Today we’d like to introduce you to ZarahBodhi.
ZarahBodhi, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am a first-generation college graduate and the youngest of four daughters. I graduated from the University of Florida College of Law in 2000 and finally became a member of the Florida bar in 2005. Both law school and the bar exam were extremely difficult for me and I questioned my passion in my first year of law school. After a difficult first year, including suffering from depression, I withdrew in my fourth semester.
Still, everyone was fascinated with my life–certainly, more than I– and I felt a sense of responsibility not to disappoint. I returned after a semester and finished only one semester late–still without passion for the competitive contentions of the legal profession, but for words–for the English language–for teaching, writing, sharing knowledge and being creative in all forms. I knew where I belonged in my heart, but my mind in its desire to fulfill expectations–had its own goals.
So after I failed the Florida Bar twice, I was done. I returned back to my roots–to the classroom teaching middle school language arts– where the job was challenging but my spirit was at peace. Still, even after all that, my mind won the battle– everybody’s expectations prevailed–and I returned to the Florida Bar to pass and became a prosecutor in 2005. Having only made an entry-level salary for over three years there, I returned back to my first love and became an Assistant Professor at Miami Dade College in 2008. I liked it so much that I could have stayed there even until now. But, my legal career was young and everyone was wondering and some even blatantly asking–” How long are you going to work there–you’re an attorney?” So I resigned to give my legal career another chance. Certainly, being an attorney, I could always go work somewhere. I could certainly make money doing something.
That was in 2010. Ten years ago. I’ve witnessed the legal profession become oversaturated and watched the overall economy take a downturn. And I have not had a regular legal job since Miami Dade College in 2010 in either Florida or California (I’m actively licensed there too.) Having been on 100’s of interviews, I’ve become a professional job seeker, worked temporary low paying contract positions as needed for ten years “just to get by,” secured only two adjunct college teaching classes, tried to build a practice at least three times, worked at a law firm for nearly minimum wage (desperation is a beast), been on unemployment time and time again, and contemplated suicide more than once.
Two things saved me one dark early morning in late 2011. I lay on my air mattress in Hollywood, CA and had just put seven lorazepam in my mouth. I heard God’s soft voice warning me that my life this way could only be worse–especially if I didn’t succeed. It was true, with life, I had a chance. Without life, I had nothing. It had all caught up with me, for after only a few months of living in LA, the overwhelming life pressures, expectations, and failures that had engulfed Marcey Venoy Hall came crashing down that morning. I was done with life.
LA received me broken. Yet God touched that brokenness there. I found hope and turned to my words–my gift– to tell my story. And since, whenever I’ve felt hopeless, I found hope in my writing and believed in my ability to be creative. Because in LA, everybody was doing it. The city is one big creation. Several years later, from my dining room table in that same apartment, I wrote a three-part screenplay called “The Meditations of David.” In 2019, I wrote, created, directed, produced, executive produced and starred in “The David Rush Firm, Pilot–” a revised excerpt of the same–autobiographical satire about the life and firm of a billionaire entertainment attorney, musician, and mobster.
ZarahBodhi means “awakened.” It represents a re-invention of a life that suffocated in the world’s expectations, yet was awakened, anew, through love and the gift of creativity. Everything I do is because of the awakened spirit within me. So please, don’t call me “Marcey.”
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not. I am an actively licensed attorney in Florida and California and have been without steady work for ten years. Granted I have always questioned my passion for being an attorney, so my creative work, The David Rush Firm, is a result of the desperation and frustration that I feel with life, along with the frustration that I feel both with people’s perceptions that all attorneys are rich, and especially the frustration I feel with the legal profession. My creative work had literally saved my life as I was on the verge of a suicide attempt when I learned to believe in my ability to be creative because Los Angeles, where I had just moved, lived and breathed creativity.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
The David Rush Firm is my upcoming autobiographical satirical YouTube series about a billionaire entertainment lawyer, musician, and mobster. It is being produced, along with myself, by a non-profit company, I founded last year Slay Your Auditions dba Slayed Productions. I am the writer, creator, director, producer, executive producer, and cast member of the series for which the Pilot episode was filmed in September 2019 and is in the final stages of post-production at the moment.
The series is not just for entertainment. I am both elated and proud to have given a cast of nine talented actors and a crew of ten opportunities to further display their talents. I am also very proud to be able to share my story and encourage and entertain others through my work. Still, the show, in all its seriousness, has a comedic vein and is written to give its audience not only a laugh but an escape. It’s a contemporary presentation of attorneys and law firms. There are no stiff blue suits at this firm–but young, fresh, in your face, razor-sharp, dashing Millenials. It is a firm where women enjoy power while embracing their feminity and sexuality, and where the support staff brings just as much venom as those they support.
The David Rush Firm is about the life of a corrupt billionaire attorney, musician, and mobster David Adonis Rush, Esq. Mr. Rush lives in his criminal matrix of self-created, self-serving source code, bitcoins, and human experiments. While he has way too much of everything, in his mind, he never has enough of anything. Meanwhile, his bestie–the firm’s senior attorney co-founder–truly has barely enough of anything. It is autobiographical because it depticts the legal profession for what it truly is from the eyes of an actively licensed attorney–a world of the haves and the have nots.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I feel that being someone that others can trust is very important to my success. To this end, I believe that building authentic business relationships is essential. I am very loyal to my business relationships because I try to establish them on a foundation of mutual trust.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTkvbZ78FcX8rqKpc3nULQ
- Phone: 310 300 3118
- Email: thedavidrushfirm@gmail.com / zarahbodhi@gmail.com
- Instagram: @thedavidrushfirm / @zarahbodhi
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedavidrushfirm/?modal=admin_todo_tour /
https://www.facebook.com/ZarahBodhi/?modal=admin_todo_tour
Image Credit:
H2CreativeConcepts, Miami Photo Biz, and BigC Photos
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