Alternate Life Timelines. #2 - Moving To New Orleans

This is the second in a series of articles looking back at moments from my nearly 50 years of life. These are moments where I zigged. But what if I had zagged instead?

In some ways, life becomes like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. The decisions you make have ripple effects throughout your life. If you do this, then that happens. What about the decisions or events that could have happened but didn’t? That is going to be the purpose of this series of articles.

The first article saw me reflecting on my decision to not go away to college and, in fact, take a semester off before continuing my education at all. It had a huge effect on my future.

In this second article, I am looking at another moment that had a major rippling effect on my future. This one, when changed, could have resulted in this never being written at all.

These articles won’t be so much about rehashing regrets. They are more of an interesting look at how many times in life you are faced with the potential of a big change. What do you do when the opportunity arises? Let’s try a different path.

In the spring of 2004, I was a mess. The three years since I had returned to Cape Cod after living in Las Vegas had not been kind. Yes, I had graduated from college with a 2-year degree in communications. However, the stink of failure, in my mind at least, was hard to wash away.

I was meant to succeed in Vegas. I was supposed to have gone there, finished college, gotten a good job, and moved Cape Cod into the ‘completed’ chapter section of my life. That did not happen. It will also be a future ‘alternate timeline’ article, so you will get the full story then.

All you need to know for this piece is that I did not succeed in Las Vegas. I came home with my tail between my legs. I went back to cooking, then left for landscaping, then returned to cooking. My most taxing job was battling the overwhelming depression that hovered over me for years.

I was working as a cook in the spring of 2004 when one of the most important moments of my life occurred. I saw her. Through the rectangular-shaped window of the swinging door to the kitchen, I saw the most heart-stoppingly beautiful girl. My world was never the same.

The view from 2004

I officially met her a few days later. She almost immediately cured my depression with the confidence of someone scaring off a bear with a stick. I was in love.

We spent much of the summer together. I felt this unusual feeling of wanting to be my authentic self around her. I always had a tendency to keep at least a little bit of my guard up around people, but she was different. It was like every rom-com rolled into one and gently placed into my hand like a butterfly.


Now, of course, we all know that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. My summer romance in 2004 was no different. It had nothing to do with her. It had to do with her situation. She didn’t live full-time on Cape Cod. She was a live-in nanny for a family, and they spent winters in New Orleans, Louisiana.

It was a hurdle for sure. At first, it was not insurmountable, though. She would leave with the family back to New Orleans in October, but then return to Cape Cod the following April. The confidence I had in our relationship told me to just relax; good things would be waiting on the other side of a harsh New England winter. Silly me.

In one of those ‘of course’ moments, the husband and wife she nannied for split up shortly after they returned to New Orleans. This meant there was no return trip to Cape Cod on the horizon, because why would there be? Sure, maybe she would have come up for a week to vacation, but our relationship had hit a crossroads.

I had never felt love like I did for her, before or since. I had given her a placeholder ring during one of her last weeks on Cape Cod. Along with it was a promise of a real ring and a potential real engagement when she returned the next year. I don’t think she believed me, but I was deadly serious. She had changed my life so deeply that my focus turned to building on that life with her.

There was a big problem in the way. New Orleans is more than 1,500 miles from Cape Cod. It is not exactly somewhere that you can drive to easily. What was I to do?

In reality, I kept in regular contact with her, typically daily. I slowly felt the distance winning. To try to combat this, I booked a flight to New Orleans in January 2005 and stayed for four days. She and I got to spend a lot of time together seeing the sights, meeting her family, and enjoying each other’s company. It all felt right again.

A collage of memories from that New Orleans trip

I had to act. During a drive around New Orleans, I came clean. I was seriously thinking of moving down there permanently. To my surprise, she seemed shocked by this news. I told her how I felt and how I wanted to at least give our relationship the full chance it deserved.

She didn’t outright reject my plan, but it wasn’t the overwhelming success I'd hoped for. The rest of my time visiting went well. I flew back home fully intending to follow through on my idea. I even began voicing it to my family and friends as if I were trying to make sure I was held accountable.

Weeks passed, and little was said of the potential move. I don’t know if she was hoping I’d forget about it or wanted to see if I was serious or just all talk. When her birthday drew near in April, I again broached the subject. She was not into it.

Unbeknownst to her, I had begun scoping out apartments and jobs in New Orleans in anticipation of relocation. I had begun contacting an art gallery that was looking for a host.

My family saw how serious I was and supported me. Everyone supported me, except for the person I was going to move for. She backed away. She felt things were going too far too fast. Looking back now, her being 23 and staring at a man she had known for a year, planning to move 1,500 miles to be with her, must have been a lot. It was a lot. I know that now, but in 2005, I was as crazy in love as Beyoncé and wanted to finish my story.


What happened in reality?

In reality, I dropped my plans. She and I took a break. I don’t know if you’d consider it the official breakup, but we went from being frequently in touch to being more intermittent. I was hurt and confused. I am sure she was as well. The best of intentions cannot overcome some things.

A few months passed. Then a major event threw us back together. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast of the United States. All of my hurt over not getting the storybook romance I wanted went out the window. It was replaced with fear over her safety.

I reached out and got the update. She and her family were safe. They ended up being evacuated and relocated to Houston, Texas. To this day, she still lives in a suburb of Houston.

The relief over her safety morphed into wonder about my own timeline. As is the title of these articles, I was already thinking of what could have been had I gone through with my move to New Orleans.

So let’s take a look at it over 20 years later.

My original plan was to move to New Orleans, likely sometime in early June 2005. In this timeline, I follow through with getting the job working in an art gallery and also get one of the apartments I had been looking at. I would have driven my Saturn sedan the 1,500 miles from Cape Cod to New Orleans. Fine, so I am there.

The Saturn model I planned to drive to New Orleans

Perhaps the fact that I actually went through with it and uprooted my life in the name of being with the girl I loved would have changed her mind. The odds of that are probably 50-50. New Orleans is a big area, with the metropolitan area being home to nearly one million people. I believe that the apartments I was looking at were between 10 and 15 minutes from where she lived with her family. I’d be there, close, but not right on top of her.

In all honesty, I’d have been trying to court her from the time I got there. After all, she was why I moved. When we were together, we had a chemistry that was undeniable. That was when we were physically together. Apart it was different, like she needed to see me to remember she had feelings. How much would I encroach on her life to be seen?

Not to have rose colored glasses, but I do think we’d end up together, at least to start. Dating is one thing. Being in a serious committed relationship in close proximity is another. How much would she bend to fit me into her life? The bigger question is how much I would bend?

She was, and to this day is, extremely religious. In fact, she and her husband (spoiler) run a church together. Would I have moved things around in my life to accommodate a hefty dose of religion? I honestly don’t think so. Having date nights always consist of church would start to wear on me. I’m not anti-religion, but I am wary of those who make their religion the overwhelming defining characteristic of their lives. It’s the same way I feel about people who do that with politics.

So, we’d probably have had some sort of relationship. To what degree, I don’t know. Looking back on it, I feel like it would have been an uphill climb to get back what we had when she was on Cape Cod. I would have tried, though.


We then get to the bigger issue: Hurricane Katrina. I highly doubt that I would have given up on us by late August. I would have probably stuck it out through 2005 in the hopes of my birthday in November, or Christmas, tightening our bond. This means I’d have been living in New Orleans when the storm hit.

That statement in and of itself is chilling. Knowing how serious that hurricane was, the fact that I would have likely been in its path is crazy. The first question is, what happens to me? I’m grateful I don’t have to find out, but 1,833 people died in that storm.

Even if I were in a relationship, that wouldn’t have meant she and her family were obligated to take me with them. I’d like to think the offer would be made, but who knows? Would I have been fine in my apartment? Would I have been relocated to the Superdome? Would I have ended up in Houston? Or somewhere else?

My honest opinion? I’d have hoped to go with her family to Houston. If that wasn’t an option, I’d have gone back to Cape Cod if possible. To pick a path, I’d say I'd go to Houston, too. Here’s where it gets interesting as far as the future goes.

If I went to Houston, that would mean I was indebted to her family. I’d have been more likely to bend my life around theirs. I could see myself, out of respect, becoming way more involved in religion than I normally would. I’d have sacrificed my interests to stay close to her.

I can’t say if we end up together and I am then the husband she runs a church with. Maybe so. Or do I become resentful and end up leaving her and moving back to Cape Cod, or somewhere else? I was never great at openly discussing serious issues, so I’d have probably simmered until I boiled over.

At some point, we would have ended our relationship, and I would have probably come back to Cape Cod. In reality, once the plans to New Orleans blew up, I still had the itch to move and ended up doing so.

I moved to Florida in September 2005. It was very brief, lasting all of two months before I went home. Ironically, it was because Hurricane Wilma tore through and washed out all of my job interviews. Once out of money and patience, I went back to Cape Cod.

The reality, when I moved to Florida in 2005.

In reality and in an alternate timeline, I don’t think my relationship dream works out. It’s sad but an honest reality check. I end up back on Cape Cod before my 30th birthday, and we go from there.


One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet that I need to mull over. My writing career, beyond this blog or anything amateur, got its start due to my relationship ending. I processed my pain through writing. It led to my blogs, which led to my first book, and eventually ten published books. Everything I have done creatively since the end of 2005 is because of her and our relationship ending.

What if that relationship came to a natural end instead of feeling like the distance was the killer? Do I have the same sadness to overcome? Do I write a fictionalized version of our relationship that becomes my first ebook? I don’t know.

Maybe the extra time we have together opens my eyes to some other career path I end up enjoying. Maybe I could build a successful career running art galleries? That’s the intriguing thing about these articles: it’s all just informed speculation based on what I know of the situation at the time and of myself.

I do believe that everything worked out as it should. It’s funny how each of the first two alternate timelines ends with me believing that I ended up on the right path. Maybe it’s just my way of coping with unknowns and unfinished business.

In reality, once my girl moved with her family to Houston after Hurricane Katrina, we slowly lost touch until one day it was the last time. She was beginning to move on and mentioned meeting someone. That was a bridge too far. I didn’t want to be a pen pal hearing about her new flame.


My biggest regret of this entire story is letting go. Once we lost touch, and I lost her phone number, that was it. She was never on social media, and thus I had no way of reconnecting. If we had stayed in touch, maybe a day would come when she wanted to give it another try? I’ll never know.

As I said earlier, today she is married, has no kids, and runs a church with her husband. How do I know this if we lost touch? I am a master internet detective. I found a shared social media profile she has with her husband. There, I got my closure. I had no need to reach out. I saw her. I saw her life. I saw her happy. That was enough.

Do I wish we’d ended up together back in 2005? Yes. Nobody has made me feel what she made me feel. But she did make me feel it. That means there’s always a chance I could feel that way again about someone else. Or, if someday her profile isn’t shared anymore, all bets are off.

She and I were good together. She and I are good apart. She changed my life more than she will ever know. She continues to do so as all of my creative endeavors trace their origin back to her. So in a weird roundabout way, she is still in my life.



“There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more
Than to feel you deep in my heart
There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more
Than to never feel the breaking apart
My pictures of you.”

Pictures of You – The Cure

See you in the next alternate timeline

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.

Peaceful Emptiness: Finding Closure After 20 Years

     Closure is a funny thing. You can be looking for it for nearly 20 years and somehow still not be ready for it when you get it. As I sit here releasing all of these thoughts, that’s what I am dealing with.
     Closure can be cathartic. It can signify the end of an important chapter in your life. It can trigger the release of strong pent-up emotions. That’s where I’m at now.
     Less than 24 hours ago from when I am writing this, I got the most important closure I had been looking for. It is not the exact picture-perfect type of closure I might have desired, but after years of nothing, it was something I needed. Bear with me as this is something I’ve wanted to write for almost 20 years.

Chapter 1: At First Sight

    In order to understand why this closure is so important, I need to take you back to the beginning. Let’s go back to the first week of June 2004. 21 years ago this past week.
    I was introduced to a girl. We’ll call her Gwen. I had no idea that she would end up being one of the most important people to ever grace my life.
    On the day I met Gwen, I remember telling a friend that I was done with love and relationships. I said that if love wanted me, it was going to have to kick down the door and whack me over the head with a club. Only a few hours after saying that, the club had crashed down on my head.
    I had been in the throes of a terrible bout of depression at the time I met Gwen. She was a gorgeous Hispanic girl with dark brown eyes and black curly hair. When she smiled, her eyes squinted in the cutest way. When she spoke in her soft, almost breathy voice, I had to grab a chair to keep my shaking legs from giving way.
    I felt inadequate and unworthy. Gwen made me feel like I was good enough. She single-handedly pulled me free of the chains of depression and squashed those feelings of inadequacy. That being said, I still kept my guard up. I typically believe that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. After our 3rd date, I let my guard down. Then things got real.
    I let the feelings free. I was crazy for this girl, and my world suddenly seemed like it made sense. Everything I had gone through leading up to the day I met Gwen was paying the toll to cross the bridge. Then the hammer dropped.

    Gwen didn’t live where I did year-round. She worked for a family as a nanny who spent half the year on Cape Cod and the other half in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was into me, and I was into her, so we enjoyed every moment of the summer and figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
    I became so attached to Gwen. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, or remember my life before her. That’s the forever type of feeling. I was 26 at the time, she was 22, but in my mind, I could see this being a long-term relationship. What about the impending return to New Orleans?
    As the days ticked down to the first week of October and her leaving Cape Cod for half a year, I started to formulate a plan for her return. I declared my intentions. I told her that someday I wanted to marry her.
    That’s a big declaration. She was a bit taken aback, but I made sure to tell her I didn’t mean today, or even next year, just someday. To prove it, I even gave her a sort of placeholder ring. Not anything expensive, but a gesture of the weight of my words. Gwen had changed my life so completely. A person like that is not someone you let get away.
    We made promises to stay connected through the winter. We knew that come April, she’d be back and we could hopefully pick up where we left off. October came, and Gwen departed Cape Cod. She would never return.

Chapter 2: The Distance

    The first few weeks went well. We stayed in touch, and at times it was like she was just away on a trip. Then the calls and texts got fewer. Gwen worked full-time as a nanny, so I understood that she didn’t always have time to answer her phone. I knew that we just had to navigate these waters and we’d come out the other side stronger than ever.
    The hammer dropped on those dreams. Gwen let me know that the husband and wife she was working for had decided to get divorced. In short, this meant that returning to Cape Cod with them in April was off the table. I was devastated and desperate. I meant all that I had said to her and now I needed to prove it.
    First, I got time off from work and set up a trip down to New Orleans in January. It would be the first time I had seen Gwen in four months. Her mother would tell me in a letter later that Gwen was overcome with emotion seeing just how far I was willing to go to see her. She knew I really loved her.
    Looking back, the trip to New Orleans was our last hurrah, but at the time, I didn’t know that. We had fun and reconnected, and I got to meet and spend time with her family. I specifically remember Gwen’s youngest sister gifting me a pair of heart-shaped Mardi Gras beads.
    I felt like they accepted me. I even started trying to learn Spanish so I could better communicate with Gwen’s parents, who spoke very little English. Gwen felt like home to me so in my mind, wherever she was, needed to be my home.
    While driving around downtown New Orleans, I told Gwen of my plan to move to New Orleans. She was shocked. I explained my reasoning, but the most I got out of her was that it was a big city and she couldn’t stop me if that was what I wanted. The distance between us for those months could not be overcome in four days. In fact, it was only on my last day in New Orleans that it felt like it had on Cape Cod.
    We parted ways at the airport. I remained steadfast in my plans to return to New Orleans. For her part, I think Gwen could have gone either way. If I never returned, she’d be okay. If I moved there, she’d plan accordingly.

    I think deep down, I knew that was it. While driving home from Providence, the song Sunday Morning by Maroon 5 came on the radio. It was a song Gwen and I had sung together often. The lyric that broke me was “I would gladly hit the road, get up and go if I knew.
    That someday it would lead me back to you.” I cried so hard while driving on the highway that I eventually needed to pull into a rest area to collect myself.
    I figured things could go one of two ways. Either it was over, and I'd try to put my life back together without the person who had changed it more than nearly anyone. Or I followed through with my plan to move to New Orleans and let the chips fall where they may. I chose Option 2.
    I began setting up plans to move. I began scoping out apartments in and around New Orleans. I also started sending feelers out for potential jobs. The one that I was closest to accepting was working at an art gallery. I can’t remember what exactly I was going to be doing but I’d be in the art world, which was good for my hopeful photography or writing dreams.
    Although I hadn’t accepted any jobs or put any money down on any apartments, the wheels were in motion. All I had to do was tell my job on Cape Cod that I was leaving and that would be it. Then fate intervened.
    I was likely only a few weeks from making the move when Gwen ended it. She told me that things were going too fast and that she was too young and not ready for the step I was planning. She said some things that crushed me. Basically, she felt like what we had was a fun little fling, and that the time had passed. At that moment, I was hurt, confused, and angry. Looking back now, I see her side more clearly.
    I loved Gwen. She had pulled me from a deep depression just by stepping into my life. That being said, she didn’t ask to be my savior and that had to be a pressure that she wasn’t ready for. If things had gone to plan, where she returned to Cape Cod that April and we picked up where we left off, I think we would have had a good chance of making it. Life is never a single straight line though.

Chapter 3: Fading Away

    Our time as a couple was over. The calls, the texts, the poetry I wrote, it all ended. I tried, and failed, to get over Gwen. I was floating in a sea of sadness during that summer. Then life threw one of those curves.
    Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005. I saw the videos and was horrified. All I thought about was Gwen and her family and hoping that they were okay. I had to bridge the gap. I made the call to check on her.
    Her family was safe. They had relocated to Houston, Texas. Gwen and I reconnected. We didn’t talk every day like we used to, but it was at least a few times a week. Keeping the lines of communication open with her was a blessing and a curse.
    I felt that as long as we talked, there was always a chance of getting back together. After the hurricane, I wasn’t sure if Gwen’s family was to permanently stay in Houston. Maybe they’d move somewhere else? Maybe somewhere closer? Or maybe I’d plan another move and follow through?

    Within a few weeks of Hurricane Katrina, I was on the move from Cape Cod to Southern Florida. I kept Gwen in the loop with my plans to drive more than 1,500 miles from Cape Cod to Fort Lauderdale by myself in my blue Saturn Ion. At the very least, with me in Florida, she and I would be about a 17-hour drive apart. This was about 13 hours less than if I were driving to Houston from Cape Cod. I kept running on faith that we were meant to be together.
    My time in Florida was short. Hurricane Wilma thrashed the state about a month after I arrived. All of my job interviews were gone. Soon enough, my money was too. I knew I needed to punt on this journey and go back to Cape Cod to start again. It ended up being a fun story but a failure of a life change.
    As for Gwen, things kept changing. In the time since she had left Cape Cod, she had gotten very, very deep into religion. I don’t know if she was always that way and I pulled her away from it while we were together. Maybe so. All I know is that it became an insurmountable obstacle.
    I wanted Gwen to remain in my life. If I truly had meant all I said about her I’d be a hypocrite if I cut her off because we no longer were a couple. It was a double-edged sword. Every time we’d talk, I’d hear her voice, and it was like a visceral reaction. I’d remember all we said and did, and I’d want it all again. However, there was one thing I hadn’t counted on.
    She began talking about dating others. It was a gut punch. Looking back now of course Gwen would have no shortage of suitors. She was all of the things I had said and believed. Men would be falling all over themselves to be with her. I just wasn’t ready to hear that.
    I was angry, hurt, and confused again. What about me? I was good enough at one point, but now I was only good enough to be her sounding board about other men she was with. I loved her, but I couldn’t take it.
    Our calls and texts became fewer and fewer until one day they stopped, forever. I don’t remember who was last to reach out to the other. I don’t know if she called and I didn’t respond or vice versa. All I do know is that Gwen was out of my life.
    From the day we first met to the day of our last interaction, it had been two years at most. She had gone from a stranger to the most important part of my life, and back to a stranger in the blink of an eye. It was over, for now.

Chapter 4: The Search

    To cope with the end of an important relationship, I dove headlong into my writing. The first short story I wrote was actually a semi-biographical tale of my relationship with Gwen. I even called her Gwen in the story.
    Those short stories led to ebooks on Amazon. This led to my own website, a travel blog, and eventually a book deal. As much as I tried to forget Gwen, she was a huge part of my life still, as my writing career truly began as a way to deal with losing her. To this day, all of my writing and content work I do is connected to her.

    Years passed. I looked for love and failed at every turn. I was chasing the feeling that Gwen had given me. It felt like nobody measured up, or that I’d never even give them a chance to. It was sometime in early 2010 that I first tried to reconnect with her.
    I didn’t have her address. Her phone number had changed. She was nowhere to be found on social media. The only connection I had was her youngest sister, and she was not interested in helping me bridge that gap. To be fair, it wasn’t her job to reconnect her sister to an ex-boyfriend. Still, at the time, I was angry. She was my only hope, and it was dashed.
    More years passed. I met a few people. I even had a relationship that, for a time, made me forget about Gwen. However, once that one ended, I again began the search.
    By 2016, I learned that Gwen had gotten married and still lived around the Houston area. She still wasn’t on social media so all I had was the most minimal of information. I would get frustrated and then mad at myself. If I had just kept in touch even through her dating others who knows where we’d be?
    Time kept moving on. I battled alcohol issues. I dealt with the deaths of several loved ones. I kept my head down and worked on my writing, which as of today is 9 published books. I also buried myself in content creation, including a podcast. I was trying to fill every nook and cranny of my life so that I didn’t have time to think about things like relationships.
    In 2022, I tried to connect with Gwen again. I knew her 40th birthday was coming up and wanted to at least wish her a happy birthday. I mentioned to her sister about Gwen’s birthday. She never responded so I left it alone. I’d share things on social media that were vague and/or cryptic. I knew Gwen would never see it, but it soothed my heart briefly.
    This pattern continued over the next few years. Birthdays, anniversaries of our first date, I’d post something to keep that memory alive. I created a Spotify playlist with songs we used to listen to. Even if she wasn’t there, Gwen’s memory would make me smile.

    I pride myself on being great a research. I’m an excellent Internet detective, for what that’s worth. Still, despite my best efforts, I could not locate Gwen. I refused to do any people searches. I didn’t want to invade her life in such a way. I had to use my detective skills, which always led to dead ends. I had her name and roughly where she lived. I’m sure if I’d have paid, I’d have gotten what I wanted. But if I truly had loved Gwen, if I truly respected her and wanted her to be happy, I couldn’t cross that line. I’d never be able to live with myself.
    June 2024 marked 20 years since Gwen had blown up my life like the most beautiful tornado. It was another chance to reconnect. I again asked her sister to please pass along my email and phone number. I said Gwen didn’t have to use them, but if she ever wanted to reconnect, she could. Her sister said she couldn’t do it. Out of respect for Gwen’s husband, she didn’t want to give an ex-boyfriend’s contact info to her.
    I felt sad and defeated. Yet I understood. I told her sister that I would leave it alone. Out of love and respect for Gwen, I would let the past be the past. The search had to be called off.

Chapter 5: Closure

    I began to look back on things more pragmatically. I started asking bigger picture questions like ‘Why?’ Why had Gwen come into my life? What was the lesson I was supposed to have learned?
    I had loved her hard. I had loved her more intensely and deeply than anybody. I had chased those feelings and looked for them in others, only to find that it was something that couldn’t be so easily replicated.
    Gwen had become a ghost. I could never see her but I felt her in every facet of my being. She had left such a mark on me that I ended up stopping my search for a relationship with someone else because I knew they wouldn’t be Gwen. But what did I learn?

    The main thing I learned, which took me a long time to see, was that Gwen had shown me that I could be loved in a real way and do so by being a 100% authentic version of myself. I’ve felt in every other circumstance that I’ve altered something about myself to try to fit someone else’s idea of a relationship. If I could find a love like that once, then surely I could find it again, even if it took much longer than I wanted.
    The other thing that I was having trouble accepting was the fact that I was never going to get closure. My closure was not getting closure and having to deal with it. I hated that. I hated that I’d never know more about Gwen than the fact that she was married, didn’t have any kids, and lived near Houston. But it was all I was going to get, or so I thought.

    Here we go back to the beginning. Less than 24 hours from when I’m writing this, I got what I didn’t expect. I got closure. How?
    This week is the anniversary of when Gwen and I first met. I am always deep in my feels, remembering what she meant to me. It is easier to go back to that place because I was smart enough to keep a journal of our relationship. I can flip through the pages and it’s like she’s here with me again.
    I took the journal and parked in a secluded area of a beach parking lot. My windows were down, it was a perfect afternoon. I started from the beginning, making sure to soak in every word I’d written. It was different reading the words I’d written at 26-27 now in my late 40s. I had a different view of life and could see the issues I brought to the relationship.
    Don’t get me wrong, I was still looking for things I could have done to save the relationship, but when the last journal entry was finished with a period, all I could do was smile.
    I closed the notebook and stared out toward the beach. I said out loud in my car, “I want to find her. Or I want her to find me.”
    Many times I have stated this. I had put it into the universe that I wanted Gwen and I to somehow reconnect. It never happened and this time I figured it would be more of the same. Things changed a few hours later.
    I sat in my chair, looking at the laptop I’m writing this on. For kicks, I typed in Gwen’s name and town, like I had done many times before without success. I found something. There was someone with the same first name, same middle initial, same age, same town, but with a different last name. Could this be her?
    My heart began fluttering as I clicked the link to a Facebook page. What I saw knocked me for a loop. There was Gwen and her husband, they shared a page. I clicked their profile picture and saw her face for the first time in 20 years. I smiled and said, “I found you.”

    Gwen and her husband run a church in the Houston area. Their shared account is all about their religious teachings. It turns out her deep dive into religion at the end of our relationship was her true calling.
    I scrolled through the posts and photos. Over and over, I saw comments from the parishioners thanking Gwen and her husband for all of the positive impact they have made in so many people’s lives. I watched videos of Gwen giving sermons, all in Spanish, but still. It was what she was meant to do and meant to be.
    I saw the photos of Gwen with her husband. They looked happy. She looked happy. She looked as beautiful as the first day I laid eyes on her. Just as I am a far different person than when I first met her, I could tell Gwen was far different as well. In the end, I was happy for her.
    

    So what of my closure? I now have ways to contact Gwen, yet I feel no desire to. Is that strange? I searched for her for so many years and now that I’ve found her, I feel more compelled to stay in the background as only an observer.
    What good could come from my reaching out? The Facebook page is for both Gwen and her husband. Am I going to send a message spilling my guts? They also give the address of their church. Again, am I really going to write a letter condensing everything I’ve written here into a page or two?
    I don’t want to tarnish what we had. I don’t want to cause damage to Gwen’s life by revealing my truth. What would it matter? I got what I needed. I needed to see her with my own eyes. I needed to know how she was, what she was doing, and most of all know that she was happy and fulfilled.
    Gwen and I are two different people living two different lives. In the best-case scenario, one of us would have to totally alter ourselves to fit in the other’s world. I am not willing to do that, and I wouldn’t want her to do that for me. My writing career and her religious teachings are what we were meant to do. I don’t think I had a hand in helping her get to where she is, but I do know she had a major hand in getting me here.

    In the end, where does this all leave me? Once I closed the Facebook page, I felt a mix of peace and emptiness. I had been chasing Gwen for so long, and having finally found her I feel like there is a big space I need to fill with something else. I’ve been filled with content and writing work so I don’t think more of that is the answer. Maybe I’ll give a relationship a more serious try.
    As time passes, I will likely check in on Gwen. I will look at her Facebook page, and her church website, and maybe see if she’s on other social media platforms. Contacting her? Right now, that’s a ‘no.’ Out of respect for Gwen and respect for her sister, whom I had told I wouldn’t pursue her, I need to keep my word. However, if someday I open her page and it’s no longer both Gwen and her husband, then all bets are off.
    I feel strange not having that monkey on my back of needing to find Gwen. It was there so long that it’s hard to imagine life without it. After so, so long, I got the closure that seemed like I’d never get. I see how happy Gwen is, how fulfilled she is, and that’s all I want for her. Sure, I’d love to tell her all about where my road has taken me, and maybe someday that will happen. For right now, though, I’ll end this by saying thank you, Gwen, for coming into my life, for changing me more than you’ll ever know, and I kept the promise you made me make, I never forgot you.

In My Footsteps: My Biggest Butterfly Effect Moment

 

    It’s amazing how much the journey of life is a game of inches or seconds. I am getting close to wrapping up my 43^rd year on this earth and have been looking back and marveling at how many forks in the road there have been. It’s like a butterfly effect where if something had changed ever so slightly my life would look nothing like it does today.

    We all have those ‘what-if’ moments. Life is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book though, so we can’t safely look forward and see what might be. You do or do not. Typically these what-if’s come down to relationships or employment. I’ve had so many with both. I moved to Las Vegas and moved to Ft. Lauderdale at different times and wonder what if I had stayed at either place. I’ve had relationships end, or potential relationships never happen and wonder about all of them.

    However there is one what-if that I felt compelled to discuss as it coincides with a sad anniversary. As of writing this it is the 16^th anniversary to the day of Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans, Louisiana. As a brief overview, Katrina was a monstrous Category 5 hurricane which struck the United States with sustained winds topping out at 175mph. It caused $125 billion in damages and led to 1,836 deaths. New Orleans in particular was the epicenter for the destruction. Sadly also as I write this Hurricane Ida is traveling nearly the same path into the city.

    Flashback to June 2005. There was a relationship I was in that had become long-distance. She lived with her family in a suburb just outside of New Orleans. I was crazy about her. My plan was to move down to the area and begin a life and see how things progressed with her. I had visited in February and felt out how I might do moving there.  In June I had begun setting up viewings of apartments and sent out feelers for job interviews including one particular one at an art gallery.

Laketown Park in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans during my February 2005 visit.

    The plan for me was to move down to the New Orleans area in early July and go from there. Then things changed. Our relationship ended. She got cold feet and thought things were progressing too fast. Looking back she was absolutely right, I was so smitten by this girl and just wanted to skip the chase and get to the finish line. I was very confident in what our future could be, but sometimes that stuff doesn’t matter. At the time I was 27 and she was 22 so I can see that she felt she was too young for such a serious step I was planning.

    That being said, about 2 months after my New Orleans plans dissolved Hurricane Katrina hit. My first thoughts were concern for her and her family. I reached out to her after not speaking for a few months. They all had to relocate to Houston, Texas but were safe. We would remain in touch casually for several more months. Once she told me that she was seeing someone else I excused myself from her life as I didn’t think it was good for either of us to be in each other’s lives at that point.

Some of the horrific damage from Katrina in New Orleans.(cgcolman/Pixabay)

    However after I got over the initial shock of the storm and found out that she and her family were alright I went down the what-if road. If things had gone the way that I had hoped it was my intention to be down in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina. What would have happened then? Would I have stayed in New Orleans after the storm? Would I have tried to move to Houston too? What if my relationship had gone up in flames shortly after I got down there? Above all of those possible scenarios I came back to all of those poor people who lost their lives during the storm. Could I have ended up as one of them? It’s both chilling and humbling.

    As much as I wanted my relationship at the time to work and to be a grand new chapter of life I can only look back and be grateful that it didn’t. All of my writing that I have done, up to and including this blog here, might not have happened. My sadness at the ending of that relationship spurred on a lot of my initial writing. Maybe I would have still done some writing, but the travel writing which led to currently 6 books and a 7^th on the way, likely would never have happened.

geralt/Pixabay

    Who knows, maybe I get lucky and find success working in an art gallery in New Orleans? Maybe I’m lucky and spared by the hurricane? Maybe my relationship works out and the big risk pays off? Or maybe it all goes the other way.  If I could go back and change how things went down, I likely would keep it the same.  It ends up literally being the choice between love and career.

    That’s one of my big what-if, butterfly effect moments of my life. There are other ones but this one always sticks out in my mind as the biggest, or at least riskiest as far as my actual life and future goes. It’s just amazing how so much of life is just a matter of inches, or a matter of seconds one way or another.

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Previous Blog Posts:

In Their Footsteps: Cape Cod History - Lawrence's Sandwich Depot, Falmouth

In Their Footsteps: New England History - Henry & Elsie Baumann, From Escaping the Nazis to Finding Success in New England

Be sure to check out my website: Christopher Setterlund.com

Zazzle Store: Cape Cod Living