Saturday, February 9, 2008

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

Ten years ago in a city far, far away from LA, I was graduating film school in Chicago. I was trying to decide what to do next when the universe basically lit up the sky with a neon flashing arrow pointing toward Los Angeles. It didn't seem very gradual. All the signs came all at once and it seemed like the decision was made before I ever needed to consider it. There were no pro or con lists really. I considered staying in Chicago because it was all I had known, my friends were all there, my family was all there and I had a good enough job. However, there was nothing really keeping me there. Nothing that I couldn't get from Los Angeles - where friends, family and (at the time I thought) a job were all there already. It meant leaving my comfort zone and leaving some friends and an enormous chunk of my family behind, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. The only thing I would do different, if I were to travel back in time, is not bring as much stuff with me and rented a small U-haul instead of putting my stuff on a friend's moving truck.

Los Angeles and the last ten years have changed me in good ways from the person I once was. I left there 20 years old making minimum wage never having lived outside my parents home. I learned the value of 29.99% APR on credit cards and that credit scores need to be higher than a perfect bowling game. Friends you have and think you will have forever can no longer be your friend and that sometimes that is the best thing for everyone. I now understand what a co-worker meant when he said "Never do anything major in your twenties." I've done some dumb things and a lot of them were just from inexperience and thinking I wasn't inexperienced at all.

It is now my thirty first year on the planet. I have been in LA for ten years and a few months. I've looked to the universe to see if all signs are still pointing at Los Angeles as where I need to be. Over the years the neon flashing lights on that sign have begun to burn out and in the last few months it has been spinning around like a weather vane before Mary Poppins appears. In the last few weeks, it has started to settle down and all the lights are on full blast. However, it isn't pointed at LA anymore. It's not pointing at Chicago, either. It seems to have set it's sites on the Emerald City, the land of Starbucks and Frasier, the place located in the Pacific Northwet..err..Northwest, Seattle.

I'm just a big believer in following signs that are put in front of you and lately, I've been getting a lot of them. In the next post, I will lay out some of the signs that are pointing me there and you will see how they are kind of hard to ignore.

Until then I'll leave you with this joke that always sticks with me when stuff like this happens:

It had been raining for days and days, and a great flood had come over the land. The waters rose so high that one man was forced to climb onto the roof of his house.

As the waters rose higher and higher, a man in a rowboat appeared, and told him to get in. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me.” So the man in the rowboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and suddenly a speedboat appeared. “Climb in!” shouted a man in the boat. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me.” So the man in the speedboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters continued to rise. A helicopter appeared and over the loudspeaker, the pilot announced he would lower a rope to the man on the roof. “No,” replied the man on the roof. “I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me.” So the helicopter went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and eventually they rose so high that the man on the roof was washed away, and alas, the poor man drowned.

Upon arriving in heaven, the man marched straight over to God. “Heavenly Father,” he said, “I had faith in you… I prayed to you to save me, and yet you did nothing. Why?” God gave him a puzzled look, and replied “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So, you're actually going to keep this blog updated? Like...regularly?

Throw in some pics too while you're at it.