Florida Living: 20 Years Later

My 20s were spent searching. I was searching for love, searching for adventure, searching for my future. I was in my 20s from 1997 to 2007, during which time I moved seven times and switched jobs five times. When you’re younger, risks don’t seem as risky, for lack of a better term.

I had moved to Las Vegas in 2000 and returned to Cape Cod early in 2001. It was a significant shift in my life, one that I felt I needed to undertake. It didn’t work out. When I returned to Cape Cod, I found myself falling back into the same rut that had made me want to move away in the first place. Severe bouts of depression overwhelmed me. These were alleviated thanks to a fluke meeting with a girl who would change my life more than almost anyone ever. It also didn’t work out.

I moved to Florida in September 2005. This was a reaction to the ending of that relationship. The original plan was to move to New Orleans in the summer of 2005. I was so positive that the girl who owned my heart was the one that I went all in. I had apartments lined up to look at. I even had a potential job, it was at an art gallery. I forget the name, but I was so confident that I’d be living there soon that I began sending feelers out as far as meeting. I can’t remember what my job was supposed to be. Maybe a greeter of some sort?

Lake Ponchartrain, just outside of New Orleans, where I had hoped to move.

When my reason for moving to New Orleans was taken away, I was torn. My mind was still set on moving away from Cape Cod, much like I had done 5 years earlier when I moved to Vegas. I felt like I was again stagnating and needed a change. Being in my 20s, I was going for the biggest change possible. Switching jobs or changing hair color or clothing styles just wouldn’t cut it. I thought my destiny was going to be moving to New Orleans and further developing a serious relationship. With that off the table, my backup plan was Florida.

My initial plan was to stay with my cousin Tracey and her then-boyfriend in Delray Beach, which is just south of West Palm Beach on the east coast. I was lucky to have a support system where I could move to a far-off place and still feel safe. A more feasible option that came up was for me to move further south to Fort Lauderdale and move in with another cousin and her boyfriend. I don’t think I had any concrete plans besides driving down to Florida and sort of just letting the chips fall where they may. That was my first mistake.

It was like deja vu as I gave my notice at the same restaurant I had been working at when I left for Vegas. Returning to that job, although the people I worked with were great, was probably a big reason why I felt stagnant. I packed up my blue Saturn Ion. The back seat, trunk, and passenger seat were nearly spilling over with everything I owned. I left Cape Cod and headed 1,500 miles south down I-95 toward Florida right after Labor Day.

The same model of the car I drove to Florida and back.

The drive down I-95 was pretty standard most of the time. New York City was a pain-filled with traffic. I went through or got close to Philly, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. There was no way I was going to make 1,500 miles in one shot, so I needed to stay overnight somewhere. I believe it was somewhere in southern Virginia. The main thing I remember about stopping for the night was the fact that my car was overflowing with all of my possessions. I brought in what I could, but most of my stuff had to stay in my car. I was so relieved when I woke up and found my car hadn’t been ransacked.

It was while stopping for gas in the middle of nowhere in Virginia that I had a nice heart-stopping moment. I went to pre-pay for the gas with my credit card at the pump. In those days, I think you could still pump and pay after, but since I was in a totally unfamiliar area, I wanted to keep my interactions with strangers to a minimum.

I didn’t end up getting to pay at the pump, though, as nature intervened. It turned out that there was a black widow spider that had built a web around the credit card slot. I guess not many people stop there for gas. Needless to say, I went inside and paid. They didn’t seem to care about the spider. I guess they were just used to things like that. I mean, the gas station did look like a place where horror movies took place after dark.

Not what you want to see at a gas pump.

A fun event happened when driving through North Carolina. I came up on road work and must not have been paying that close of attention. I ended up having to slam on my brakes. I owned and still own a soft green 8# medicine ball, which was packed for my drive south. When I slammed on the brakes, that ball came flying forward from the backseat. It hit my gear shift and forced my car into park. I almost got whiplash from that stupid ball. Luckily, I was almost stopped, so slamming the car into park didn’t do any damage.

In Georgia, I remember getting my Saturn up to 105mph. Those were small and light sedans, so getting up that fast was a risk. I don’t think I saw a cop for 1,000 miles, which got my bravery up and gave me a bit of a lead foot. I was hopeful of making it to Fort Lauderdale by the end of the day, but I guess I didn’t fully understand geography.

Only when I crossed into Florida did I realize how big the state was. I went through Jacksonville and can still remember Gwen Stefani’s song Luxurious playing on my iPod at that time. I can see the overpasses on the highway as if it were happening now. It’s funny how songs can bring back certain memories.

I stopped in St. Augustine to call my cousin Tracey to tell her I had crossed into Florida. She laughed and said it was still about 4 hours to her house in Delray. It was closer to 5 hours to Fort Lauderdale. It was probably mid to late afternoon by then, so I bit the bullet and ended up staying the night in St. Augustine. It was another night of worrying about my belongings. I covered the fully loaded backseat of my car with a blanket, like that would stop thieves. Looking back, I also kick myself for not stopping at St. Augustine Lighthouse. I am a huge lighthouse fan and have planned many road trips based around visiting certain ones. I actually had 2 chances to stop there and missed out. Now granted, there was no GPS then, and I only had a flip phone, so I likely would have gotten lost trying to find it. Still, it might have been the only chance I’ll ever get.

I arrived in Delray Beach first and spent some time with Tracey. I felt at home there, but also knew that I had said I’d be moving into the apartment in Fort Lauderdale. The fact that I didn’t go immediately to Lauderdale should have been another sign.

I had fun getting acclimated to Florida. I drove the A1A highway just like in Ice Ice Baby which, for some reason, I found thrilling. After a day or two, I eventually made it down to my destination. Fort Lauderdale was a beautiful city, but I didn’t feel as at home as I did in Delray. I chalked it up to needing to get used to my new surroundings.

One thing I wasn’t expecting was my morning wake-up call in Lauderdale. It consisted of a flock of wild parakeets that lived in a tree right outside my bedroom window. Once the sun came up, it was like being in a pet store with squawks nonstop. Yes, I was living in the apartment with my cousin and her boyfriend, but I felt as if I was totally on my own. After having a large support system on Cape Cod, it was shock to my system to feel so alone.

A Monk's Parakeet, my morning wake-up call.

My cousin Tracey’s boyfriend came down to Lauderdale one day, and he and I went with my other cousin to wander Las Olas Blvd and do a little day drinking. Las Olas is the main road that is filled with shops, bars, and restaurants. I couldn’t get over how hot and humid it was, but hey, it was southern Florida. It would be over 90 degrees and 90% humidity every day. It was almost like clockwork that you could predict that in mid-afternoon, it would quickly cloud up and there would be a round of heavy thunderstorms. Just as quickly, it would get sunny again. Then the humidity would become unbearable. It was like the worst of Cape Cod’s summer weather, but it was an everyday thing.

Florida was supposed to be a new chapter of my life, but I started off by treating it like an extended vacation. I remember having to call my old job asking for my last paycheck to be sent to me. Sure, I was looking for a job, but it was almost like I had no sense of urgency. It literally was like I just up and moved without any real plans of what to do.

Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale

The one job story I have is that I applied to a company that specialized in newborn photos. So you’d go to a new parent’s house and take photos of the parents and the baby, and they would hopefully buy a package of the photos. You might need to do some high-pressure sales, though.

I forget the name of the company, but I remember driving to meet the guy at the office, not far from my apartment in Fort Lauderdale. The guy looked a lot like Larry Fine from the Three Stooges, if you need a reference. We drove to one potential job location in Miami. It’s ironic that I have a lot of issues with trusting people, and have had for most of my life. Yet I jumped into this stranger's car, in a strange place, and drove to an unknown location without a second thought.

I remember going through Alligator Alley in the Everglades and seeing gators on the side of the road and people jogging in the same vicinity, and being surprised that I didn’t see someone get killed. It was the only time I ever went to Miami. I just remember not feeling comfortable with the way the guy was trying to pressure a new mother into buying an expensive photo package. We stood in the living room of this young mother’s house while she was tending to her newborn. I was just watching. Larry Fine kept pushing until she finally agreed to one of the cheapest photo packages. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a fit for me. I am not a good salesman because I empathize too much with people when it comes to money issues. So that job never happened.

My potential boss.

I believe that my moving to Florida was snakebit from the beginning. It was, after all, a fallback plan from what I had really wanted to do, which was to move to New Orleans. I think that’s why I wasn’t heavy into the job search. More proof that it was snakebit came about a month into my time there when Hurricane Wilma struck. It was a Category 3, bigger than any storm I’d ever been through.

As the storm was getting closer, my cousin Tracey offered to let me drive up to Delray and stay with her. I wasn’t really happy in Fort Lauderdale anyway, so I jumped at the chance. Tracey was and is like an older sister, so I felt more secure being under the same roof as her.

I liked Delray Beach. Not far from where I was on Linton Blvd, there was a strip mall that had 4 fast-food places in the same parking lot. I would go and weave my way through all 4, getting things from KFC, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Arby’s. That’s not the only reason why I liked Delray; it was just a nice, unhealthy bonus.


I also got to try a new energy drink they were selling called Celsius. Today it’s everywhere but ironically, it was founded in Delray in 2005, so I was on the ground floor. This was back when Celsius was in glass bottles.

The big thing I loved about Tracey’s house was that it was on the Intracoastal Canal. Every house on her street and the neighboring streets had docks, and most had boats. She had a grapefruit tree and a pool that was shaped like a bean. It was also crazy to see all of the lizards that would be running around. Think about having squirrels in your yard, now replace them with lizards. They were harmless, all of them probably 6-8 inches long, but still a wild scene.

I would take my little iPod shuffle, grab a few beers, and go sit out at the dock for sunset and after, and just love life. It was weird, but the Boz Scaggs song Lowdown seemed to always play during my sunset drinking times. It was like my unofficial drinking song. Every time I hear that song to this day I can picture that dock and those purple and orange sunsets. 

I remember there being a party one night, and this was where I learned about the wacky effects of combining alcohol and caffeine. There were small kiddie pools with alcohol in one and Red Bull in the other. I enjoyed a good mix of both. Luckily, I didn’t make any poor decisions while under the influence. Again, I was not taking life in Florida very seriously.

My favorite seat

So, back to the hurricane. Wilma roared through. We taped up the sliding glass door, and almost immediately lost power. Everyone within 50 miles lost power. Luckily, Tracey’s house was not damaged, but there was significant damage to the neighbors' houses. The worst thing that happened to Tracey’s was all of the grapefruits being knocked out of her tree. It was a wild scene tossing more than a dozen of them into the ocean. It looked like one of those rubber duck races.

I remember having to pick up and move a pretty big tree with Tracey’s boyfriend. I swear there was a photo of me pressing another smaller log overhead. The worst damage I saw was an auto dealership that had been completely pancaked. It had been an all-glass showcase, and I think it was a luxury car brand. So it was possibly over a million dollars worth of cars crushed by this storm. The big thing was that we realized that there was no telling when power would be back on. Luckily, Tracey had a generator, but it needed gas.

There was a major gas shortage thanks to the storm. Every station within 50 miles was either empty or had really long lines with no guarantees that there would be gas when you got to a pump. I believe that we ended up driving nearly 100 miles north before we finally found a gas station that we could get into.

They were limiting people to no more than $20 max on gas. Tracey was smart and slipped the guy some money to let us fill up the car and the tanks for the generator. I’ll never forget watching the pump going so slow as if it was almost out of gas and seeing a line of cars behind us. We got our fill, and we got the hell out of there fast.

The drive back south consisted of copious amounts of fumes in the car from the gas cans, and me getting car sick and having to jump out in some rural area to puke behind what I think was an abandoned barn. I didn’t go inside to check. I do remember Tracey falling asleep in the backseat close to the gas cans, and her boyfriend wanting me to wake her up just to make sure she was alright.

We might have spent another day or two back at the house in Delray. Not wanting to just hang out and waste the generator’s power, we all ended up making the trip north to Orlando, where a friend of Tracey’s had power. They offered us a place to stay for a few days. That was another unique experience. We packed up what we needed and made the trip nearly 200 miles north to Orlando.

First off, Tracey’s friend liked being naked a lot. It was not ‘good naked’ like on Seinfeld. This friend was very nice, but no model, so I was not enjoying it. It was like a Monkey's Paw situation. I slept on the couch in the living room, and I’d have a moment where this woman would stroll in totally naked. It sounds like the start of some erotic movie, but sadly, it was not. I’d end up rolling over to face the couch.

On the other hand, where we were staying was within walking distance of Universal Studios, and it was the week of Halloween. There was a costume contest with the winner getting $5,000. I was all in on that. I got dressed up as a geisha girl. I had a blue dress, a white painted face, red lips, and some sort of hat. This was all stuff readily available where we were staying. I didn’t go to some Halloween store to buy a blue dress.

At Universal for Halloween, they had people dressed as zombies and crazies with chainsaws that would chase you. I was in line with my other cousin getting something to eat, and a chainsaw guy came up behind us and revved the engine. I’ll never forget that I turned around and said ‘what’s up?’ He let out a scream when he saw that it was a guy dressed as a geisha. I should have gotten the prize right there but sadly, I didn’t win. The couple we were staying with did win third prize dressed as convicts with striped uniforms.

After Orlando, after power was back on in Delray, and things were pretty back to normal, it really hit me that I wasn’t feeling life in Florida. I didn’t even bother going back down to Fort Lauderdale. All of my job interviews had gone up in smoke due to the hurricane. I was blowing through my savings just trying to get my bearings.

Plus, I was in a bad place mentally over my recent breakup. Only looking back in hindsight, do I realize just how badly I was doing mentally after that. I had moved to Florida to escape my emotions. It’s as if I felt as though this major change would throw me off so much that I’d forget about old what’s her name. That was not the case.

There were some great sunsets there.

Still, there I was, far from home. I didn’t want to fail and go back to Cape Cod, much like I had done when in Vegas. I also didn’t want to fail in Florida and be left with no way back. I felt like it was a choose-your-own-adventure book, and I wasn’t willing to take my finger off the previous page to fully cement my decision.

I celebrated my 28th birthday at a gentleman's club. It was a first and to this point only experience in such a place. Everything for me was comped, which made it a very fun and unique celebration. This included a private dance in the champagne room with a girl who looked so much like my recent ex that it really messed with my head. Don’t get me wrong, lap dances from a hot stripper were great, but it highlighted the fact that I felt lost inside. I needed to go back to Cape Cod.

Less than two weeks after my birthday, I had a sort of ‘tearing the Band-Aid off’ moment. I just said to Tracey that I felt like it wasn’t working for me there and that I was going home imminently. She said, rightfully so, that I hadn’t given it a full chance. My mind was made up, though.

I have been someone who has always had trouble asking for help from others. I’d almost rather suffer than feel like I owe someone. What I mean is that if I had remained in Florida, I’d have likely needed to borrow some money to make ends meet until I found a decent-paying job. I hated that idea. Ironically, what lay ahead of me was driving 1,500 miles back up the East Coast to Cape Cod, where I’d also have no money and no job.

I made a final drive to Fort Lauderdale to pack up the rest of what I had brought with me to Florida. Luckily, I hadn’t signed any sort of lease on the apartment where I had originally planned to stay. I basically was able to slide in and then get out with an Irish Goodbye. My cousin, who was living in that apartment, wasn’t happy that I was leaving, but I was long past the point of no return.

The trip back to Cape Cod was far more eventful than the trip down. I stopped overnight in North Carolina. The next morning, I packed up and headed for the highway. Before I had even made it to full speed on the entrance ramp, I was met with the flashing lights of a police car.

I was ticketed for speeding, which I probably was, but I was not even on the highway yet, so how fast was I really going? I was told that due to my rate of speed, I needed to be in the Johnston County court in Smithfield, North Carolina, the following Monday. I explained that I was in the midst of driving from Florida to Cape Cod and didn’t have the money to pay for a hotel room and any other amenities for a few days.

The cop didn’t care. What he did say was that if I couldn’t appear in court, I would have to hire an attorney to appear on my behalf. I ended up having to call a North Carolina lawyer to pay them to appear in court for me as soon as I returned to Cape Cod. It was Everett Law Firm, which got off on the right foot by misspelling my last name in their email.

The form I had to fill out and return, including what I had to pay the lawyer.

I succeeded in getting the ticket cost lowered somewhat, but it was offset by what I had to pay the lawyer. It was a ridiculous set of circumstances, but I used it as a life lesson. In fact, for more than a decade, I was subscribed to that particular law office’s newsletter. The funny part was that not long after I unsubscribed, I got a speeding ticket when driving in Maine.

My time in Florida lasted a little more than 2 months. Was it a failure? Overall, yes, but with a caveat. If the hurricane hadn’t hit, I think that I would have had a better chance for success. It went from being a new chapter of my life to a sort of reality game show where we traveled hours for gas, dressed up for costume contests, and celebrated in strip clubs.

Do I regret it? Not at all. Over the ensuing years, I learned a lot about myself thanks to that time in Florida. I learned about the differences between calculated risks and running from problems. Plus, it did end up being a sort of adventure movie that I was able to experience with little damage done. Well, except for that speeding ticket.

Interestingly, though, since I left Las Vegas, I have always had a desire to return there, maybe not to live but at least to visit. I have never had a desire to ever go back to Florida, which makes me wish my cousin Tracey lived somewhere else. I am not sure why I have the desire to return to one place but not the other. I have family in both, and both experiences ended with me failing and having to move back to Cape Cod.

Upon returning to Cape Cod, I felt like I was drifting again, but in familiar waters at least. I didn’t have time to be picky about a job since I was broke. I ended up working in the dairy section of a Stop & Shop for a few months. This was fine. It was low-key, not great pay, but simple.

In a serendipitous moment, my old boss at the restaurant I had left when going to Florida happened to pass through the dairy section. She said I should go back and work at the restaurant again, and so I did. This time, I was so appreciative of the opportunity that I stayed way longer than I should have out of loyalty and respect. I will admit though, I often wonder what my life would have looked like if I had politely declined to go back. That’s another in a long line of ‘what if’s’ in my life.

There was however, one major positive that came from my time in Florida. It is one that is still large in my life and includes what you are reading. While sitting on my laptop in my bedroom at the apartment in Fort Lauderdale, I happened upon a screenplay writing contest.

It was through a company called Withoutabox, no, I didn’t forget the spaces. They partnered with a lot of major film festivals at the time. I had almost exclusively written poetry up to that point, so crafting a screenplay was uncharted waters.

The Withoutabox website as it appeared in 2005

I wrote something for it, but didn’t win. I can’t remember if they contacted me to tell me, or if I just figured it out when I didn’t hear anything after a few months. Regardless, I was so happy with that screenplay that I decided to turn it into my first short story, which I ended up calling Eight Hours. Basically, that story was a kind of fictionalized version of the recent breakup that had prompted my move to Florida in the first place.

That short story started me down a different writing path. The poetry started fading away and was replaced by short stories, children’s books, and novels. I would end up uploading more than a dozen of my works onto the brand new Amazon Kindle store between 2007 and 2010. All of my writing, the ebooks, blogs, and eventually 9 going on 10 published books, stem from that contest in Florida. 

Everything I’ve done creatively since then, with videos, podcasts, and film, all go back to my time in Florida. So, for as disappointed as I was that I bailed on it pretty quickly, I feel like all of my major accomplishments professionally got their start during that brief time when I called Florida home. For that reason, I can never say that my time there was a failure.