Mental Note.

Dear mom: when I grow up, I promise I will never speak to my wife the way dad talks to you. 

"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."   -Richard Bach

Highways to Nowhere. Pt. I

(from my personal journal: 2/11/2009)

She came into my workplace with a baby in her arm and a newborn in a stroller. I forget what her driver's license said, but she must have been in her early 50's or so; the bags under her eyes were in full bloom and the wrinkles on her face were like highways on a road map, leading to nowhere. Her hair was slowly turning into a web of gray. If you could personify stress, indignation, and unfortunate, this would be the person standing before you. I don't remember her name, and her words were in a language I couldn't understand. Regardless, she changed my life forever.

All she brought was 6 W2 forms, her last year's tax return paperwork, and an eviction notice from her landlord. It turns out that this woman's husband passed away 3 years ago and is taking care of 4 children and 2 grandchildren (who, by this time, are chewing up my pens and pencils and mixing up my paperwork). In one year, she worked 6 jobs to bring in less than $12,000 for the year.

Her coat had a strong, pungent smell of poverty. Her fingernails were yellow like an old book's pages and had dirt under them. She was missing a handful of teeth. 

With a few keystrokes and a spanish-english dictionary, I'm able to get her enough of a tax return to keep her apartment. To feed her grandchildren for a few more weeks. Maybe even to buy herself new shoes since it hurts for her to walk 2 miles to the canneries to work.

After the good news, she starts crying and whispers something to me that I don't understand, and takes off. 

I still don't know her name, but I thought about her a lot today and about her life and lifestyle, which is why I decided to write this entry. If I meet her again, I have so many questions for her and I would really want to share with her that she gave me a personal epiphany and taught me an important life lesson:

The most privileged people in our world have the most responsibility. It just so happens that the most privileged tend to be the least responsible.

This last month has, for the most part, been my luckiest 30 days of my life. I feel like something is watching over me and making sure that everything goes my way. I always was really skeptical about luck and thought karma was really what decided how the cards are dealt...but lately, I haven't been a saint and things have been going great for me.

At the same time, I'm still really scared that my luck is going to run out and I'm going to deal with misfortunes ahead. Just like life and death, the seasons, and the tides, I have a personal theory that luck for MOST people is just a cycle.  Lady Luck is infatuated with me, but tomorrow I could wake up alone in bed and left to deal with misfortunes again - I just hope she doesn't wake me up when she closes the door.

For now, though, everything in my life is AMAZING. I'm just juiced to get out of Santa Cruz and move to the city. I've grown so much in SC and have met amazing people, but this chapter in my life is coming to an end, and I can't wait to start the new one.

A Crash Course Into Real Life

Somehow, miraculously, I was hired with the California Franchise Tax Board to be a tax auditor for their Partnerships division. I'll be working out of their San Jose offices, which is AMAZING because my office is gonna be in downtown San Jose right off of Santa Clara Street. Ever since I got the job offer, my life has been crazy. Aside from all of the shit I do at school, I have to:

1. Book hotel rooms for my training in July in Sac and SJ

2. Buy a car (I got $10,000 to drop)

3. Find housing

4. Buy shit for my new place

Because of all of this shit that just fell on my place, I had to cancel with Gadgetbox and lost my deposit for studio time. I guess in a way its cool because I get to refine all of the parts I wrote so far, and I want to write a few songs in different dropped tunings (possibly a really heavy drop A song in the works?). 

Anyways, I guess everything worked out in the end. I was able to find a job in a recession/depression and I'm still in the area, so I still can come out to Santa Cruz and kick it.

Things are really exciting right now, but I'm still really sad that I don't have much time left in Santa Cruz...