One of Me Would Like To Know: Which Life Is Mine?

I miss writing for the FT, and was happy when I knew I'd get to see some of the people there at the fifth annual "Meet the FT" party.  It was a great set up -- at the top of 30 Rock.  As I walked in with my Jedi Master, James Altucher, we passed NBC Universal CEO, Jeffrey Zucker, coming out of the building.  I got a kick out of telling James that Zucker had eyed me as we passed because he knew who I was.  LOL

But the whole evening did feel rather surreal.  I mean, I already do TV for a living, and I've been dealing with the idea that I now live in four realities in which I have to somewhat keep track of what I've done where, when, and how.

That is, I have my real life.  My on TV life.  My off-air, but still wired up and being heard by dozens of people whom I don't know life.  And my writing life.

Is that four? I've lost track.  And I've lost track partly because taking a car service to go to a party for the FT at the top of 30 Rock, where I remember seeing my first NYC-celeb sighting as Billy Crystal came out of 30 Rock during my first week working at Oppenheimer back in 1996, was indeed rather surreal.

And I'm always still feeling a bit out of place in the city -- any city -- because I really did spend my whole life in the country, far far away from apartment buildings and subways and skyscrapers.  Further, it's a trip hanging with all these incredibly powerful, smart, and successful businesspeople and media people.  I turned to a friend of mine who used to run PR at FT (that's exactly my point, btw -- How and when did I end up in a place of calling someone who runs PR at FT a "friend" of mine!) and said, "How the heck have I gotten here?"

And that's just about the time one of me got asked, "How you doing on the show, Cody?"... and the writer/real-life Codies tried to answer for that TV life Cody in as honest a way as I could.  And now I see one of (all of???) the Codies' names in headlines all of the blogosphere.  And this writing life Cody now asks, "How the heck have I gotten here?!"

Cody Willard: "I Don't Have Any Idea What I'm Doing" Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | April 24, 2008 02:32 PM

And I'm now Catholic?  When did that happen:

Apr 24 2008 2:05PM EDT

FBN's Willard: 'I Love My Hairstylist to Death'

Maybe I've been thinking this line of thinking about my life (lives) lately because UNM had asked me to come home and talk about what it took for a naive, native New Mexico kid to survive a dozen years in NYC.  After the FT event, I'd been bumming that I'd forgotten my Flip Camera to record some of the night for the upcoming music video I'm making off the song I wrote as I wrote that speech for UNM about dreaming big and never letting go (name of song, coincidentally enough:  Dream Big and Never Let It Go)...

But seeing this headline and layout...pretty much made my week. There's even a picture of the Empire State Building in the background...I'm just gonna record some footage of the site itself and that Cody guy's name in the headline.

You do gotta love it, no?  Right, Cody?  Cody?  Any of you?

PS.  Had more than one strangely competitive conversations with execs and producers from that competing biz network at the event too. Is this actually my life?  I mean, these are actually my lives.  How the heck did I get here?