Soundtrack
I've begun taking a closer look at the spectrum of events over the last ~15 or so years, and like any good memoirist have begun taking stock in search of decent material to write about. This leads to the reasons to start this post, as a certain amount of navel-gazing can be instructive, occasionally.
Over the course of my life, I've had many forks in the road, where eventually it became crystal-clear that my choices would have life-altering consequences. However, few really equal one that happened to me in the late spring of 2001, and I'll share it with you now.
At the time, my life seemed to be about as stable and permanent as anything could be: I was six years into a nine-year relationship that, despite its flaws, appeared to be my ultimate, life-long commitment. I simply couldn't imagine myself outside of it.
Likewise, I was at a sort of peak in terms of my professional success; after two years of proving myself and overproducing, I was finally making the salary I'd asked for coming into it. Though not without its trials, I felt justified in thinking that my career was headed on a genuinely upward trajectory. I had the esteem and respect of my boss, the co-workers whom I managed and, perhaps most importantly, of my clients, who would make decisions involving tens of thousands of dollars based on my opinions and insights.
I was living in a perfectly lovely home in Connecticut, just north of New Haven, on an acre and 1/2 of land, which I'd landscaped into a series of truly wonderful gardens; inside the house was a treasure-trove of custom-made furniture (my career at the time) with several carefully selected pieces of French antiques, including some things that were truly extraordinary.
I'd been recruited for my job by the owner of the company himself, based on the recommendation of several woodworkers and small furniture manufacturers whom I'd represented for the preceding eight or nine years; he'd had a heart attack at 55, and his wife issued him an ultimatum that either he'd find a qualified general manager or he'd be forced to liquidate everything and retire. Though New Haven wasn't my first choice, I fell in love with the concept he'd developed over twenty years and knew that I'd found a position that was a fitting accumulation of my decades of experience, and took both reins firmly in grip: in theory I'd never have been happier nor more fulfilled, both personally and professionally.
But I was miserable, but didn't understand why, until one afternoon when it all became suddenly obvious: I'd made deep, seemingly permanent commitments to the wrong choices.
Among the many professional tasks I'd assigned myself was the option of a housecall. These were driven by the necessity to get a sense of location, scale and, ultimately, to deliver an added value to certain clients at my sole and unique discretion: it had been understood from the beginning that I was the ultimate arbiter of who received this service, when and under what circumstances.
So when the owner informed me, out of the blue, that I was to be at a potential client's home at a specific time on a certain day, I felt abused. This feeling was compounded when I learned who the client would be: we'd met earlier that week and I didn't believe that he was an actual, serious, big-ticket client. He was a gasbag with vague needs insisting that he required a homecall; instead, I suggested he come back with some photos and his architect's plans. All of my gut instinct told me that he wasn't nearly the customer he purported to be, and my instincts were hardly ever wrong; I'd been doing this too long to make false assumptions or be bought into a scenario that just seemed so wrong.
But for the only time in our four-year professional relationship, the owner overruled me and essentially demanded that I go out to the middle of nowhere to stroke the ego of someone who hadn't spent a dime in the store yet. Even worse, the nature of these homecalls (as they'd been negotiated when I started working there) meant that it would be completely unremunerated: I didn't bill for either gas or mileage because, again, it was always at my discretion, and they were almost always a short hop, not an extended road trip. This one called for me to go on a several hour's drive into the northern-central part of a neighboring county. I only acquiesced when it became imperative that I go.
Selling out
Is not my thing
Walk away
I won't be broken again
I'm not
I'm not what you think
Dream away your life
Someone else's dream
Nothing equals nothing
It took about two hours of driving before I learned that the owner had either taken the directions incorrectly or that the presumed client hadn't given them correctly; I found myself traveling in circles in the Connecticut woods with neither a cell phone nor any GPS to guide me, getting quietly livid as I was losing an afternoon on what I knew was, ultimately, a fool's errand. I eventually found a gas station with a pay phone and pulled in to call the customer for better directions; it turned out that I'd been within a ten-minute drive to his lake-front home for way too long. When I pulled into his driveway, I was already over an hour late (and I pride myself on punctuality).
Letting go
Is not my thing
Walk away
Won't let it happen again
I'm not
I'm not very smart
Why should I feel sad
For what I never had
Nothing equals nothing
Needless, to say, the meeting didn't go well. The customer was demanding and impossible at the same time. His vision of what he wanted was not just beyond the scope of our resources, but, in several cases, literally impossible to build without having Vermont-based woodworkers living on-site as well. His budget expectations were also entirely unreasonable: the entire job was completely impossible, as I'd known from our first conversation. My anger was, unfortunately, quite palpable, as was his. I had completely wasted more than half a day, and it would take hours before I could even get home.
Turn to stone
Lose my faith
I'll be gone
Before it happens
Dream away your life
Dream away your dream
Nothing equals nothing
Once I did get back home, I called the owner and reported back how and why, specifically, the job was impossible. His response was terse and fixed the blame on me, which enraged me further. Adding to the discomfort was my partner's attitude, which centered around his impression that I was unable to ever say no to my boss, and I got a 30-minute lecture on my being a push-over (as well as being late for dinner). I was feeling hen-pecked and abused by the two commitments I'd made at that time, and wasn't feeling good about any of it.
Turn to stone
Lose my faith
I'll be gone
Before it happens
Selling out
Is not my thing
Walk away
I won't be broken again
I won't
I won't fall apart
Dream away your life
Dream away your dream
Nothing equals nothing
That was the day that I swore to simplify my life and purge it of the complications and drama that had become, by then, everyday. All that driving in circles, all that wasted time, and all the ensuing drama with my partner made me long for the type of utter simplicity with which I lived my late teens and very early 20s: I’d had an affordable apartment in downtown Boston, a simple (if laborious) job, with no car, no garden...not even a land-line phone. My mind’s eye figured it was near-nirvana and nothing would or could shake me of the idea that my life consisted exclusively of (needless) compromise.
I was mad as fuck and wasn’t gonna take none of it any more: dammit!
It took two years to escape the employer entirely, and it ended very poorly, and another 18 months before I ditched the lover, who by then had cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was free but deeply bankrupt, utterly broke and months away from joblessness. My career was toast and I was left profoundly alone in a hostile environment.
But I was oddly, unsettlingly free. I was free of the encumbrances I’d gathered over the preceding 20+ years and, at last, had no one to answer to except myself. The feeling, though upsetting in so many ways, had its technical advantages in a free spirit kinda way.
A fork in the road had been passed, most definitely.
I've begun taking a closer look at the spectrum of events over the last ~15 or so years, and like any good memoirist have begun taking stock in search of decent material to write about. This leads to the reasons to start this post, as a certain amount of navel-gazing can be instructive, occasionally.
Over the course of my life, I've had many forks in the road, where eventually it became crystal-clear that my choices would have life-altering consequences. However, few really equal one that happened to me in the late spring of 2001, and I'll share it with you now.
At the time, my life seemed to be about as stable and permanent as anything could be: I was six years into a nine-year relationship that, despite its flaws, appeared to be my ultimate, life-long commitment. I simply couldn't imagine myself outside of it.
Likewise, I was at a sort of peak in terms of my professional success; after two years of proving myself and overproducing, I was finally making the salary I'd asked for coming into it. Though not without its trials, I felt justified in thinking that my career was headed on a genuinely upward trajectory. I had the esteem and respect of my boss, the co-workers whom I managed and, perhaps most importantly, of my clients, who would make decisions involving tens of thousands of dollars based on my opinions and insights.
I was living in a perfectly lovely home in Connecticut, just north of New Haven, on an acre and 1/2 of land, which I'd landscaped into a series of truly wonderful gardens; inside the house was a treasure-trove of custom-made furniture (my career at the time) with several carefully selected pieces of French antiques, including some things that were truly extraordinary.
I'd been recruited for my job by the owner of the company himself, based on the recommendation of several woodworkers and small furniture manufacturers whom I'd represented for the preceding eight or nine years; he'd had a heart attack at 55, and his wife issued him an ultimatum that either he'd find a qualified general manager or he'd be forced to liquidate everything and retire. Though New Haven wasn't my first choice, I fell in love with the concept he'd developed over twenty years and knew that I'd found a position that was a fitting accumulation of my decades of experience, and took both reins firmly in grip: in theory I'd never have been happier nor more fulfilled, both personally and professionally.
But I was miserable, but didn't understand why, until one afternoon when it all became suddenly obvious: I'd made deep, seemingly permanent commitments to the wrong choices.
Among the many professional tasks I'd assigned myself was the option of a housecall. These were driven by the necessity to get a sense of location, scale and, ultimately, to deliver an added value to certain clients at my sole and unique discretion: it had been understood from the beginning that I was the ultimate arbiter of who received this service, when and under what circumstances.
So when the owner informed me, out of the blue, that I was to be at a potential client's home at a specific time on a certain day, I felt abused. This feeling was compounded when I learned who the client would be: we'd met earlier that week and I didn't believe that he was an actual, serious, big-ticket client. He was a gasbag with vague needs insisting that he required a homecall; instead, I suggested he come back with some photos and his architect's plans. All of my gut instinct told me that he wasn't nearly the customer he purported to be, and my instincts were hardly ever wrong; I'd been doing this too long to make false assumptions or be bought into a scenario that just seemed so wrong.
But for the only time in our four-year professional relationship, the owner overruled me and essentially demanded that I go out to the middle of nowhere to stroke the ego of someone who hadn't spent a dime in the store yet. Even worse, the nature of these homecalls (as they'd been negotiated when I started working there) meant that it would be completely unremunerated: I didn't bill for either gas or mileage because, again, it was always at my discretion, and they were almost always a short hop, not an extended road trip. This one called for me to go on a several hour's drive into the northern-central part of a neighboring county. I only acquiesced when it became imperative that I go.
Selling out
Is not my thing
Walk away
I won't be broken again
I'm not
I'm not what you think
Dream away your life
Someone else's dream
Nothing equals nothing
It took about two hours of driving before I learned that the owner had either taken the directions incorrectly or that the presumed client hadn't given them correctly; I found myself traveling in circles in the Connecticut woods with neither a cell phone nor any GPS to guide me, getting quietly livid as I was losing an afternoon on what I knew was, ultimately, a fool's errand. I eventually found a gas station with a pay phone and pulled in to call the customer for better directions; it turned out that I'd been within a ten-minute drive to his lake-front home for way too long. When I pulled into his driveway, I was already over an hour late (and I pride myself on punctuality).
Letting go
Is not my thing
Walk away
Won't let it happen again
I'm not
I'm not very smart
Why should I feel sad
For what I never had
Nothing equals nothing
Needless, to say, the meeting didn't go well. The customer was demanding and impossible at the same time. His vision of what he wanted was not just beyond the scope of our resources, but, in several cases, literally impossible to build without having Vermont-based woodworkers living on-site as well. His budget expectations were also entirely unreasonable: the entire job was completely impossible, as I'd known from our first conversation. My anger was, unfortunately, quite palpable, as was his. I had completely wasted more than half a day, and it would take hours before I could even get home.
Turn to stone
Lose my faith
I'll be gone
Before it happens
Dream away your life
Dream away your dream
Nothing equals nothing
Once I did get back home, I called the owner and reported back how and why, specifically, the job was impossible. His response was terse and fixed the blame on me, which enraged me further. Adding to the discomfort was my partner's attitude, which centered around his impression that I was unable to ever say no to my boss, and I got a 30-minute lecture on my being a push-over (as well as being late for dinner). I was feeling hen-pecked and abused by the two commitments I'd made at that time, and wasn't feeling good about any of it.
Turn to stone
Lose my faith
I'll be gone
Before it happens
Selling out
Is not my thing
Walk away
I won't be broken again
I won't
I won't fall apart
Dream away your life
Dream away your dream
Nothing equals nothing
That was the day that I swore to simplify my life and purge it of the complications and drama that had become, by then, everyday. All that driving in circles, all that wasted time, and all the ensuing drama with my partner made me long for the type of utter simplicity with which I lived my late teens and very early 20s: I’d had an affordable apartment in downtown Boston, a simple (if laborious) job, with no car, no garden...not even a land-line phone. My mind’s eye figured it was near-nirvana and nothing would or could shake me of the idea that my life consisted exclusively of (needless) compromise.
I was mad as fuck and wasn’t gonna take none of it any more: dammit!
It took two years to escape the employer entirely, and it ended very poorly, and another 18 months before I ditched the lover, who by then had cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was free but deeply bankrupt, utterly broke and months away from joblessness. My career was toast and I was left profoundly alone in a hostile environment.
But I was oddly, unsettlingly free. I was free of the encumbrances I’d gathered over the preceding 20+ years and, at last, had no one to answer to except myself. The feeling, though upsetting in so many ways, had its technical advantages in a free spirit kinda way.
A fork in the road had been passed, most definitely.
