Category: The Book

How to Fail in Love, or: What a man will do

Joseph Lyttleton

Chapter V

[Warning: This chapter deals with sexual assault. Names have been changed.]

We didn’t last.

We could hash out the reasons for months – and we did – but in the end, perhaps it was inevitable: a transient soul meeting an intransient heart.

Chicago brought its share of challenges for Selene and me, financial and personal, but whereas in San Francisco there were common foes to unite us, now it was just the two of us sharing a single bedroom apartment in the North Side neighborhood of Buena Park.

There was much to love: the city, the neighborhood, our apartment. Within walking distance of Wrigleyville and Boy’s Town and right off the vital Red Line, we were just minutes from the Loop. We also had “our” bar for cheap drinks and billiards whenever we needed a casual date night.

Selene was able to return to school to finish up her senior year (a main reason for choosing Chicago) and my job search lasted a mere two and a half months instead of five. Granted, my job was as a sales associate in the cavernous Forever 21 on Michigan Avenue, but it provided a paycheck. Bills were being paid, life was being lived.

Unfortunately, our visions of the future were not in alignment. Over the year in San Francisco, Selene transformed from a shell-shocked new explorer to the woman who traveled to Chicago ahead of me to make arrangements. She was stronger and more resilient. Just because someone can move, though, doesn’t mean they want to.

As the months passed, Selene dropped hints about backpacking Europe together. It was an appealing idea – the classic travel narrative – but to do so would require staying at least another year in Chicago to save money. It’d mean abandoning 10 Cities/10 Years.

Other factors were leading to our dissolution, as well. There were the usual abrasions that build up on the body after two years together, exacerbated by our abnormal circumstances: Suspicions of infidelity and apathy, fights and spying, the subtle but inevitable erosion of passion. We took each other for granted, only seeing one another from the corners of our eyes.

I pulled the trigger. One March night, Selene once again brought up a European divergence, now more of an urging than a suggestion. I could no longer deny the inevitable. I felt incensed because of what she was asking me to give up, but also mortified because of what I was forcing her to forgo: a life of her own.

We argued through the night, much of it in tears. When the sun arose the next morning, we were sharing a bed but no longer together.

Neither one of us could afford to move out. Overnight, our apartment had suddenly become claustrophobic. It was late March and my move wasn’t until September. We had five months ahead of us, cellmates in a rented prison.

Some days, we were utterly miserable. Others, we found equilibrium. The fact of our underlying incompatibility was always there, but with that out in the open, we were looking at each other straight on again. At times, it felt like love; that is, when it didn’t erupt as hate. After everything else fell away, we still had passion. You can’t have the warmth of fire without destruction.

August, 2010

Four months after our break up, Selene moved out. She was staying in Chicago and had found a new apartment with a roommate who’d arrive from Philadelphia in a few weeks. Though we were cycling through one of our regular bouts of acrimony, I helped her move across town. That was to be, more or less, the end of it. We were both alone now.

2:00 am

I can’t remember the last time I slept uninterrupted through the night without the aid of intoxicants. There’s always a device by the bed, a tether to consciousness, to an unsettled world. It’s nigh impossible to disconnect.

It was late and I was asleep, but only barely, when a familiar chirping stirred me. Grabbing my phone in the dark, I read the glowing words.

“I was almost raped.”

I shot up in bed. Selene’s message sent shocks through my nervous system, that word exploding like napalm from every synapse.

In a fog, I texted back.

“Where are you?”

When she didn’t respond immediately, I called. She answered through choked sobs.

“He’s in my apartment,” she said. “I left.”

I knew who “he” was. Tommy, her friend, was stationed on a base north of the city and had come down for a Saturday night movie with Selene. I confess, Tommy had previously been a cause of discord between Selene and me. They weren’t romantic (he was married), but theirs was a charged, flirtatious friendship. I had never met the man, but jealousy preemptively bred hate nonetheless.

After the movie, Tommy went out with his buddies for drinks. Ostensibly too inebriated to return to base, he called up Selene and asked to crash at her place. She offered him her couch. What happened next is a common chapter in the stories of far too many women.

Tommy came to Selene’s room and made advances, which she rebuffed. She closed her door. Soon, he came back and attempted twice to force himself upon her. She fought him off and, with no other choice, abandoned her new apartment.

These details I learned later, but at that moment in my darkened room, all I knew was that he was still in her apartment and Selene was somewhere alone.

“I’m heading over there!” I yelled, already dressing.

“Please don’t! I need somewhere to go. Stay at our apartment. Please!” Fighting every instinct, every screaming, wrathful cell in my body, I complied. Selene’s stricken voice was drenched in tears. I stayed. I waited.

When she arrived, she was pale, her eyes sallow and red. She lied in our former bed and I pulled the blankets over us as she cradled into my body. It was like our first night in San Francisco all over again, except I never fell asleep. I wanted to be of comfort to her, but my body was so tense with fury that it must have felt like hugging a statue.

I worked the next morning. I imagine I must have offered to call out and stay with Selene, but for whatever reason I still went. I hadn’t slept, my body was sore from clutching Selene to me all night, and my anger hadn’t subsided. It was a Sunday morning, so the train was, thankfully, mostly unoccupied. I found an isolated seat in the corner, curled up against the glass as tight as I could, and wept. Bitter tears burnt my face.

At work, I managed some semblance of composure, but it must have been obvious that something was seriously wrong. Don, a jovial, good-hearted friend approached and asked what was wrong. He hadn’t been the first to ask how I was doing that morning, but I had brushed most inquiries off with the usual prevarications. When Don asked, though, I could no longer contain the anger.

“Jesus. What are you going to do?” He asked.

“I’m going to kill him,” I promised. Don coughed a slight, nervous laugh, realizing there was no humor in my tone.

I pride myself on eschewing macho male stereotypes, but in this situation all I could think of was fighting. I craved a violent solution.

The problem was, I had little recourse to enact revenge. This wasn’t a movie, I wasn’t going to sneak onto a military base and display some heretofore unseen fighting acumen. Any hope of punishing Tommy required he return to Chicago. I also needed help.

The following day, I found Tommy’s private email address and, creating a fake account, sent him a message with a simple subject line: “Careful”

I opened the missive by laying out what I knew had happened between him and Selene. I put it in exacting detail so that there could be no question of “interpreting” events differently after the fact. I warned that I knew he was married and I could contact his wife easily.

Then I made my demands:

You will come back into the city, Chicago, at a time that is convenient for me. We are going to meet face to face, man to man.

I ended with:

You will not tell Selene you are coming here. In fact, you will not talk to her at all, ever again. Forget you ever knew her.

Meanwhile, Selene didn’t want to return to her apartment, so she stayed with me. Around her, I hoped to be a calming presence, but I was nothing but boiling agitation and rage. She knew I wasn’t letting the matter go, but I kept her in the dark about my intentions. Tommy couldn’t go unpunished. I had to prove – to her, to myself? – that this crime would be met with sufficient vengeance.

Our SoCal friend, Kate, vowed to fly out and “beat the shit out of” Tommy, but I assured her I was taking matters into my own hand.

At work, I enlisted Don and another friend, Aidan, to my cause. Knowing most of the details, they offered their tentative support, not entirely sure how seriously I intended to pursue my plan. Trained as boxers, both men were muscular and intimidating in all the ways I was not. I can’t discount the racial component either: they were black men and I was planning to rendezvous with Tommy on the South Side.

I had no devious master plan, no Machiavellian revenge plot: I wanted Tommy in my presence and I wanted to hurt him. Only his blood would pay for his sins.

But Tommy didn’t respond to my email. Two days passed before I sent another taunting email. I tried to sound threatening, in charge, but the truth was, if he didn’t respond, there was essentially nothing I could do. 

He responded. No denials.

I know i was so very wrong for this, i wish in so many ways i could reverse my actions, not because Selene turned me away, but because it was a darkness within me that i have been fighting for so very long.

It wouldn’t hold up as a confession in court, but it was enough for me.

Over the next few days, we exchanged a half dozen emails. I gave him a date to meet me. He provided excuses why he couldn’t get away from the base. I told him if he didn’t show, I’d forward our email chain to his wife and his CO. Meanwhile, Don and Aidan were, judiciously, backing out of my plan. They understood better than I that no one was making it out of this unscathed.

Finally, Tommy sent one last, clearly rattled email:

I have told my command and my wife what truely happened, they have all read your e-mail. I was given a direct order to tell you such and that i will no be meeting with you under any circumstances.

I attempted to goad him out of hiding, but he didn’t respond. So, through a fake Facebook account, I sent his wife our emails. And there it ended.

I have no idea what became of Tommy. I don’t know what he meant by “what truely happened.” Maybe his wife never read the messages or didn’t believe them if she did. If nothing else, I wanted the people in Tommy’s life to learn the kind of vile man he truly was. I suspect some already knew. I can only hope his “darkness” was never unleashed on another woman.

Without resolution, my anger wouldn’t abate.

A week after escaping assault, shaken but not broken, Selene returned to her apartment and a life that would continue in Chicago without me.

For the remainder of the month before I moved to Tennessee, Selene and I feinted at an amicable friendship. I wish I could say our final parting ended with hugs and fond reminiscing set to an acoustic song like some treacly TV series finale. Alas, our last meeting ended in rage-fueled tears – mine.

Still holding onto resentments from our relationship, I laid blame at her feet. I accused her of leading Tommy on by flirting with him. I did what so many before have done, what too many continue to do: I implied that a woman who dares display her sexuality gives up her right to bodily autonomy.

This was Selene’s struggle, and I had made it about me. I thought it was my war to fight, that I was Selene’s soldier. What she really deserved was an ally.

The Chapter Ends

We’d been good and bad together in equal measures. We had the singular ability to lift one another up, and tear each other down.

I left Chicago in a daze, 100% certain I would never see Selene again; 100% sure I would. I was halfway through.

Selene was no longer the girl I’d met in Costa Mesa two years earlier. So much had happened to her since moving to San Francisco – to both of us – and she’d been transformed. She couldn’t be the person she had been even if she wanted to. Change – positive, negative – is the inevitable result of stepping out one’s front door.

Skydeck View Cropped

It was September. After two hard years together, our roads now diverged.

Keep reading: Chapter VI – Nashville

Making it through: Surviving the Great Recession on opioids and vodka

Joseph Lyttleton

Chapter IV

[Note: The names, they are a-changin’.]

The most scenic route to San Francisco from Orange County is the 101: long stretches of coastal views and cool, dry air whipping through your windows. For our cross state move, Selene and I drove the 5 through the desert.

The trip started with a fight over a flimsy IKEA mattress that refused to stay strapped to the roof of her Jeep. Selene argued for dumping the thing, but I was determined to get that slab of hay to our new home even if I had to ride on top of it. Ultimately, we dumped it by a gas station dumpster just outside L.A.

So began Year 4.

This would be Selene’s first time living away from her parents.

Relocating every year bred routine: rent an apartment, explore the neighborhood, find a job. For Selene, though – joining me despite the vehement objections of her father (strangely immune to my charms) – this relocation upended her entire existence. In addition to her family, she was leaving behind a job, college, and her college boyfriend – her entire life up until that point – to be with me as I pursued my dream; a dream, mind you, without a raison d’être.

We’d gone in with two other couples for a lease in the unfashionable Portola neighborhood of southeast San Francisco. Though the predominantly Asian neighborhood is at a remove from the more celebrated and urban areas (or, at least, was back then), wherever you find yourself in the city’s 49 square miles, you’re never far from some activity.

We arrived under the red glow of the gloaming. Greeting us at the Jeep were Ann and Don, he an aspiring stand-up from Australia, and she the manager of a clothing boutique. Inside were Samantha and Glen, an earthy, vegan couple who, like Selene and myself, were brand new transplants to San Francisco. After first impressions, I expected to have more in common with Ann and Don, but they’d soon demolish that assumption.

With greetings out of the way, Selene and I unloaded our belongings and called it a night. In echoes of my first night in Philadelphia, all we had to sleep on was a pile of blankets.

Exhausted, Selene still couldn’t sleep. The alien surroundings mixed with a motorcycle engine revving belligerently beneath our window had her on edge. I offered to go out and say something to the cyclist, but Selene insisted I stay with her. I was her anchor to the familiar, and would be for some time. I had every intent of staying awake until Selene fell asleep, but eventually I dozed off. She never did.

Our first San Francisco morning, Selene was clearly operating on frayed nerves. I suggested a walk to familiarize her with the neighborhood so the strangeness might dissipate.

She appeared to have calmed some by the time we came across a discarded mattress a few blocks from our apartment. We hauled the find back to our place, and even though we didn’t have the right size bed frame, just having a real mattress to sleep on felt like a victory. Laying sheets down, we crawled into one another’s arms. For a moment, everything felt settled.

The moment was brief.

“Are you okay?” I already knew the answer. I could feel Selene crying into my chest, her body taut as a violin string.

“I can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay here.”

Since our arrival, her anxiety had only grown worse. I attempted to convince her to stay and give San Francisco a chance, to trust that in time she would acclimate. I knew well the unease of unfamiliar territory. My best efforts weren’t enough, though. Even as I begged her to reconsider, she gathered her things and headed to the Jeep.

Out on the street, I tried every last arrow in my quiver to change Selene’s mind. For an instant, I thought I might have succeeded when she slid back out of the driver’s seat. But it was only to give me a tearful, trembling goodbye.

Another woman driving away.

Selene didn’t answer her phone while on the road, so I called Kate, a mutual friend, and filled her in. Kate had worked with us at the bookstore in Costa Mesa and had been privy to every development in our romance from the beginning. Sometimes she seemed as invested in Selene and my relationship as we were.

Kate leapt into action. Throughout the next week, she worked on persuading Selene to give San Francisco another shot. Sometimes, Selene and I would talk by phone, but with 400 miles between us, it was up to Kate to act as our mediator.

Alone again, I had little else to do but wander San Francisco. One afternoon, having stepped into a bookstore, a title caught my eye: Stuff White People Like. Absentmindedly flipping through the pages of the book, one entry stuck out: “Difficult Breakups.” Touché, hipsters, touché. Under the circumstances, the humor was a bit lost on me.

Day by day, Kate chipped away at Selene’s doubts. Finally, Selene called and we discussed what it would take for her to feel comfortable in the city. I vowed to spend all day, every day with her until she felt at home. We would go to shows, take in the sights, have our bohemian, San Francisco romance.

Meanwhile, Selene was remembering why she had gone with me in the first place: her boredom in Orange County, the lack of ambition she felt there, her desire to see more. She was primed to travel. Would she take the risk?

A week after I had helplessly watched her drive away, Selene returned.

It might have been the biggest mistake of her life.

September 2008

It’s hard to express just how disastrously those first months in San Francisco went for us, but consider: We moved to one of the priciest cities in the world at a moment in time that economists have identified as the nadir of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. So, not ideal.

Up until that point, it had never taken me more than a month to find work. In San Francisco, I went without employment until January of 2009. Selene had better luck, landing a gig with the San Francisco Symphony, selling tickets on commission. Bafflingly, the middle of a recession is not the best time to try to hawk tickets to the opera.

And then there was Ann and Don, the Platonic ideal of horrendous roommates. Don, the Australian comedian with an allergy to jokes, didn’t have a visa to work and so spent his days lounging on the couch in his underwear. He might have pulled off the charming layabout cliché if he weren’t such an unrepentant piece of shit. Verbally abusive towards Ann, he berated her for her cooking (though she worked all day, she made his dinner every night) and could be heard yelling at her behind their closed door almost daily.

Ann, who could be perplexingly chipper and assertive with the group, confided her grimmer truths to Samantha: she was pregnant and hoped to keep it, but Don was demanding she abort or he’d leave her. Having furthermore admitted a penchant for finding (nay, seeking) abusive relationships, there was little question which decision Ann would ultimately make. One weekend, the couple disappeared without announcement; when they returned, the matter was closed.

Samantha, Glen, Selene, and I resolved that they had to leave. Best case scenario, Don might be forced to return to Australia and would simply ditch Ann. Since they were persistently behind on the rent and owed Samantha and Glen money, their protestations garnered little sympathy. Still, Ann knew there was only one person responsible for their ousting: me.

Cornering me in the kitchen one afternoon, she unloaded, arguing that she and Don only fought because of my sinister presence. I, it turned out, was the real corrosive element in the household. More stunned than angry, my bemused expression must have rubbed her the wrong way because suddenly she reared back, snatched a spoon from the counter, and flung it at my face. Thankfully, her aim was as poor as her taste in men.

In the midst of that drama, Selene and I had our dwindling finances to worry about. We rarely went out. Instead of drinking cheap whiskey, I settled for cheaper vodka (sacrifices had to be made). We did manage a pleasant New Year’s Eve out when an elderly queer gentleman at the bar took a shining to me and bought us drinks all night in exchange for the occasional ass grab. Worth it.

As our poverty worsened, I grew convinced that my project would become a causality of the recession. The stress dissolved our bound like acid; Selene and I existed in a perpetual cycle of fighting and reconciliation.

In November, Samantha alerted me to a two-week medical study that paid $2,100. I promptly signed up. It was a drug trial. I was administered two different drugs: the first was a potent opioid, while the second was supposed to nullify the narcotic effects of the first in an effort to quell withdrawal symptoms. Either the drug worked or I was on a placebo, because the only effects I felt were constipation.

For the length of the study, I was sequestered on a single floor of the hospital, leaving Selene behind two months after promising to be by her side through everything. She was on her own, and she was fine.

Home sweet home

When I left the hospital – practically rich – Ann and Don were gone.

Shortly afterwards, we received news that Selene’s great-grandfather had passed. Driving down to Orange County to attend the funeral, we had no choice but to stay with her parents where I was not a popular guest. Still, aside for a few pointed remarks about my joblessness, her father was generally civil.

Preparing to leave, I carried our bags to the Jeep. With Selene in the house, her father stood on the driveway, drinking a beer.

“Must feel good to be the man for once,” he called out. We didn’t speak another word to each other.

(At this time, I was also dealing with excruciating pain: my wisdom teeth were coming in, but jobless and without insurance, I had to live with it.)

In December, a charming young woman named Nicki moved in with her kitten, ushering in a quiet, calm breath of fresh air. Our living dynamic was now peaceful. The five housemates spent many nights playing board games or watching movies together.

In January, I interviewed for a management position at the locally owned Books, Inc. I had interviewed for this exact same position when I first arrived in the city, but never received a call back. That was 2008; in the new year, the store manager hired me essentially on the spot. After five months adrift, we found land.

Then Nicki’s breathing problems began. We discovered moist, black mold growing in almost every room of the apartment. At first, we only noticed dark spots in the middle of the walls, but upon investigation, we uncovered thick sheets of growth behind our bookshelves and dressers. Our attempts to wipe it away were futile: the apartment was a lost cause.

Leaving behind our friends – comrades in arms, by this point – Selene and I moved to Outer Richmond, a short walk from the beach. We had been in San Francisco for six months.

After half a year of constant, roiling turmoil, our lives were stabilizing. The new apartment was clean and the new roommates were boring, but in a good way. Selene, adapted to her new life, worked as a bank teller. We could afford the occasional date night, usually Mexican food and margaritas at a corporate chain followed by a film at the indie cinema. We were making it work; we worked.

But there’s no such thing as status quo in my life.

Year 5 was on the horizon.

Keep reading: Chapter V – Chicago

The difference three months can make

Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Chapter III

[Reminder: Names are sometimes real, sometimes changed, sometimes made up because of whiskey.]

Three months changed my entire life.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

June, 2007

In the years immediately following 9/11, a confluence of political conservatism and social frivolity made California’s Orange County the darling of pop culture. With its green money, yellow beaches, and rainbow of white epidermis, the OC-

…the OC was everywhere. Regardless if media was glorifying or satirizing the place, all of it helped mythologize that immaculate corner of America.

Orange County’s cultural bubble had burst by the time I arrived in 2007. I don’t mean to say that the county wasn’t still wealthy – it was – but it no longer captured the ADD-ravaged attentions of the collective television audience. It had lost its aura of cool (or ironic cool), so it was the ideal place for me to move.

In fact, I moved there because of Amber. Like myself, Amber was inflicted with a compulsion to write. We had met the previous December in Los Angeles at what could loosely be described as a writers conference. Our mutual appreciation for, shall we say, spiritual matters had led to a fast friendship, and whether in LA or at meet-ups in NYC, we made swift work of a bottle.

In the waning months of my year in Philadelphia, I still hadn’t determined where I would move for Year 3. I was leaning towards Chicago, but that felt too easy since I had spent a considerable amount of time in the Windy City during my college years. Then, one evening, Amber mentioned that she needed a roommate to fill an extra room in her Costa Mesa apartment. That was that.

At 24, I was single, young (not that I knew it), and living in the land of milk and silicone.

 

Oh, and I had hair.

Our days were filled with beach lounging, eating sushi, and drinking; our nights spent clubbing, seeing comedy shows, and drinking. My alcohol intake soared, and with it came confidence. Not with women, to be clear; just with my self-estimation of artistic relevance. Now in my third year, 10 Cities/10 Years had taken shape. I envisioned the future, the path ahead: a decade documenting hard partying in America’s coolest cities.

If my alcohol consumption was at an all-time high, my art consumption was almost non-existent. Orange County was woefully lacking in anything resembling culture. Sprinkled near the beaches were an assortment of art galleries that I’d sometimes peak in, but they were invariably unimpressive showcases for some hobbyist painter’s gaudy beach porn. Live music, usually lifeblood for me, was hard to find; I attended one concert the entire time I lived in Costa Mesa, and that turned into a bit of a mess.

Amber and I took it upon ourselves to address this deficiency by holding poetry readings in our living room. Mostly, they were gatherings of writer friends, like Ivy, our resident mystic and one of the driving forces behind the initial writers conference. The get-togethers occasionally involved the reading of poetry, an unsightly event we are all better to forget, but sometimes we did more seemly things, like the evening I manically insisted every new arrival watch “2 Girls, 1 Cup.” I like to think I did my part for culture in the OC.

Oh, we had jobs, too. I worked as the music manager at a nearby Barnes & Noble (now shuttered), while Amber tended bar at a local gentleman’s club (also closed now). I learned quickly that, like almost every city in the southern half of the United States, Orange County’s public transportation was abysmal. With my apologies to Leo, good public transportation is all alike; every bad public transportation system is bad in its own way. For Costa Mesa, that meant meticulously clean buses that only arrived once every hour. Not that it mattered. Only the help took the bus.

(Costa Mesa has been nicknamed Costa Mexico because, being slightly inland and more affordable, it houses much of the immigrant population that sustains the lifestyles of the rich and famous.)

I bought a bike.

It was stolen.

I bought another bike.

One day, as I rode to work and barreled down the sidewalk (Orange County bike lanes being a joke), I spotted a pretty young girl walking towards me. Not wanting to run her over, I deftly turned my tire to swerve around her. In my head, I saw myself soaring just past her, my hair waving behind me like Fabio. In reality, my front tire hit the lip of a jutting sidewalk slab and my momentum thrust me over the handlebars and hands-first onto the pavement. As I quivered in pain on the ground, scrapped and bleeding, the girl passed by me without a word. It was the most OC experience imaginable.

December, 2007

After six months of living together, Amber and I were still enjoying each others’ company, which, in my vast roommate experience, is a rare thing. In fact, we were almost inseparable, so we started talking about living together for a second year in a different city. Amber was a young, (generally) single woman with nothing holding her in place, so why not?

I had already set my eyes on San Francisco for Year 4, and as we discussed the possibility of moving together, we fed off one another’s excitement. In mid-December, we drove up for a Wednesday night in the City by the Bay. Our belief that San Fran would be bumping every night of the week, it turned out, was mistaken.

Of course, we could’ve planned our visit better. Renting a room central-ish to the city, we unloaded our stuff and started walking. As dusk fell, we strolled through our future home together and anticipated the wild, drunken stories that awaited. While we walked, a homeless man stopped us and asked for change. Amber replied…

I’m going to be honest here: She made a comment that, although not meant in jest, cracked me up in the moment. After joking about it for months afterwards, though, and with many years to embellish the memory, I can’t recall what she actually said. So, here are some options, pick your favorite:

  1. “Can you break a hundred?”
  2. “Could you take a debit card?”
  3. “No, but do you have a cigarette?”

We wandered on through the dwindling light until we came across a streetcar to nowhere. We hopped on, hoping it would take us to the night life, but as the city light receded behind us, we realized we were heading in the wrong direction. Debarking in the dark, we sought a taxi.

“Where to?” The cabbie asked.

“We’re looking for a dance club,” I told him

“Got it.” After fifteen minutes, we arrived at our destination: a strip club.

“Not that kind of dancing.” Amber and I discussed it amongst ourselves and surmised that if we wanted mid-week dancing in San Francisco, there was only one group we could count on: The Gays.

“Take us to a gay club,” we instructed.

“Got it.” He drove us across town and deposited us in front of a garishly painted building with a large black sign that read in bold, stenciled letters, “STUD.” Oh yes, this would do nicely. Not knowing what type of bacchanal to expect, we giddily threw open the door and entered into…

An empty bar. In the void stood Nick, a solitary bartender occupying himself with the polishing of glassware. One man sat at the bar, but it was readily apparent that he was less a patron than a down-on-his-luck chap being tolerated because no one else was around. Nick’s face immediately lit up when he saw us approaching.

Apologizing for the lack of festivities, gay or otherwise, Nick offered us a drink. After two hours of fruitless searching, we saddled up. With no one else in need of Nick’s services, the three of us chatted for hours. We told him of our plan to move to the city next year and Nick assured us that, despite the evidence of this evening, we would adore San Francisco. Upon request, he happily played music so Amber and I could dance on the vacant floor by ourselves.

For every drink Nick poured Amber, he tossed me one on the house. In Costa Mesa, Amber received free drinks all the time from bros in the bar. Frequently, I milked a couple gratis cocktails from the guys trying to usher me out of the way. In the Stud, the roles were reversed. I’ve set off my share of gaydars in my time, so I knew to turn into the slide. By the time we called it quits, I’d paid for one drink and we had a new friend waiting for us to move up. Nick hugged me warmly at the door.

(I never saw him again.)

The next day, Amber and I toured the city that would be our future home. In the light of day, there was no doubt that San Francisco was one of the most beautiful metropolises I’d ever visited. I was already picturing the possibilities.

An example of somewhere we didn’t visit in SF

There was just one hiccup in our plans: Though I’d been preparing for this move since I deplaned in June, Amber hadn’t been anticipating a relocation. 2008 was dawning, with five short months until my intended departure. So she asked: Was willing to delay my move through the summer to give her extra time to save funds?

Sure, I said. What difference could three months make?

June, 2008

In the interim months between our trip to San Francisco and the time I had originally intended to move, things between Amber and I changed. Mostly, I suppose, it was simply the passage of time. I made friends at work and had developed my own sort of life, while Amber dated and went out with friends from different circles. Our drifting apart was, at least partially, due to the inevitable entropy of existence.

With the summer approaching and the move less than three months away, I was keenly aware that Amber’s financial position seemed no different than it had been in December.

I can’t speak for her. There are dozens of reasons why a person may decide to stay instead of moving, most perfectly understandable. I suspect for Amber there were a number of reasons, including the simple fact that she had built a life in Southern California. She may have also concluded that while I had a specific (albeit esoteric) rationale for moving, she was just going on a whim.

In those final months together, Amber and I didn’t talk much. Our lives were on different tracks. I had fallen head first into a romance with a coworker and my plans for San Francisco were quickly – and dramatically – changing. Rooming with her had been the best living situation I could have hoped for, but that phase of my life – like so many before it, so many after – had to end.

I ruminate often on how much my life changed because of that one choice to stay an extra three months in Costa Mesa. If I had arrived in San Francisco in June instead of September – before the Great Recession had kicked into full gear – I quite possibly could have found work right away instead of being unemployed for five months. I would have lived with different roommates instead of an emotionally damaged woman and her abusive boyfriend. I wouldn’t have had to move halfway through the year because of mold eating away at every surface of the apartment.

Something might have kept me in San Francisco. Maybe I would’ve done the next six cities in a different order, or picked different cities altogether. A thousand divergent paths came into existence the moment I made that seemingly minor deviation.

I will never know the ways my life changed because of those three months.

What I do know is, I would’ve never fallen in love with Selene.

Keep reading: Chapter IV – San Francisco

Sound & Vision or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Whiskey

Joseph Lyttleton

CHAPTER II

[Some names are real, some are changed, and some are made up because I don’t remember their real ones. You can guess which is which.]

I was leaving work when my phone buzzed: a text. It was Megan.

“You want to get drinks?” It read.

~~

Two months prior to this evening, I was employed at Sound & Vision, a used CD/DVD store with two locations in downtown Philadelphia, one on 2nd Street and the other on South Street. Separated by less than a mile, when I needed to bounce from one store to the other, I frequently took a scenic stroll past Penn’s Landing.

I began working there in June, only a few weeks after departing Charlotte. The job involved sifting through stacks of mostly unlistenable CDs while blasting Neutral Milk Hotel over the stores speakers or staving off boredom by watching movies on a 13″ television. For a 23-year-old new to the city, it was almost the perfect job. Steve, the owner, played the role of Almost.

A man more horizontal than vertical, Steve had spent his entire 50 years in Philadelphia but looked no less road worn for it. He rhapsodized frequently about his past accomplishments and justified his current, not-quite-estimable status by blaming any number of villains: Past employees, city officials, his baby mama.

I suspected, however, that his decline in fortunes might fairly be attributed to his crack addiction. That, and his weakness for companionship. Prostitutes aren’t cheap; although, his did appear to be on the, shall we say, more economical side.

As Steve’s extracurricular activities took precedence over managing his stores (and paying his employees, and bathing), he charged me with finding someone to cover the shifts he was no longer interested in working himself.

One of those interviewees was Megan. She was a petite, mousy girl with an almost perfectly round face and hair so thin and matted down, she gave the impression of someone just a couple months out from finishing chemo treatment. Other than the aforementioned baby mama, Donna, the staff was all male, so I recommended Megan to Steve who, with all the vehemence he could muster, said, “Fine.”

After that, I rarely saw Megan unless there was a problem. The stores could operate with one employee at a time, and as the de facto manager (a role I had essentially forced Steve to bestow upon me), I took all the hours I could get.

When I did cross paths with the other staff, we shared our latest stories on Steve’s erratic behavior.

“He came into the store with a hooker and emptied the till.”

“He called me up, yelled at me, and then started sobbing.”

“He smells like a homeless man, if that homeless man ran back-to-back marathons.”

With Steve growing increasingly unhinged, the responsibility of running the stores fell to me, even as I knew no employees were being paid. Some of the newest hires – including Megan – still hadn’t received a single paycheck. I received promises almost daily that we would be paid “the next time I come in.” But one afternoon, I noticed an ominous bill in the pile of mail. Holding the unopened envelope to the light, I could make out the words “Past Due” and a number with five digits before the decimal.

On what would turn out to be my last day working for Steve, I arrived before noon at the South Street location. Megan was to work at 2nd Street that afternoon; it was a normal Sunday.

A few minutes after I opened South Street, Megan called in a frenzy.

“My purse was stolen.” She had opened the store, set her bag down on the counter and gone to the back for a moment. When she came back out, someone had absconded with her possessions. Frazzled and upset, she wanted to go immediately to the police station to make a report. I told her I’d have Steve come down and cover the store. That didn’t seem unreasonable. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Steve arrived at 2nd Street in a sour mood, his 4-year-old son and Donna, the child’s mother, in tow. Immediately after relieving Megan, he called me on the store phone and launched into a lengthy diatribe, complaining about our overstock and any number of other grievances. This haranguing continued for a half hour, until eventually his voice began to drop out and his words jumbled together. Then silence.

He fell asleep. Poor guy, apparently all those hookers and blow had plum tuckered him out.

An hour later, I received a call from Megan.

“They’re both passed out.”

“Excuse me?”

“Donna is asleep on the ground behind the counter, and Steve is passed out in the back. He doesn’t have clothes on.”

I had unfortunately had the inauspicious experience of walking in on a sleeping Steve before, so I knew what she was witnessing: A gray-haired, whale of a man, undressed to his skivvies, his gelatin hindquarters squeezed to the point of bursting inside tighty (off-)whities. It was a sight meant for neither man nor woman.

“You have to get out of there,” I insisted.

“I can’t,” she protested. “The boy’s here. There’s a homeless guy in here with him.” Where was Norman Rockwell when you needed him?

Megan did leave, after Donna had stirred, and she came straight to South Street. I was sitting there with another employee who Steve had fired the night before (the employee claimed he quit). He was looking to get paid, and come to think of it, Megan wouldn’t mind the same.

I gave the former employee about $200 out of the till, figuring that was the least Steve could do. I told Megan she should just go home for the day. There was no way she could be expected to work around her half-naked boss (no sexual harassment policy on earth would let that fly). I told them that if Steve contacted them, tell them I gave them permission and they could blame me.

They did. And he did.

When Steve awoke from his power nap, he called again, apoplectic. He upbraided me for giving away his money. For an hour, we yelled at each other, I laying out his numerous sins, he venting all the ways I had earned his disdain. Then, with his anger boiling over, he abruptly hung up.

Stewing for half an hour, I paced back and forth behind the counter while the few customers the store had stared at me with concern apparent in their eyes. They’d heard everything.

I called Steve again and quit. Immediately, he turned apologetic and conciliatory. He offered to pay me (most of) what he still owed me. He offered to drive me home. He offered to buy me dinner. I took him up on all of it; then I still quit.

My triumphant exit was slightly undercut by the fact that I had already agreed to cover Megan’s shift the next day. But then that was it.

A few days later, I started working at Penn Book Center and I put Steve and his insanity behind me.

~~

Megan and I had remained in touch, but this was our first excuse to hang out.

“They’re running a crazy promotion. Free vodka from 6-7.”

In those days, I wasn’t yet on the whiskey train. As an inexperienced drinker in Charlotte, I initiated my journey towards noble alcoholism with rum. However, after a few too many nights that resulted in my evening’s drinks reincarnated as vomit, I was looking for a less sweet drink. Vodka, why not?

The bar was somewhere downtown, and that’s about as specific as I can hope to get. When I arrived, Megan was there with a friend I didn’t know. The promotion, – sponsored by Smirnoff, or Skyy, or Absolut, as if it made a difference – was as advertised: From 6 to 7, the bar was slinging free vodka. The three of us immediately lined up and downed a round. And then we did it again. And again.

In between drinks, Megan and I caught up. She had stayed on at Sound & Vision for a month after I left. With the crew diminished, she was catapulted into the managerial role I had vacated. Whereas I had convinced Steve to allow me to take cash from the register when I needed to pay bills and whatnot, Megan lasted nearly two months at the store and never received a red cent. “I quit last week,” she said.

By the time the hour had passed, we had managed four or five shots each, and I, being a vodka-newbie and drinking on an empty stomach, was feeling the warm, Russian comfort in my gut. My drinking companions, being prudent with their finances, packed it in when the free booze dried up.

I, on the other hand, had a full time job that actually provided an income. I said goodbye to my companions and saddled back up to the bar.

All I remember after that was stumbling out of the bar, maybe ten minutes later, just as possibly three hours. Crowds of well-heeled couples were gathered on the sidewalk, waiting for taxis. I circumvented the line and threw myself into the back seat of an unsuspecting cab.

“Where you going?”

“50th Street and Spruce,” I sputtered.

The cab was swirling. The planet was shaking. As the taxi pulled away from the curb, I felt a familiar churn in my core. I rolled down the windows and – well, I’d like to say that I managed to evacuate everything outside the window, but I suspect that was not the case.

“Here you are,” the cabbie said curtly after only a few minutes. Even wasted, I knew he couldn’t have possibly gotten all the way across town.

“Where are we?” I asked, as much a question of location as a metaphorical pondering from death’s door.

“15th Street.”

“No, 50th Street. Five-Oh.”

“I don’t go that far,” he stated in such a way as to preclude debate. Drunk, sick, and wobbly, I paid the protracted tab and stepped out of the cab and into darkness. I was just on the outskirts of Center City, but it might as well have been the woods by Camp Crystal Lake for all I knew.

Now, on top of my inebriation and general wooziness, I was lost in a city I had only lived in for three months. My dark haze had me turned around and unable to figure out which direction I needed to head. Looking about me, I picked a direction and…

Woke up on my lumpy futon the next morning.

This wouldn’t be the last night I would find myself in an unknown Philly neighborhood and somehow will myself home. It was also the initiation of a brief affair with vodka that would last roughly until I moved to southern California and began courting a burly gentleman named Jack.

I hung out with Megan two or three more times after that night and then she just slipped out of my life, like so many other two-month friends I’ve had. Philadelphia, more than anywhere else I lived, was a city I merely passed through, sometimes stumbling. Much of that year set the pattern for the next decade of my life, but when Year 2 ended, there were no tearful goodbyes, no farewell parties.

I was stronger for it: the struggles, the isolation, the city’s coarse touch. I chose Philadelphia for my second year specifically so I could push myself, test my mettle. In that sense, it fulfilled every expectation. It’s why I’ll always have a fondness for that dirty town; even a slight appreciation for Steve.

Still, a month before I packed up all my stuff and moved to Southern California, I trekked down to 2nd Street and saw something that made me smile:

The End of Sound and Vision

The end of Sound & Vision. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Keep reading: Chapter III

Moving is hard. Sometimes, it’s brutal.

Joseph Lyttleton66 Comments

CHAPTER I

Our last meal together was at Olive Garden. It could have been worse; it could’ve been Chik-Fil-A. In a couple hours, I was to board a bus headed for Philadelphia. My second of ten years was to take place there, but before that, I had to say goodbye to North Carolina. And Ashley.

We had only been dating for a month and a half – hadn’t even known each other for three – and from the beginning it had been established that I would leave, for reasons not entirely clear even to me. That didn’t keep us from soaking up every second together, never apart for more than a few hours. Our instant rapport was built on youthful zeal and fragility, a translucent love that began fading the moment we touched it.

For my last two days in Charlotte, Ashley and I were inseparable. She helped me pack up my apartment, drive my boxes to the post office, and unload the few pieces of secondhand furniture that I owned. With friends wanting to hang out and say their goodbyes, we savored our last, precious moments alone together. Our final night was spent in my spacious but now bare apartment. I laid my one blanket out on the carpet and Ashley slept in my arms.

She volunteered to drive me to the Greyhound bus station, and it was on the way that we stopped for committee-tested Italian cuisine.

A Greyhound bus station can be many things – cold, sticky, desolate, haunted – but one thing it can never be is romantic. No movie builds to the climax of a man swooping into the bus terminal just as his lover is about to give her ticket to the wheezing, septuagenarian driver. Greyhound stations are where stories end, not begin.

We stood in line together, me with a bulging suitcase, a green backpack, and a blue laundry bag stuffed with a cornucopia of my possessions, the draw string wrapped around the wrist of my right hand while my other held Ashley’s. We had arrived early because of her inherent punctuality and now we had a half hour to wait. She couldn’t wait.

My decision to move to Philadelphia, the decision to bind my fate to my10 Cities/10 Years project, had been made before I met Ashley. I suspect if she had come into my life just a couple months earlier, my life would have been very different. I couldn’t know it then, but the year ahead of me – indeed, the decade – would be tumultuous and exhilarating, crushing and beautiful; most of all, lonely.

Ashley was crying at my side, her stoic resolve dissolving with the clock’s merciless ticking. Up to the end, she refused to ask me to stay. Fearing she would, I had briefly turned bitter towards her in our last week together, but she held her tongue. She was young, but wise enough to know better. It didn’t mean she didn’t want me to stay; it didn’t mean I didn’t want to. I am a stubborn man, though. With her tears turning into sobs, I couldn’t give her the one thing that would have comforted her.

She left me then. It was too much to ask of her that she wait to watch me step up onto the bus. She fled back to her car and suddenly it was just me, facing my uncertain future alone.

That’s not entirely true, actually. Standing in the line before me was a young boy, not quite 20 (granted, I was only 23). When Ashley left, he looked at me with a quizzical, unreadable expression, suggesting neither empathy nor embarrassment. His confused, blank eyes looked like he was seeing everything for the first time.

“She okay?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, doubtful.

“She loves you, huh?”

“I…” I was taken aback by his forwardness and also not entirely sure how to answer that question. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay.” I hoped that would end the conversation but he soldiered on. “Where are you headed?”

Since we’d soon be boarding the same bus, I saw no reason to not tell him: “Philadelphia.”

“Yeah? I’m going to Pennsylvania, too. My family lives in…” some city I don’t remember, a place that might as well have been Moscow for all I knew of Pennsylvania at that point. I flashed one of my patented half-smile/half-grimaces of acknowledgment, hoping that would suitably express my incuriosity. Typically, I might have engaged in innocuous chatter with a stranger – why not, I had nothing better to do for the next day – but Ashley’s absence was pulsing inside me, reinforcing how drastically uncertain I was of my choices.

“I’ve been in an asylum,” my glass-eyed companion offered without prompting.

Of course he had.

Feeling it prudent to give this boy the opportunity to talk about himself, I offered a simple, “Oh, yeah?”

He talked more, much more, but what he shared about himself I no longer remember. There was only one person on my mind. Was she still sitting outside, crying in her car? Or had she left immediately? Should I call her, attempt to say something comforting? Or would that just make things worse?

Eventually, the boy sensed my disinterest and went silent. Or, perhaps more likely, he had found it hard to maintain conversation with a pillar of salt.

When our bus was ready for departure, I gladly let him board first. The boy picked a seat near the front of the bus and I, avoiding eye contact (even as I felt his gaze on me), headed to the rear of the bus.

I’ve ridden Greyhound buses all over the country. From Kansas to Boston, from DC to Detroit, and countless stops in between. They aren’t pleasurable trips, but can be generally tolerable as long as you procure a few things: a seat to yourself, preferably not near a baby; a sizeable music library; and something to read that won’t give you a headache (magazines or paperback novels are good; Russian literature tends to strain the mind too much). If you’re so inclined, a few mini bottles of liquor can be of benefit, too.

Already drained of energy before we even pulled out of the station, it would turn out to be one of the most grueling bus trips of my life.

Our fully booked bus departed Charlotte midafternoon, due to arrive in Philadelphia in the morning, the following day. That trip is roughly 16 hours, a long haul, but hardly a marathon. The early going was nothing unusual. We made various stops as we progressed up the coast, out of North Carolina and up through Virginia.

When we made bathroom or food breaks, I found myself shadowed by the young, Pennsylvania-bound man. He attempted small talk, but after a few hours on the bus and still raw with emotions, I was in no mood for it. Though he eventually picked up on my unresponsiveness, he still hovered about me, always standing a few feet from me like he was afraid I and the bus would leave without him.

We were scheduled to arrive at the Richmond, Virginia bus station before midnight where I and most of my fellow bus riders were to catch a transfer at 12:30. Instead, inexplicably, traffic outside the city stopped to a standstill. By the time we got through and arrived at the station, it was coming on one in the morning and the bus to Philly was long gone.

The station was bustling with passengers. Apparently a number of delays had riders stuck in Richmond, and for those of us continuing north, we had to wait for a bus that was scheduled to depart at seven. We spread out in the terminal, hoping to find even a few feet of unclaimed floor space to sleep on (it was too much to hope for a free seat).

Even when I did manage to find the bare minimum of unoccupied space, I couldn’t sleep. I had my three bags with me, essentially every possession of any value stuffed into them, and didn’t feel safe falling asleep with so many restless, gray-eyed strangers around. For nearly six hours, I held loosely onto consciousness, but even when exhaustion began to win the battle, my growling stomach remained vigilant. I hadn’t eaten since Olive Garden, and my only options at that time of night were whatever the depleted vending machines had to offer.

Finally, sunlight peaked through the grimy windows and, with it, the promise of my Philly-bound bus. Unfortunately, when you’re sleep-deprived, hungry, and sore, the length of time between sunrise and genuine morning is interminable. As I waited for the departure announcement over the loudspeaker, I couldn’t sit still: I paced, I sat, I stood again; I carried all of my bags into the bathroom and then right back out.

To my great relief, my bus did arrive and in time, I was on the road again.

We pulled into downtown Philadelphia in early afternoon, a quarter of a day later than I was scheduled to have arrived. I still had to figure out how to get from Market Street to my apartment in West Philly. I was in a city I’d never been to before, weighed down with heavy bags (growing heavier with each passing minute), and completely unfamiliar with the public transportation system.

By the time I made it to my new home, I was too exhausted to process that my new apartment – nay, my new room – was barely large enough for a full-sized bed or that the bars on my window warned of a rougher neighborhood than I was accustomed to. I pulled out my one blanket, the one I had shared with Ashley, and laid it out on my hardwood floor. Then I passed out.

That wasn’t the last I saw of Ashley. In fact, she visited just over a month later, and we reconnected a few times over the years of my project. But what I left behind in Charlotte, what I abandoned with her, would never be recaptured again. Of course, it couldn’t: when we separated that first time, we were still in the midst of our initial infatuation. Looking back on those brief few weeks is like peering at an insect frozen in amber: It will remain forever pure.

I will always regret and not regret my decision to leave. I know if I had stayed, the relationship would have fizzled out in time – not because of Ashley, but because of me, because I was still so young and so far from who I would become with the years of travel and experiences. Knowing that to be true doesn’t make the sting of that first move any softer. It was something I had to go through. Loss is a fundamental part of traveling; people rarely tell you that.

Now, when I’m asked how I can move so much, when questioned how I stand to leave behind places after such brief stays, I can only think, “It will never be that hard again.”

Keep reading: Chapter II – Philadelphia

Go. Do.

Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

I was dating a girl named Destiny.

That isn’t the beginning of a poem – it would be terrible if it was – but it is, more or less, the beginning of 10 Cities/10 Years.

Destiny was the prototypical mid-2000s emo chick, sporting the requisite shock of dyed hair and inked with star tattoos on her wrists. A hairstylist in Charlotte, she had transplanted to the city from Seattle via Tallahassee and spoke with the soft, stoned surfer girl’s patois of some indistinct Pacific Northwest tribe from which I imagined she had emerged, punctuating every other sentence with a slurred, “For sure.”

She was my type, which is to say in those days my type was any cute girl who’d date me (still is). A regular at the bookstore where I had been hired as a barista, I would fawn over her every time she ordered her coffee. Eventually, I was promoted to Receiving, but I popped up on the book floor whenever there was downtime. One day, seeing her sitting out on the café patio – despite it being January – I made the unprecedented move to walk out and talk to her. I’d rarely been so bold in my life.

I have no idea what we said, but it was an introduction. On my next day off, a coworker at the store called me up and let me know that Destiny (or, the “hot emo girl,” as he didn’t know her name) was back at the store. I lived across the street, and under the pretense of visiting the art store around the corner, I crossed Destiny’s path.

The total time I knew Destiny was one month, neither the longest nor the shortest I’ve gone out with someone. Most of our time together was spent in her large pick-up truck – jacked up on giant tires so entering the vehicle involved a climb – listening to music.

She introduced me to quite a few bands and albums I still listen to, most notably the Magnetic Fields and the Shins’ “Chutes Too Narrow” which she lent to me. We made a lot of mixed CDs for each other; I’m more than a little embarrassed to imagine what music I would have given her at that time. Our other activities together, like attending a poetry reading and eating at diners at two in the morning, have congealed in my mind as some sort of romantic ideal, but the truth is, we barely knew each other. I didn’t even know her last name.

chutes_too_narrow

One night, when we were supposed to meet up after I got off work, Destiny left a voice message on my cellphone. Through some indecipherable noise, voices and her laughing, she had muttered something to me. When my shift ended, I called her but she didn’t answer. Days went by without any contact from her. I tried calling again a few days after she no-showed but she didn’t answer.

“Just checking to see if you’re around. I need to give you back your CD.” Destiny didn’t return my call, which is how I came to own “Chutes Too Narrow” (still my favorite Shins album). I never saw her again at the bookstore and that’s where I left it.

I’ve dated my share of women since Destiny, most more seriously than her, and in fact, only a couple months later I would meet someone who would become a major love interest in my life for the next seven years. Destiny and I didn’t have a relationship, we were just casually seeing each other. And yet, she remains in my mind a pivotal character in my story – in a way I’m sure I’m not for her. Maybe it’s just the storyteller in me – a mix of false memories and symbol creation – but those brief moments with Destiny feel important.

It was with Destiny, the two of us sitting in her apartment while she smoked weed and we listened to Billy Joel on vinyl (she had eclectic tastes) that I first started talking about 10 Cities/10 Years like I was going to do it, not just as a fantasy. I remember distinctly telling her, “I’m moving in June.” My little idea had gone from a hypothetical dream to a plan, and with that touch of reality, my life gained direction.

Perhaps I imagined I could impress her with my confidence, or maybe as winter set in, I simply realized that I was running out of time to luxuriate in a dream. Whatever the case, by mid-February of 2006, 10 Cities/10 Years was reality.

At some point in all of our lives, we have to reach a tipping point, that line we cross when a dream becomes a pursuit. At some point, the words we use must transform from “I would love to…” to “I’m going to…”

This isn’t some sort of mystical, Oprah-approved, The Secret pablum. I’m not talking about “Telling the Universe what you want.” At some point, though, if your dream is going to be real, you have to go from talking about hypotheticals to making plans. You will never save money without a reason, you will never take the big leap if you don’t know where you’re going to land. You don’t have to know everything before you start – almost nothing about the next decade of my life was planned before I set out – but you must take concrete steps.

When I returned from Spain last September, I realized that I needed a new direction. Ever since I’d finished my project, I had been living without a plan. Ten years is a long time to live by a schedule, and I needed a break. But after a year with no distinct goals, I realized I was ready to have a plan again. So I made one.

It’s great to dream, it’s the hallmark of all creative people. With enough time, though, dreaming transforms from an active to a passive activity. At that point, you need to live with a different set of verbs: Go. Do.

So once again, I’m going. I’m doing.