Road Not Taken

I don’t want to be an artist. I just want to be happy. Maybe I can be both.

I had a really important realization last night. My 1989 and 1999-self would have been really proud to be my 2009-self.  Which means I’m doing the right things even if I don’t always feel successful.  It seems I have always wanted to be 10 years ahead of myself without being able to enjoy where I am now.  But, no matter what happens today – I’ll be happy with how it turns out.

A Little Man with Sunshine in his Pocket

I would like to believe that if I try hard enough I can still talk with my grampa.  And even if logic tells me this cannot be so – I know what he might say anyway.

When he felt like it he could get anyone to smile and make anyone feel better.  I remember a time when I was about 7 or 8 and we went to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant together just the two of us.  The waitress seemed like she was having a really bad day.  My grandpa said to her right away (using her real name, which was written on her name tag), “Hey Sally, how are you doing today?”  She replied, “I’m fine.” (clearly not so…)  And he said, “Well Sally, you could have fooled me – looks like you might be having a rough day, but don’t worry my grandson and I won’t be too much trouble for ya — In fact, my little man over there carries a bit of sunshine in his pocket and if you ask him nicely I bet he’ll leave a little here for you on our way out. (- with a smile)”  She smiled back halfheartedly with a nod for his effort.  As we sat there and continued to interact with her my grandfather in the most natural way was able to change our waitresses’ whole attitude.  On our way out the waitress said to me, “Hey there little man you keep that sunshine in your pocket- someone else might need it soon- you guys have a good day and take care of that grandpa of yours.”

He wasn’t perfect, but he was the most capable person I’ve ever seen at making people feel better.  Most of the time my grampa was about 50% full of bullshit, but he was also 100% full of the truth.  And because of that combination  he was able to connect on a real human level to anyone, anywhere, anytime.  He was an artist of happy interactions.  And his work was beautiful.

I could use a little of his sunshine now.  Because lately I seem to be losing too much of my own.  It seems like as soon as I find the hole it is leaking out of – I find another one.  Maybe I just need a new pair of pants.

A Riddle

What is beyond infinity,
Smaller than the smallest thing ever,
The poor have it,
If you eat it you will die,
And if you don’t move your life forward – it will happen to you.

– Nothing.

What Does Failure Feel Like?

(About five years ago I wrote this in a journal.  Even though I have written on and off many times over the years about my experiences, at that point in my life, I rarely wrote about what I thought or felt about them.  When I wrote about my own life it was only as a log to serve as a kind memory tool for my future self.   This entry was a departure for me because it was one of the first times I had felt like a true failure and I needed to let it out.  I felt that the world had conspired against me.  I was really confused as to why and had no idea what to do next with my life.  I felt really lost and was crushed.  I was a talented, motivated, creative, college-educated person who had fallen hard.)

Well, it’s been a month since I left Austin and Texas.  I have been putting off writing this entry for a while because I think, honestly, it was weighing heavier on my spirits then I would’ve liked to admit.  As I left Texas I was feeling good about my choice to move on and hopefully forward.  As I drove late into the night I was pulled over by a Texas state trooper because I had a tail light out and because I think he was racial profiling my car.  It was a 96 Lincoln Towncar with tinted windows and was really lowered because my suspension was out and everything I owned was in the car weighing it down. The police officer asked me a bunch of times if I was on drugs.  I wasn’t, but I was really tired and probably looked like it.

(As a funny side note, the reason I owned a 96 Lincoln Towncar in the first place was because the car I owned before that, a 94 Jeep Wrangler, (which I loved!) had literately broken in half a few months before that due to the fact that, without my knowledge, the frame had turned into Swiss cheese from rust during the years I lived in MN.  I actually took a 10-hour bus ride to pick up this car (long story about why) in a Mexican border town.  And then rollerbladed 5 miles from the bus stop, with little Mexican children watching me in amazement as I’m sure non of them had seen anything like that before, only to find this car with not one but four flat tires.  Insert foreshadowing here…)

This was a minor issue to start out my trip.  I continued to drive all night stopping to sleep at 5:00am at a truck stop in Kansas.  I woke up feeling good and hoped to make it all the way home in one more day.  A few hours later I got a flat tire.  Of course, I had no jack and only a tiny spare.  So, I waited for a fairly short amount of time and an old man with a strong Kansas accent helped me out.  Since I only had a temporary spare tire, I needed to get another one for the rest of my trip home.  After driving all around the small nameless Kansas town I was in I finally stopped at a Wal-Mart for a cheap new tire.  The tire guys were not in a hurry.  After about 6 or so hours from when I first got my flat I was back on the road.  However, 30 minutes later I got another flat tire – the front right tire.  Only this time things were worse, much worse.  Not only did I get a second flat tire (of course I didn’t get another spare tire or a jack, thinking who gets two flat tires in one day. right?).  But, my car destroyed itself.  When the tire blew-out the tread came off and ripped the wheel-well out to the side of the car.  Along with the wheel-well came all of the electrical wiring, the motherboard, and all of the fuses for the car.  When this happened the car went dead and I skidded off to the side of the road.  I was screwed.

I sat on the top of my car until I was picked up by a Latino guy who had just quit his job and seemed like he needed to tell someone about it.  I went to a gas station and called a tow-truck driver who picked up my car and took it to the last open service station in the town.  The mechanic took one look at it and laughed.  He said it could take a week or so just to find all the parts and would probably cost more than a grand to fix it.  Having no money, no job, nowhere to stay in Kansas, I had no choice but to figure out a way to get rid of it.  In the end, I sold it to the lady who owned the service station for 250 bucks even though it was worth close to $3,000 only a couple hours beforehand.  And it had one new tire on it as well…

That night I stayed in a dingy hotel nearby.  I was extremely hungry and had exactly one twenty-dollar bill left to my person.  I walked a few blocks from the hotel to an equally dingy looking all night diner.  I ordered whatever the five-dollar special breakfast was and waited in pain for my food.  While I was waiting for my take-out I was sitting fairly close to the register listening to the conversation between the waitress who took my order and another woman who was clearly a local patron.  The waitress sounded like death, sick with some sort of major chest cold, and her friend was asking her why she didn’t stay home from work.  The waitress told her that she had to work because she was out of money due to some random financial hit along the lines of my car explosion and because her kids needed new school supplies, she was taking care of her ill father, etc. etc. – A completely horrible-sounding story.  While I was sitting there I couldn’t help but think, right there in that exact moment – at my lowest point, I was with someone else who had it worse.

When my food was finally ready the waitress gave me the bill for five-bucks and change.  I handed her the twenty, smiled, and walked out without her realizing that I had just overheard her conversation with her friend.  I figured I was already screwed so I would rather give her my very last fifteen dollars because at least it would give me something to feel good about.  Plus, I figured it had to be worth some kind of karma points and I really do believe good deeds come back to you in  time.

In the morning I went to the local courthouse to transfer the title and the woman at the service station gave me the money, which I turned around and used to pay for the rental car I needed to get home.  I transferred all my stuff into the rental and took off for home.  At least it was a nice fall day as I was leaving Newton, Kansas.  I drove for 13 hours and pulled into my parent’s house around 11:00pm.

On the bright side I can say that everyone who helped me out in KS was very nice and the rest of my drive home was problem-free.  But, the fatality of my car sort of represented the deeper sense of failure my whole Texas experience has felt like for me.  In a way, it was like one last kick in the nuts from Texas.  For the year and a half that I lived there is was a process of taking one step forward and three steps back over an over again, until it was apparent I needed to leave.

I didn’t really show any emotional reaction to my situation, I didn’t get really upset, or cry, or freak out, but I was very bummed.  Although, I didn’t really react to my trip home, my spirit was totally and completely broken.  I was literally penniless, had built up debt for the first time in my life from the many other car related problems I had experienced over the last year, I hadn’t accomplished what I set out to do in Austin, and I was heading home only a couple weeks before winter.  And I hate winter.

It has taken me a couple weeks to start to move forward again, and I must admit I don’t think I’m totally over how stuck I feel being back in MN.  I don’t want to see my friends, because I have to explain to them why I’m back.  My feeling of failure even haunts me in my sleep.  I have had many strange dreams that repeatedly involve falling trees.  I looked into the meaning behind this and simply put it means you feel like you are heading in the wrong direction, or that your life is a lowly mess.  Yep, that about sums up my thoughts on that.

(After I got home I lived in my parent’s basement.  I worked outside most of that winter at a Zoo in the maintenance department taking apart children’s amusement park rides with freezing tools.  And my transportation back and forth to work was via one of my dad’s extra utility work vans.  I didn’t get my own car again until a friend of mine basically gave me his old pizza delivery car the next spring.  Before winter ended I got a corporate sales job halfway related to my college degree.  But, it really took me almost 2 years to get back on my feet again.)