Jewswithoutjobs's Blog

I was raised somewhere between the meticulous golf courses of Pebble Beach and the natural madness of Big Sur. I was drawn to the wild coast but would never stay, could never find solace in the uncertainty. While a force deep inside always drew me to that creative energy where I’d stand with charred redwoods at my back, salt spray pouring through the summer fog against my face, I’d always return to the predictability of fairways, to where I knew that the second followed the first as surely as the eighteen finished the day. I gravitated to the manicured consistency of green.

At age 10, I received a fellowship to an acting academy, my teachers seeing a useful outlet for the class clown. Yet during the performances, I’d feel the same churning in my belly that I would later feel standing at the mouth of the Big Sur River, watching cliffs crumble into the sea, massive breakers filling my head with the surf’s howl. The energy was too disquieting; I quit the acting company.

This allowed me to get to my newspaper route early enough to beat the other kids to the streets. I knew the rules here, where value was measured by the weight of the coins in my jeans. I remember the smell of oiled oak at the bank teller’s window and the ink-stamped dates of my deposits. The blue-hairs would cluck in appreciation, wagging their chins, complimenting me as concretely as the dimes I dumped before them. For much of my life, the only balance I knew was in my bankbook. I loved to see the interest grow. I was well primed for performance, achievement, and pursuit of the American Dream.

And although I followed the path that did in fact lead to great material rewards, most of them disappeared in a flash. I must have done something right, though, because somehow I’ve still got enough to not be bankrupt, to go for walks everyday, to have the luxury to whine about my plight over cappucino, and generally to have survived. But the main thing that’s kept me going is to look back and see I never could have been happy ENOUGH. The beauty and tyranny of the PURSUIT is like any other chase…you’re always on the treadmill.

So to all those of you who have suffered in your own way, it’s humbling to remember there’s nothing we can control but our attitude. To mash up John Lennon and Bob Dylan: Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans, and there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all

This entry was posted on October 10, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.