Welcome to Miami

Five years ago I left South Florida on a quest to find my way in life.  I jumped from state to state climbing up the corporate ladder and looking for a place that felt like home.  When the states weren’t enough, I tried out the United Kingdom.  I poured more focus and determination into this five year stretch than I ever had in my entire life.  Friends and coworkers that didn’t have the same level of ambition, I left them behind.  My girl followed my silly ass all over god’s creation, a one woman support team trying her best to help me achieve my goals.  I put my head down, super-glued blinders and barreled forward with no regard for anything in my way.  Breaking through wall after wall, feeling the progress as I moved in what I thought was an upward direction, I never expected to have my legs yanked out from under me.  That was December of ’07 when my company pulled the plug on their European expansion.  Instead of the trailblazing hero—builder of companies and forger of empires—I was the bitter veteran, unable to adapt to being a normal cog in the corporate machinery.  I lasted roughly six more months there before jumping ship, too angry to integrate and too frustrated to change gears.  The place I landed was supposed to be the next step, but ended up being more of the same, constant travel and same kind of work yet lacking the momentum I had earlier.  In general I started to lose steam, the delayed effects of the road warrior lifestyle and a decade in a fast paced, high pressure industry finally got to me.

The move we made to California was an attempt to find the spark that went out after the UK.  Los Angeles ended up being a lot less substance than we wanted at twice the price we expected.  Times there were tough without purpose.  There was no brass ring after all the struggle, just survival.  With our lease nearing its end we started the familiar ritual of where to next?  The thought of another move to parts unknown filled me with dread as opposed to curiosity.  At that point I felt like Sisyphus, my wanderlust replaced by a grueling forced march to a destination always just over the horizon.  They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and that’s exactly what a move to a new city seemed to be.

Where to go now?

While still in CA, my girl and I had an in depth discussion on what we really wanted out of life.  Her always feeling one step behind me as I race to a new destination had reached its limit, not to mention my constant absence was now intolerable.  It was especially difficult when upon first moving to Los Angeles I was assigned to a 3 month engagement on the east coast, a mere week after we had arrived.  For some couples a telephone relationship worked perfectly, but we were of the rare breed who actually enjoyed each others company and were friends to boot.

My struggles with creativity and the rat race were already well documented.  Structure was something I had long forgone in my life due to upbringing and the false belief that it was a richer way of living.  Several decades into my hypothesis I’m seeing that the initial data was off the mark.  For anyone in a highly mobile position, the novelty of a jet set lifestyle wears off quickly.  Being unable to make dinner plans with friends because you’re unsure if you’ll be in the state, or even country, that week becomes frustrating after a while.  The tradeoff of new experiences just doesn’t cut it when you’re missing out on so much real life.

We were both frustrated and disappointed with how things had turned out.  My shiny brass ring, so alluring at the outset, became maddening.  Our gypsy wandering which was a roadmap to new experiences became tiresome and draining with its lack of foundation.  We thought about the last time we had been happy where we lived; the kind of living, the weather and the things we loved to do.  Unsurprisingly, all of our memories pointed to one place.

Back in the familiar

You don’t learn to appreciate something until you no longer have it.  When stuck in the morass that can be South Florida, you only dream of leaving it behind.  We left it for quite a while, convinced somewhere else would have that something we were looking for.  After 5 long, hard years I’ve come back to the home I didn’t know felt like home.  Stepping off the plane a solid wall of humidity raced to greet me, wrapping me in its loving embrace, smelling of suntan oil and sunshine.  The rays of sunlight energized me with the same vigor of a cortadita.  I had never truly understood the feeling of being on native soil—always the perpetual tourist during my travels—and now it filled me to the brim.  I finally knew why it was home.

I would love to say the return to South Florida was all laughter and rose petals, but it seems 2009 is not done being a rough year for us.  Our lovely new home, the top choice during our search, was less than ideal.  As I pulled out an inflatable mattress for our first night there, I noticed a small black speck moving next to the box.  I stepped on it without hesitation, thinking it a beetle or something along those lines.  Then I saw another one scurrying around, then another one… and another one.  The fatigue from the flight quickly vanished  and I flipped on all the lights in the room.  To my disgust, there were baby roaches all over the carpet.  This was something that would have thrown up red flags during the walk thru, but like all nasty bugs, these fuckers wait till nightfall to make their presence known.  What was supposed to be a relaxing night after hours of air travel turned into a hurried rush to the closest hotel followed by a very hot shower.  We notified the property management the next day hoping to get this remedied soon.  Sadly, this ordeal would last for almost 4 weeks.  Bug bombs, visits from Orkin, gels and traps did nothing to dent the problem.  The good thing was the problem only occurred on the third floor (with minor miscreants making it down into the other rooms).  The bad thing was that our bedroom was on that floor.  With heroic efforts on the part of the property manager, this tale did come to a pleasant end, even though it involved moving yet again in less than thirty days.  Now nestled in a brand new, bug free home, we can begin repairing the effects of sleep deprivation and stress.

But wait, there’s more

Changing the scenery was only half the battle.  My travel was still a problem and true to form, I left for a 5 day engagement in CA a week after landing in FL.  My lovely girl, with the patience of a saint, was worn down to the bone by our insect escapades which was then amplified by my ill timed departure.   As long as I stayed in the skies my life would be held hostage.  So I did the one thing you should never do in “this economy”, I quit my job.

It wasn’t a willy nilly decision, that’s for sure, and I spoke with my wife at length before pulling the trigger, but honestly I had no other options.  My projected travel for the rest of this year would have had me home in 24 hour increments (if that), once a week till the foreseeable future.  If I had just started doing something like this, maybe it would have been tolerated, but clocking in at several years of it, there is no way my marriage would have survived.  The cracks were already showing when we were unceremoniously pulled out of the UK, so I knew we had reached the end of our threshold.

So I write this entry unemployed yet happy.  I haven’t solved my creative conundrums (still unpublished, fiction still stymied) and I haven’t found a local (non-traveling) gig, but my partner in crime is still by my side, which is the only thing that makes any of the hardships in my life bearable.  Without her I would lose one half of all my memories from the last decade and one half of all my memories for the rest of my life.  That’s too steep a price for me.

Finally, I’ve ripped out the blinders, given the corporate ladder the cold shoulder and hopefully will find the balance that’s been sorely missing in these past 5 years of existence.

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