP, and some music videos. Living with Prashant and Ashwin in New Jersey spawned a collection of memories I will cherish forever. And then, less than a year later, that chapter closed. Ashwin moved out to LA to start his entertainment career. Prashant moved to Paris on a prestigious grant program. And I finally punched my ticket to New York.

All in all, these past 4 years added up to a TV job at a “Big 3” network in New York City. I love the people I work with, and can see the results of my labor broadcast to the world every day. We won a fucking Emmy last month! So is it all gravy now? Are my dues paid? Have I made it? Not even close. Working 6 day weeks, I’ve clocked in as early as 3AM and out as late as 1AM, had 17 hour workdays, and regularly commuted back to Jersey to stack boxes of film in the warehouse all day (How you like them apples UPS!). I’ve only just reached the entry level of a long, long climb towards my ultimate goals. So… who cares? What inspired me to write all this out today?

I realized I now work in this building from the picture I took on my first trip to the city. Four years to the day from when I took it, I met Hasan Minhaj in that very building and got to tell him about the web series I dreamt up as a result of his show. Timing is everything.

– Rishi R.