Losing Your Spark

    I don’t know when it happens. I don’t know when the adventure of life slowly fades and is replaced by the repetitive and mundane. Over the last few years, I have slowly started feeling this way. I feel like my spark has faded and been lost.

    It is hard for me to tell if this is just a part of the ‘mid-life crisis’ that comes when you get deep into your 40s. Or perhaps this feeling of malaise and being lost has its roots in the series of unfortunate events that have dotted my last several years.

    When you lose a loved one, it changes you. When you lose several in rapid succession, it does irreparable damage. Your brain and heart don’t get a chance to process one loss, and another comes rushing in to knock you upside the head. And how do you process such losses when you feel like you have nobody to talk to about them?

    At this point in time, I feel like I have two types of people in my life. Ones who listen to me like they're listening to the ‘on hold’ music waiting for a real conversation to begin. Then there are the ones who simply cannot just listen. Any conversation devolves into a pissing contest over whose problems are worse. That usually ends with me deferring to them and just putting my problems, which we never come back to, on the back burner.

    But what of the spark? That zest for life, that yearning for the future. What happens to it? Some people seemingly never run out of fuel for that spark. Others, like me, are just staring at a cold fire pit, wondering where the lighter fluid is.



    When I was a teenager in the 1990s, the spark raged out of control. I was full of the angst that the Grunge movement and my own childhood had instilled in me. I was fighting for my future. I was working hard to do well in school so that I could have the future I wanted. I was planning on that future with friends, many of whom are still big parts of my life to this day. I was bound and determined to make it and filled with the energy to prove it. My apologies to 16-year-old me.

    When I was in my 20s in the 2000s, the spark was lit by an unending need for change. I did whatever I needed to do to find my path. If I had to leave a job that I felt was unfulfilling, I did it. If I had to move across the country a time or two, I packed my bags. I was lucky enough to find the love I had craved since I was a boy. I was also unfortunate enough to find that things like time and distance cannot always sustain love. Unflinching, I pressed on. I knew that each door that closed meant my future lay behind another one I had yet to find. I knew that risk-taking was the only way to truly change things. My apologies to 26-year-old me.

    When I was in my 30s in the 2010s, the spark engulfed me in the need for success and acceptance. The future I had dreamed of as a teenager felt like a raft attached to a slippery rope that I was slowly losing hold of. 

    What was success? What was love? The definitions changed with age. I wanted to be a published author, and that happened, now nine times over. Yet it didn’t lead to being a self-sustaining career. 

    I wanted to change day jobs so that I could at least feel fulfilled while waiting for my ship to come in. I did that, and yet my dissatisfaction only grew and festered. No matter the good that came to me, I was never fully happy. I was in the best shape of my life physically, but on the inside, I always felt not enough. I wanted to be as big as possible and yet still go as unnoticed as possible. That spark turned to an inward anger that burned me up and wore me out. My apologies to 36-year-old me.

    Now in my 40s in the 2020s, the spark lay dormant. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am still bound and determined to find the path I am meant to be on. Now it is far quieter and reserved, and cautious. It feels as though those losses I've suffered, 6 people in 5 years, have snuffed the spark out.

    There is no more teenage angst, though I wish there were. 16-year-old me would have a thing or two to say about my current mindset. 

    There is no more taking risks like you’re trying on a new shirt. I now worry more about the potential problems than the potential rewards. Maybe that comes with age, but 26-year-old me would tell me much of what my life consists of now is due to the risks I took back then. 

    There is no more ‘me against the world’ level of needing to prove myself. Shouting from the rooftops about who I am sounds like more effort than it’s worth these days. 36-year-old me would likely ask, ‘What in the world was everything we did for then?’

    These days, I feel like I packed all of my hopes and dreams onto the back of a snail and am watching it try to cross a busy highway. All of the various incarnations of myself would likely be shaking their heads for different reasons. Yet inside, I am still all of those people. There are times when I feel myself slipping into those old mindsets. But I feel like the ‘older and wiser’ version of me overrules them all. It says ‘Why push a sled full of rocks uphill when you can sail down a lazy river if both routes lead to the same destination?’

    Maybe in my 50s in the 2030s, I’ll look back on this and laugh because I found my spark again. Maybe I’ll apologize to the current version of me for something I haven’t even done yet. The spark inside you isn’t something tangible. It is a feeling, a movement, a driving force meant to get you through the journey we call life. It is also something that, if not cultivated and nurtured, can be lost. I will keep on looking for mine, and if you are looking for yours, know that you’re not the only one.

The Vegas Journals: October 25, 2000

Thoughts from the present day will be in red as I try to decode and explain some of my experiences. Parts are also redacted as I try not to name too many people.

Written during a Quarter-Life Crisis, reviewed during a Mid-Life Crisis

Part of the reason that I have decided to share this is because of my niece Emma who is currently at the age I was when I lived this chapter of my life. She is writing her own blog that can get deeply personal. I wanted to share some of my own experiences so that she sees that she’s not alone in what she’s going through.

Intro:

This is a journal written to hopefully chronicle my rise from nobody to somebody here is Las Vegas. Maybe in time I will reveal what lies in my heart but for now it will remain on these pages.

If you love you will be loved.

If you give you will receive.

Smiles will be reflected.

Laughter will be echoed.

If you let them in they just might stay.

October 25, 2000

“When you close your eyes do you like what you see, inside your mind?”

Once In A While by Dishwalla(1998)

(A running feature of this journal was starting off each date with a lyric to a song that seemed to fit my mood at the time.)

    My birthday is coming up. #23. But I feel no reason to celebrate. Really, what have I done since I got here? Joined a gym that is more expensive than the last (Q The Sports Club), gone back to school but since I’m not a state resident that’s expensive too (Community College of Southern Nevada), and taken a job for about ½ of what I made at the Marshside (the restaurant where I worked on Cape Cod) and less than ½ the hours (Target).

    If good things happen to good people does that mean I’m not a good person? I feel like I left one rut and have landed in another. What do I do now? I want to make it here but it seems like things get worse every day. Maybe I’m just starting slowly. I keep saying in a few weeks things will settle down, but I’m losing faith fast.

    I hate my job. They give me no hours. They won’t pay me because I don’t have a social security card. I didn’t even go today because I feel it’s pointless. I miss everyone so bad, but I get confused. It’s like part of me would like nothing better than to go back home ASAP, but then I remember why I left and I get torn up.

    Some days I feel like this is all a dream and I’m gonna wake up back on the Cape. I can only imagine what would happen if I went back home as a failure. Nobody would believe in me ever again and I wouldn’t blame them.

    Before I left I said to myself I’d give myself until the summer to do something, to better my situation, before I even considered leaving. But my god I never thought after 6 weeks I’d be out of money, working 15 hours, and just about as sad as I’ve ever been in my life.

    This week sucks because Dad is now finally bettering himself and I just have no drive. Did I come out here just to reassure myself that I’ll never be anything more than I was on the Cape?

    It’s weird writing this in a journal. This is stuff I would tell Kate (my sister) or Barry (my best friend) but I have nobody really. Sure I can call or write but it’s like why burden them with my problems when I only hear from them once a week or so?

    I feel like I’m worthless and invisible. Maybe I’m just conditioned this way? Uncle Eric is looking for a job for me with one of his clients. He really wants me to make it. I’ll take whatever he can find. I just want to have enough money to get my own life started, I’m not greedy. He, Emma (my aunt), and Patrick (my cousin) it looks like are going to visit the Cape in the summer. I might go too. I might be there already.

(My family I just mentioned had been living in Las Vegas for years and their lives were well established. This made visiting with them difficult as they were busy.)

    I want to do all I can to succeed, but I don’t want to stay so long that I wish I’d never come. Bear with me this first entry will be weeks rolled into one day.

    I guess I’ve put my quest for love on hold until I find peace inside. I gave that note to Erin before I left but she hasn’t even mentioned it. I really wish she cared. Of all the girls I’ve ‘had it’ for she’s the one that remained for more than a week. Hell, since Angela I’ve seriously thought about Erin, Sue, Ally, Colleen, Amy, and Kara. Jeez, and here I am still single after 2 years. Sad as it is I still haven’t fully recovered from being dumped. Part of me still believes she wants me back but is afraid to act. My ego? Maybe.

(As I stated at the top, I am redacting specific names, especially of girls I was interested in at the time. I don’t want to cause any problems all these years later.)

    I miss Barry. I wish he would stop wasting his time in that printing company. Look who’s talking. Seriously though, he can do anything. I want to help him get discovered. Maybe helping him will help me. My real goal is to join him in some kind of venture. We could really make it I think, but he has to get that desire again. So do I.

(Barry was/is a great singer/songwriter. I wanted to have a go at some sort of music venture. I could sing and write but had no musical talent. I think part of me wanted to live vicariously through him.)

    I just hope I make it. I’m tired of being nothing. I hate feeling like I’m just not good enough. But I can only take it one day at a time. So tomorrow we’ll see…

Summary In 2025: I had not had immediate success upon arriving in Las Vegas. The job I took paid far less with far fewer hours. At 22 going on 23 I had believed that I could just show up and succeed without really trying. Unfortunately, that was not the case. My age and inexperience led me to have little patience. This can be seen with me already wishing to go back to my situation on Cape Cod that I had left behind. Being young, impatient, and inexperienced will influence a lot of my thoughts in the coming weeks and months of my life in Las Vegas.

The remaining entries from The Vegas Journals will be found on the free tier of my page at Patreon.com.

The Vegas Journals: The Arrival

This might end up being the hardest part of my Las Vegas life to share. Not because of anything I did or that happened, but mainly because the memories are hazy. We are looking back to the year 2000 from the end of 2024. A lot of time has passed.

The time leading up to the move is fairly clear in my mind. Much of my time in Vegas is clear, obviously, because I kept a journal. Then there is the in-between. The period from maybe the last week of August through late October when I began the journal is a bit muddled.

My memory seems to show me that my father was a bit hesitant to have me come and stay with him in Las Vegas. I think part of him relented because of a chance to try to show my mother that he could actually be a supportive parent. I think another part was guilt over being a terrible parent and likely a bit of pressure from family members. The bottom line is I was more of a tenant than a son when I moved out there.

There were scores of sad but hopeful goodbyes as I left. I remember my greatest sadness being toward my niece Kaleigh. She was about 15 months old and I had been a big part of her life throughout it. I hated the idea of her growing up and not remembering me.

I packed up everything I had. At that point there was no laptop, no smartphone, my biggest piece of technology was probably my Sony Discman. Speaking of Discman, I packed all of my CDs to bring with me on the plane. Yes, nothing was mailed ahead of time.

How did I pull off bringing my CDs? It was simple. A few years earlier I had been given a large hockey duffel bag by my friend John. Or he just ‘forgot’ it at my house, I don’t remember. The bag was large enough to fit our friend Barry inside of it. I loaded that thing up with as many CDs as I could fit. In the end that bag weighed a ton and was hell to move. I can remember upon my arrival at my father’s apartment having burn marks on my shoulder from trying to carry the duffel over my shoulder through the airport.

Oh yes, the flight out. I was terrified of flying. My initial trip to Vegas in January 2000 was complete with me leaving a sweaty palm print on my Discman as I clutched it for dear life as the plane took off.

On this second flight, I was a bit calmer. Plus I was filled with optimism about this new life I was embarking on. I was 22 years old and had spent my entire life living in the relatively rural area of Cape Cod surrounded by the vast majority of my family and friends. Here I was now venturing thousands of miles away to a city where I’d be able to count on one hand the number of people I knew and still have fingers left.

Hope. That was the biggest thing I remembered about the time leading up to the move as well as the first few weeks. There was this feeling of anything being possible. Cape Cod felt restrictive. In my early 20’s I believed the only way to fulfill my potential was to move away. As much as I love Cape Cod to this day I still believe that the opportunities are fewer there. In Las Vegas, there was a seemingly endless landscape of opportunity.

My arrival was the first week of September. I believe it was right after Labor Day. Despite fall being on the horizon the heat was palpable. There was a string of 110+ degree days when I first got there. Sure it was a dry heat which made it tolerable. Still, when I’d open the door to the 2^nd floor apartment to step outside it felt like someone blowing a hair dryer in my face.

Over the ensuing weeks, I would use that dry heat to my advantage when it came to laundry. I’d hang my clothes on the balcony before going off to school or work and come home to dry clothes that smelled like the outdoors.

Of course, there was one time that it was windy and when I came home from school I noticed much of my laundry had blown off of the balcony and was strewn all over the grass and parking lot. That was not a good time. There was also a time that I tried to do laundry a bit late and while my clothes were in the washer in the apartment complex’s laundry room the attendant locked the door. I was able to call and get them to unlock it so I could get my clothes though.

So I had arrived. My father worked as a cook and was gone the vast majority of the week. He was either working or drinking and gambling at one of the smaller ‘locals’ casinos. His favorite was a place called Arizona Charlie’s. In a weird bit of trivia, the restaurant where he worked called Lakes Lounge was located in the same strip mall where Diff’rent Strokes actress Dana Plato had robbed a video store in 1991. It was a place called Lakes Video.

I was on my own basically from the jump in Vegas. My father was always out. My family, Uncle Eric, Aunt Emma, and Patrick lived in Vegas but it was about 15 minutes to drive from West Charleston Boulevard to their house on Pioneer Avenue. I didn’t have a car, plus they had established lives so it wasn’t like I could just hop on the bus and go visit.

My first major orders of business in my Las Vegas life were to get a job and to enroll in classes at the nearby Community College of Southern Nevada. The college courses were an easier task.

On the grounds at CCSN

I had been taking classes in Communication at Cape Cod Community College. So when I enrolled in Vegas I looked for classes along those same lines. A major one I remember is Broadcast Writing. I learned how to write scripts for television news which was fun. The college was a 5 minute walk away and had a neat layout. There were all sorts of colorful and unique structures all over the campus. One time I bought a disposable camera at the nearby Walgreens and took a bunch of photos of these structures.

The job was a different story. I did not have boatloads of money stashed away for when I got to Vegas. Being 22 and having never been away from home my preparation consisted more on packing my CDs in a duffel bag than socking away money. This proved to be a major problem and maybe the ultimate predictor of my failure there.

My father wanted money for me to stay at his apartment. I don’t know why I thought he might see this as a chance to help his son out for a bit until I got on my feet. I should have known better. He was always incredibly selfish. He routinely refused to pay child support and then once I was working he would be constantly in my ear begging for money. The fact that he immediately saw me as an ATM machine again should not have been a surprise.

My funds were steadily leaking once I got to Vegas. I had to be a bit rude to my former job on Cape Cod to get them to send me the last of my paychecks so that I could stay afloat a little longer. Desperation was setting in quickly which was not a good sign. I needed something fast.

What I ended up doing was applying for and getting a job in the back stockroom of a Target a few miles away. I felt it was just a stopover as I went to school and until a better job came along. I’ll never forget sitting in a conference room with a handful of other new arrivals to Target. The person in management running the orientation told us to write down in the ‘pay’ area $6 per hour.

It was a big-time gut punch. Sure it was 2000 but $6/hr was half of what I was making on Cape Cod. I felt terrible. I moved across the country to get a job making half of what I was making? I kept reminding myself that it was just the beginning and that something better would come along. Still, my pay was definitely a motivator for how hard I worked.

The Target where I worked in Las Vegas

My time working at Target was an adventure. The rest of the ‘Backstock Boys,’ as we called ourselves, were still in high school. I was the old man. They didn’t work hard, just like me, but they were all harmless and fun to be around. The irony is that today I only can remember one of them.

The one Backstock Boy I remember is a part of one of my favorite Las Vegas stories. He had a crush on a girl who worked there. She was dating another employee. My fellow Backstock Boy, seeing that I was in relatively good shape, had a proposition for me. I still don’t know if he was serious or not but he offered me $100 to beat the hell out of this girl’s boyfriend.

Now I don’t know what my beating this guy would have done to make the girl want to date someone else. I doubt the $100 would have even paid for my bail money when I inevitably got arrested for assault. Nonetheless, this kid would nickname me The Assassin. He would either flash the money fingers sign to me or just shout out ‘a hundred bucks,’ several times a day when we were working.

I said above that I was feeling the pinch for money but it was never bad enough that I wanted to beat people up for money. The actual work was easy. We boys would put a lot of stuff away in the back. We’d get calls over the radio to retrieve an item for a ‘guest.’ A lot of the time we were just messing around listening to the day's hits on 98.5 KLUC.

A few things that I remember about my Target backstock days.

One, my boss was an addict. I forget his name, which is good, but he was the backstock boss. He was always on something when he came back to give us our marching orders. This was evident because he’d tell us something, then leave, then come back a little while later and say the exact same thing like it had never happened. The story was he had been injured on the job and rather than take time off he had started taking pain meds. Now he was hooked.

Two, there was one kid I worked with who would routinely make himself pass out as a joke. He would take a really deep breath and then bend over and breathe in and out in short quick breaths. Then he’d fall over. We’d have to make sure there was something soft to break his fall so he didn’t crack his head open on the concrete floor.

Three, a favorite pastime of the Backstock Boys was as follows. At the end of one of the aisles in the stockroom, we would pile large pillows against the wall. Then one of us would get a running start with a scooter or a bicycle and crash headlong into the pillows. I told you, for $6/hr I wasn’t going to be killing myself stocking shelves. Target did have a Pizza Hut cafeteria so there was that.

Getting beyond college and work there was a lot of freedom in Las Vegas. It was option overload when it came to food. This is probably my most cherished memory from this time. Within a mile walk of where I live,d there was probably every fast food spot imaginable. It included McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., Wienerschnitzel, Del Taco, and more. My two favorites were Jack In the Box and Panda Express.

Jack In the Box was in between where I lived and my school so I paid them a visit constantly. Burgers and chili cheese curly fries for dinner before watching WWF Monday Night Raw which came on at 5pm since I was out west. I had a few Jack antenna balls I wish I could find. They were the head of the mascot.

Panda Express was and still is my favorite of any fast-food place. The closest one to where I live is over an hour away. When I was in Las Vegas it was about 1 ¼ miles each way to walk to it. I gladly did this a few times a week in the 100-degree heat for some of that orange chicken.

If I needed groceries, with whatever meager funds I had from my high-paying Target job, I visited Albertson’s. The main memory I have of that store is the alcove of slot machines that were beside the entrance. Many a time I was called by those belles and chimes.

I would blow through some, or maybe all, of my money at the slot machines in Albertson’s or the nearby 7-Eleven. I stated in the last blog that winning on my first try at slots when I arrived for my visit to Las Vegas was the worst thing that could have happened.

That became a reality when left to my own devices. Within weeks of moving out there, I was in debt due to a gambling addiction that only stopped when the money ran out, and sometimes not even then. I routinely overdrew my checking account blowing money on slots. It was a regular issue that I mentioned a lot in my journal.

Fast food and slim money combine in the story of the gym I signed up at. Q The Sports Club was a short walk from the apartment. It was a massive 24-hour gym with part of the building being a glass, or plexiglass, pyramid.

 

It had all of the cutting-edge equipment. This included cardio equipment where you could access the internet. Of course that was only while you were moving. So if you were peddling the bike you were online, once you stopped the screen would go black. It was a brilliant way to get people to keep working out. There were many times I would be writing an email while peddling only for me to slow down and have the screen go black.

I can remember often walking to the gym late at night, sometimes after 10pm, and never feeling concerned about my surroundings. Perhaps it was just my age. I do know that the apartment complex where I lived a few years later appeared on the television show COPS. I guess I left at the right time.

When I look back on Q The Sports Club a few things pop into my head. One was the smell of chlorine that hit you when you walked in the front door. This was due to the pool just to the right of the entrance. The other was when I was being shown around the premises by an employee when I signed up. When we walked past the hot tub he made sure to tell me that since they were open 24 hours I could theoretically come in with someone at 3am and go into the hot tub and...you know. Honestly, that’s the first story I tell people about that gym.

I am sure that there are more of the nuts and bolts of my initial arrival in Las Vegas that I am forgetting. Being 25 years ago makes details a bit hazy while the major talking points remain clear.

This brings us up to date as to when the actual Las Vegas journal begins. I was somewhere between six and seven weeks into my time there. Things had not been progressing the way I had hoped and I felt alone and hopeless with nobody to confide in. I ended up confiding in a little black spiral notebook instead.

In less than two months I went from believing that all I had to do was get to Vegas and my life would immediately be better, to feeling like I had escaped one rut only to fall into another. My Quarter-Life Crisis did not end just because I moved away from Cape Cod. I naively thought it was that easy.

Next, we will get into the actual journal from the time. It starts on October 25, 2000, and things were looking bleak.

Previous: The Vegas Journals - Prologue

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #46 - Funny Signatures, That’s Not Toothpaste, Bad Road Work, etc.

 

1. December arrived and boy did the weather follow suit. I went out to shoot the sunset on December 1^st and was definitely under-dressed. The fall has been at least somewhat warmer than usual. I took that for granted and went out dressed like it was 55 degrees and not 35 degrees. The temperature, a howling wind, and the sun setting at 4:10pm made me immediately long for spring. Oh well, at least starting December 14^th the sunset times will start getting later. Before you know it the sun will be setting after 5pm again, well February 4^th.

2. I have begun digitizing my old Las Vegas journal to share on my blog and on Patreon. Granted these will be somewhat redacted and I’ll tell you why. In this journal there is a lot of great insight into me, full-on in my quarter-life crisis, going through a cross-country move. The problem is not sharing some deep thoughts, it is the sheer amount of girls I was interested in that I name-dropped. I was a bit surprised. I think I was really looking for whoever was going to come along and fill that void. That being said, I don’t think naming names is going to do any good. Not that they’d all be reading my blog, but I highly doubt any of them would read my thoughts from nearly 25 years ago and suddenly say ‘I never knew!’ and we live happily ever after.

First part now up on this blog.

3. Something a bit interesting to me. I noticed now that it’s December that when I turn my heat on I like it at around 64-65 degrees. I run hot so I don’t need it sweltering to be comfortable. The interesting part? In the middle of summer, I like my air conditioner to be set at 68-69 degrees. So my heat is set to a lower temperature than my A/C is. I don’t know, I thought those numbers would be flip-flopped. Actually, it would make more sense for the temperature to be equal all year round no matter the heat or A/C.

4. I feel at times like my life is an echo chamber of my own thoughts. What I mean is that as I continue on a journey of trying to become totally self-employed I sometimes find myself trapped by my own mind’s limitations. I want to use my writing and creativity skills to do something meaningful and fulfilling but it’s hard to see outside of my own little box I’ve been in for years. It can feel like the Seinfeld episode where George gets an audiobook and the narrator sounds just like him. Sometimes you need advice from a voice that’s not your own.

5. For the first time in quite a while I visited a spot called Scargo Tower in the neighboring town of Dennis. It’s a beautiful stone tower with one of the best views on Cape Cod. I shot a video of me going up the stairs to the top at sunset which was great. I was shocked when I drove up to it that there were no other people there. My excitement was short-lived as while I was shooting the video a van full of people showed up. Then after they left a young couple showed up. I decided to leave the tower to them because I was young once. I just found it funny that as soon as I thought about how great it was that nobody was there all of these people showed up. I should have just kept my mind blank.

6. A random patient at my work made me think of one of my favorite memories of my Nana. Long, loooong ago she would get Christmas cards from her trash man. It was nice, and also a way to remind customers to tip the people who take their stinky trash away for them. Anyway, the trash man signed his card and I believe his name was Doug Carp or something close. I can’t remember for sure but someone in the family remarked that his signature made it look like his name was ‘Dog Crap.’ That alone was too hilarious, but the best part was my Nana’s reaction. She laughed in only the way she could until tears were literally streaming down her face. Those were some of my favorite memories of life, someone making my Nana laugh until she cried. I miss those days.

Maybe just print your name next time?

7. On one of the mornings when I have to get up before 5 to get ready for work I nearly had a unique experience. When going to brush my teeth in my drowsy state the first thing I reached for to put on my toothbrush wasn’t the toothpaste. No, I grabbed my deodorant. I even popped the cap off of it so I was close to having a different sort of fresh mouth. However, nothing will top the time as a 5-6-year-old kid when my sister and I brushed our teeth with Preparation-H, the hemorrhoid cream. Yes, that happened. Hey, give us a break, the old tubes of Preparation-H look just like toothpaste to little kids.

8. One part laughing, one part shaking my head in sad amazement. There is a road in my town that was a part of drainage repairs over the last several months. It’s right in front of where I go to the gym. After all of the repairs were done the time came to repaint the double yellow lines that go down the middle of the road. I said ‘middle.’ In a stunning act of stupidity whoever was painting the lines had them running two-thirds over to one side. This means that you can fit a car and a half on one side of the road while on the other side, any vehicle that isn’t a Smart car is hanging over into the other lane. I have no clue how these people couldn’t figure out how to paint lines down the middle of the road but don’t worry I’m sure they are getting paid a lot to be that dumb.

9. I am a huge fan of retro commercials. The ones I grew up with from the 70s through the 90s are great. I even like ones slightly older. However, I find more recent commercials to be annoying or just plain stupid. One that I constantly hear on my Spotify app is both. Garden of Life probiotics might be the worst one yet. Talking about loving to poop is one thing, and this product helping you to poop is fine. I think it’s the way the woman in the ad gushes about just having pooped to some other woman like she’s 3 years old that just annoys me. It sounds like what a toddler would say to a parent with the child then hoping to get a toy or at least a cookie for pooping on the potty. So dumb.

10. I have found that feeling lost and feeling dehydrated are very similar. By the time you realize that you are either it is way too late and it will take a lot more work to get back to normal than it should. It’s just that you solve one easily by drinking lots of water. The other? I am still trying to figure out how to solve that one. 

The Vegas Journals: Prologue

 

The genesis of my time living in Las Vegas has roots that stretch back to the summer of 1998. As summer dawned, I was 20 years old and my life had been a river where the waters grew increasingly choppy. The wheels had been set in motion long before though.

Flashback to June 1996, my high school graduation. While all my friends had planned to head off to college, my road was going a different way. I had started a relationship with a girl a few years younger. This meant that she was still going to be in high school. I was 18 and my perspective on life was far different than it is today in my late 40s.

I had liked girls, and had a couple that were considered the middle-school version of ‘girlfriends.’ I had never had what I considered a real relationship. This changed my worldview. I enjoyed the feeling of having her in my life, it made me reevaluate my plans. Before her, my plan was to go off to college. I had been a very good student throughout my school life so college was a natural next step. Falling in love, or at least what I thought was love, that presented a problem.

As I said she was going to still be in high school. Having never felt such strong emotions I was hesitant to let that go. In hindsight, I wish I had realized that my odds of ending up living happily ever after with this girl were extremely thin. In doing research I have found a few studies stating that roughly 2% of high school relationships end up in marriage. 2%. That means in contrast that 98% do not make it, at least to marriage.

In my mind though we would buck the trend. So I made the choice to not head immediately off to college. I had worked hard throughout school so my mother understood and said she understood me wanting to take a break. Don’t get me wrong, I did want to go to college and make something of myself, but the idea of losing my relationship scared me. I honestly felt I’d never find anyone else so I had to stick around.

At first, things went smoothly. I took a semester off and started going to school at the local community college. Plus I had a good relationship so life was good. I love our community college. In fact, I’m writing this currently sitting on the 2^nd floor of the college library. However, up to and including my senior year of high school my plans were to go off to college, as in away from home. I had big aspirations of going to the University of North Carolina, or the University of Nevada Las Vegas(UNLV). My plans didn’t involve a ten-minute commute to the community college.

I didn’t see it at the time but I had sealed my own fate. I made the mistake of taking my foot off the gas. What I mean is I had spent years studying and working hard at school. Once I lost that structure and routine, by my own choice, it was never the same. Being a boyfriend was more important than building my own life.

I think part of the issue stemmed from an unstable childhood that was rife with emotional and sometimes physical trauma. I had a father who couldn’t have cared less if I had food, clothing, or medical care. This was evident by his refusing to pay even less than the minimum for child support. You know, the money you give to ‘support’ your child?

The male that I grew up with, my mother’s second husband, was abusive and demeaning not just to me but to my mother as well. I was often told that my feelings and problems were ‘petty’ and didn’t matter. When you are 11, or 12 years old the problems you face might be small in the grand scheme but to you, they matter. So being told my feelings didn’t matter scarred me in a way I still feel to this day.

The bottom line is that I was in search of love. When I found what I believed to be love I pushed everything else off of the table and focused solely on that. The problem there is the fact that when you build your entire identity around a person they will inevitably let you down. Not because they don’t care but because they are human, as we all are. I wanted this girl to justify my choice to not go off to college by being beyond perfect. That is not reality.

Let’s come back around to the summer of 1998. My mother’s second husband was out of the picture thankfully. A new man had come along who was the stepfather and male role model I had needed. One storm was gone but several more were on the horizon.

The house my family had been living in for 9 years was being sold and we couldn’t afford to buy it. In all, I had lived on the same street in the same neighborhood for 14 years. Now as June ended we were leaving. The worst part was that my family didn’t have a place lined up. This meant that we all had to go our separate ways at least for the time being.

I ended up spending the summer living at my Nana’s house. When I look back now I am so grateful that I had that time with her. I also thought it might be a way to develop a bond with my father as he still lived with his mother in his early 40s. What ended up happening was he decided he needed a change and moved out to Las Vegas within a few days of my arrival.

To clear that up, my father didn’t move because I was staying there. He was in the midst of his mid-life crisis, much like I feel I am today. He felt he needed a change and moving out to Vegas where my Uncle Eric, Aunt Emma, and Cousin Patrick lived made sense.

I still remember waking up in the morning when he left. He hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. Instead, he left a note taped to the television in his bedroom. I don’t remember all of it but I do remember him saying ‘things were going to be getting better for all of us.’ It gave me hope but that was fleeting.

That relationship I had made the centerpiece of my life? It had been steadily going downhill. My own frustration with not having gone off to college like my friends combined with the shock that she wasn’t perfect was a ticking time bomb. In a bit of sweet irony, and probably karma for myself, my girlfriend chose the week after I moved from my childhood home, had the family dog put down, and had my father move across the country to tell me she thought we should break up.

Looking back now it’s like my raft was bouncing off of rocks and rumbling over waves but I was too busy looking up at the clouds. Then when the raft flipped over I was surprised. I hate change. I somewhat fear change due to the unknown. It is a problem when change is coming and you choose to wear blinders. So how did I react to all of this change?

I got my eyebrow pierced. I dyed my hair what I thought was blond but was closer to orange. I began wearing hemp necklaces. Once I turned 21 a few months later I began to find alcohol as a new girlfriend. I changed myself so radically and thoroughly as a coping mechanism. The biggest change was still to come.

Things felt out of control and yet constricting all at once. I drifted aimlessly. I worked doing food prep and cooking while still going to college. I ‘fell in love’ with any pretty face that came close. I was angry at the world because I had chosen the wrong path and was now in a dark alleyway when what I wanted was to be on a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley.

A Quarter-Life Crisis is defined as a period of uncertainty, anxiety, and self-reflection often experienced by people in their early to mid-20s to early 30s. It typically arises as individuals navigate major life transitions and grapple with questions about their identity, purpose, career, relationships, and overall direction in life. I met mine starting in July 1998.

After drifting for well over a year I decided to do my first bit of real traveling. I bought a ticket and hopped on a flight out to Las Vegas in January 2000 to visit my father and the rest of my family. Unbeknownst to all of them I saw this ‘visit’ as a dry run for a move out there. In fact, Las Vegas would have had to kick me in the nuts as soon as I landed for me to have changed my mind.

What the trip ended up being was a sensory overload. Coming from a relatively quiet area like Cape Cod, Massachusetts nothing can prepare you for the sights and sounds as you step foot in Las Vegas. From the moment I got off the plane and walked into the airport, it was a feast for the senses.

A harbinger of things to come happened within minutes of my arrival. The sounds of slot machines were everywhere. It was like a video game menagerie of bells and whistles. Naturally, I had a ‘when in Rome’ mindset. I had to play at least one slot machine, right?

On my first play, the first coin I dropped in, I won $100. In my 22-year-old mind gambling was easy, after all, I just won $100 on a quarter. This was a bad sign that will become a running storyline throughout my Vegas Journal.

My trip was filled with fun. I stayed with my father at his apartment on West Charleston Boulevard. The area where he lived was far from The Strip that most people picture when thinking of Las Vegas. It actually looked closer to the town of Hyannis, Massachusetts which was the next town over from me. Well, Hyannis on steroids.

I was overwhelmed by all of the stores and restaurants. I loved the warm and dry weather in the winter there. I also had not missed the community college mere steps from my father’s apartment. I also had my Uncle Eric, Aunt Emma, and cousin Patrick not far away. It felt like a no-brainer.

I don’t remember if I stayed for 3 or 4 days but the bottom line was that when I was packing to go back to Cape Cod I knew that was only going to be temporary. Las Vegas was to be my new home. There was so much potential. There were so many new sights and new opportunities. I had to get away from the choking Quarter-Life Crisis I was living in back home. What better way to shake things up than by creating the ultimate change in my life?

When I returned to Cape Cod I let everybody know that my plan was to make a permanent move to Las Vegas. To better prepare I decided to wait until Labor Day to actually leave. That would give my job plenty of notice to find someone to replace me. It was also a bit of a safety net in case I changed my mind. Honestly, I had no plans to stay on Cape Cod but part of me was hesitant.

For all of the changes I had gone through in the preceding year and a half none of them had been as drastic as moving 2,700 miles away across the country. I think in the back of my mind I knew I could always come back. I think I also knew that I could change my mind and people wouldn’t think less of me. However, where I was in life at that time I was hyping this move up as success or bust.

That’s where we’ll leave it. Heading toward the end of the summer in 2000. My move to Las Vegas was solidified and impending. I had a roof over my head at my father’s apartment. I had opportunities for work, school, and an overall better chance for success. What success meant to me I had no idea. In the immortal words of my father upon his own move to Las Vegas 2 years earlier, things were going to be getting better for all of us.

The view of Las Vegas from the airport in 2000.

Initial Impressions 2.0 #5: Self-Checkout, Mutant B.O., Hidden Coyotes, etc.

 #5 Self-Checkout

1. I was at a self-checkout in a grocery store. All of the scanners were full and most of them needed some assistance including me. An older lady(70ish) was standing at the entrance to the self-checkout alcove holding only a newspaper. The employee in charge of that area repeatedly asked her to come over so she could get checked out before they went to assist with the rest of our checkout issues. For some reason, the older lady didn’t want to go over to the extra register. It ended up being like a person trying to feed a wild animal, coaxing it with food, before the employee finally gave up and flat out said in frustration ‘Why won’t you just come here?’ By the time I was finally helped all of the other people at the self-checkout had been helped and that older lady with the newspaper had also left before me.

2. Pulled in the driveway where I live after dark. The homeowners had just gotten home before me. As I walked from my car across the front yard they turned on the outside light. That was enough to light up a coyote standing twenty feet away next to a tree. Luckily my freaking out to get my keys scared it away, but if the lights hadn’t come on maybe I’d have been its chew toy.

Don't worry, it's just me.

3. Did you know there’s no such thing as a seagull? Growing up on Cape Cod I had always called the gray and white birds that live by the water (and dumpsters) seagulls. In fact, most people call them that. However in reality they are herring gulls and there is no such thing as a bird called a seagull. Crazy. Here’s its ID page: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Herring_Gull/id

4. It’s still amazing how much warmer 50 degrees in February feels as compared to 50 degrees in July. One day this week it was sunny and 55 on my way to work and all I thought as I stood on the beach was that I must really like my job because it was a perfect day to suddenly have a 24-hour bug.

Over 50 degrees at the beach on Cape Cod in February hits differently.

5. Had my first infrared sauna experience this week. 28 total minutes in 140-degree heat. I sweat buckets which basically meant I had tons of toxins I needed to get rid of. Also fun fact, my iPhone stayed with me in the sauna (intentionally) and didn’t blow up, so that’s a bonus.

Man it was hot inside that sauna.

6. Getting on the highway I was stuck behind a blue minivan with New York plates. The big issue came from the huge sheet of plywood on the roof. It definitely got a little wobbly the faster they drove. I didn’t want to end up in one of those Red Asphalt driver’s ed videos so I passed them before the plywood could fly through my windshield and pop my head off like a dandelion.

7. I found an old journal I kept during my time living in Las Vegas in 2000-01. It’s amazing to look back now at 46 to the daily thoughts from when I was 22-23 years old. Some problems were definitely not problems. Some obsessions made me laugh and shake my head. I’m about halfway through it and at times I feel like the narrator answering questions I was asking then. Overall a good trip down memory lane.

8. The latest ‘my life is like an episode of Seinfeld’ moment. Remember the guy with the terrible B.O. in Jerry’s car? Where the smell stayed long after the guy left? At the gym, there is a man whose B.O. pours out of him, even through a thick sweatshirt. It is so bad that the stink cloud hovers over the treadmill he uses long after he leaves. Like Jerry says it’s mutant B.O.

Only slightly exaggerating how bad the B.O. was

9. I finally bought myself a new Blender shaker bottle. They’re great for protein shakes and mixing other drinks for exercise, etc. Anyway, I don’t know what the lifespan is on those bottles but I believe that the one I just threw away I had for 12-13 years. Is that too long? If it is let me tell you about a few gym towels I have that are about the same age.

10. Have you ever not heard a song for many many years and then you listen to it and it instantly puts your mind back to where you were when you were listening to it a lot? I had that happen the other night with a song from the band Live. I hadn’t heard the song in well over 15 years but as soon as it started playing my brain went back to 1997 and the lyrics flooded my head. Music is so powerful.

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