Life is Plan B

Are you who you thought you would be when you were younger?

Of course you aren't. I mean, who the hell would have come up with YOU?

Or me, for that matter. I certainly didn't.

I'll tell you more about it another time, but I really didn't think I'd even be alive this long. I know that's weird to hear, but you gotta understand I was a really weird kid. I didn't pay attention to most things going on around me, and to tell you the truth, it was a lot of fun not paying attention and then having to try to snap back into the moment afterwards. You probably think the goofy, silly, unfocused, wayward, and abstract people that you know can't help being who they are. I'm sure most of us can't, but the great majority of us also don't really want to help it. Or we do. I have only met a fraction of the other abnormal people that walk the earth. And I must say, one thing we don't do well is let others know what to expect from us.

To let others know what to expect from us, we would have to know for sure what we were capable of, and that's just not realistic. You don't usually see what your future holds as well as those around you, usually that have been down the path you are starting down or that have been around you long enough to observe something you couldn't have seen for yourself. As many realizations that we have in our own heads, that are complex and are built with all of this insight into our own experiences that no one else could possibly know, some of the most clear and crystallizing moments in our lives are made up by other people introducing concepts to us that we never imagined we'd hear, that in tun shift fundamental ideas in our own minds for years to come. The most mundane piece of advice, that another lives their entire life on and doesn't even consider worth taking seriously, well that may be the missing piece to the puzzle of unlocking the true potential of you have always been searching for in your entire existence. You never know what thoughts will end up blowing your mind, or another person's mind, or starting a thought train that takes you way stage left and brings you to a realization that you can't believe no one ever told you before.

Realest piece of advice I ever got was on a plane that had touched down in New York City. The plane got into La Guardia airport sometime around 10 in the morning, and I was barely paying attention as the passengers started trying to get off the plane and the person in the seat behind me asked if I'd been to NYC before. And I hadn't, so i said I hadn't. And she asked why I was there. And I told her I was there to visit Columbia University and that I might end up running track there, which was also true. I don't know why I keep affirming to you that I didn't lie to this stranger on the airplane, but the point is, she said that was great and that I should enjoy the trip, even if I decide I don't like the school or the city is a bit too much for me.

And for some reason, that surprised me a bit. I had been looking away, out the window trying to see what I could of the city, barely even really talking to her. But the last bit, about not liking the city or the school, it made me turn and ask, "You don't think I'll like it here?"

And she shrugged and said, "No, it's not that so much. It's not for everyone, but that's not really what I mean."

Now my interest was piqued. "Well, then what do you mean?"

And she just shook her head and said, "Life is Plan B. You have absolutely no idea where this is all going to take us. Just enjoy the ride." And she smiled and pulled her bag down from the overhead bin, and there she went.

And it's not like I didn't enjoy my visit. The city itself was massive and chaotic, but fun and inviting all at the same time. And Columbia University had a beautiful campus, and it was a great school and an amazing opportunity and I was so blessed to even be in the running for admission there. And yet...

I didn't really want to go there. I mean, would it have been really cool? Probably. Would it have changed my life in ways I would not ever fully realize? Almost certainly. Was it going to be way too expensive? Yup. This place was also going to cost me an arm and a leg, and if I was going to run track, those were going to come in handy. Plus, I wasn't sure about the coaching staff, because they didn't really have a coach for my events, just one main coach for all of the mens events and a few others that basically walked around praising whatever advice he gave out. The coach was a former olympian, so it's not like he didn't know training in general, but watching the little bit of the practicing that I did, there wasn't a lot going on that I was going to learn from. I was going to be, at least for the time being, largely on my own. Which may not have been such a bad thing all the time, because I definitely liked doing things my way and still had an idea of some of the things I could do to improve, but I also knew that I benefit from being pushed, and working by yourself doesn't usually have that built in.

There were other factors, too. It was going to be too expensive in retrospect, and I knew it already without wanting to admit it. Also, I was going to be cramped into this little corner of Spanish Harlem far from home where I would need to learn a lot of things in big city living that I don't think would have sunk in as quickly as they would probably need to for me to not get robbed or get a severe ass kicking or both or worse. So just other stuff for why I didn't end up trying to go there. I told the coach I was not interested, even though I thanked him for the opportunity to see the school and the training facilities, and that was that. And I ended up attending Wisconsin, and ran track for them, and blah blah, other stuff that was amazing and a great time yada yada National Championship and Big Ten Triple crown, I know, you don't really care and it's not the focal point of the story.

But this is. I had this friend that I met freshman year that played another sport, who we'll call Cynthia. Cynthia was a hardworking, goofy, enjoyable, successful woman, and I don't think she ever once believed that anything she did was good enough. She was always pushing for the next thing on her list or trying to find points to improve on everything she did. I noticed this more than a few times with her while we were both undergrads, and then after we graduated, I lost track of her for a while. But I ran into her randomly on campus a few years ago, on a summer weekend with my fiancé and her parents on campus. I had to run to the car to pick up, of all things, my wife’s purse. And on the way back, I run into Cynthia, and we chat for a bit, and it was nice seeing her and all but I could tell right away she was still frazzled, like always. And I asked her what was up. She said, in a nutshell:

I’m in the middle of moving my life from here (Wisconsin) back to my home (California) and I don’t know how long I’ll be there or what I’ll be doing when I get there, or if I’m going to grad school or law school, and I’m basically freaking out and not knowing what I’m doing. So I have about 3 days left to figure out my life.

This is closer to accurate than you probably think. Anyway, I tell her my story on the airplane and the whole “Life is plan B” gist and I think it helped. And I admitted to her that she didn’t actually have to  listen to anything I had to say. I mean, what the hell did i know? I was holding a purse like a football because I thought it was somehow less awkward that way. But I just said to her, "You're gonna be fine. No, you're gonna be great. You are great. So stop worrying about how you're going to do it all and just figure out what you want to go do first. I mean, shit, you've got this one random life, just go do it all, right?" I'm fair certain that was my ending advice to her, which wouldn't be advice for everyone, because not everyone is going to go off and do it all. But she might, I really believe that she could and she probably wants to. I hope Cynthia is doing well.

Anyway, she may also be on a completely different path than where she was when I last saw and spoke with her, and that's cool too. But I believe you're better off finding out for sure what your plan B is than insisting that that your personal plan A has to, HAS TO come to fruition. You don't have to go do it all, you don't have to settle for plan B, but you do have to... well, I guess you don't have to do anything. You could just sit here, reading this blog over and over again, and no one could necessarily stop you, if that's the path you really want to adhere to. But hopefully, you expect more from yourself than that, and others around you do, too. And something like that will build you to do more than just accept whatever is on the path for you, but to go and choose the path you want, even if it means preparing for a backup and a backup to that and so forth. After all, life is plan Q sometimes too.

Talk at ya later.

The DSW DJ

My sister and I were talking a while ago about something that occurs to me today: persistence. We were talking about it because she wants to be an actress, and is trying to pursue this on a few fronts in a crowded and talent-packed place like New York City. And we were talking about actors that had to struggle for a long time, and work shit jobs and almost give up and then break through. And you know who came up? Peter Dinklage.

Who some of you may only know as Tyrion Lannister, while others only know that he's the midget (or little person, my bad) in Game of Thrones. And people know the movies he's shown up in and the success he's had now, but probably don't know that he had to struggle and work a data processing job for years, and then decide if he was going to quit the job to pursue acting seriously the whole time and be broke until it pulled through. But he did it. And he's one of the easier actors in Hollywood to recognize, both from his talent, his distinct roles, and his diminutive stature.

My point in bringing it up to my sister was just that it could have been someone else that broke through in his first big role in "The Station Agent" or who appeared in "Elf", "Find Me Guilty", "Death At A Funeral", another "Death At A Funeral" or a bunch of other roles. There were like 30 other little people that didn't get the parts, and had to keep struggling. Everything the dude had to do to get by allowed him to progress, but we've never even heard about all these others that could have had it worse or been more talented, all of whom probably hate Dinklage's guts for taking all the good little jobs.

Here's a link to the video project my sister recently posted, if you're interested.

My point is just that you have to take advantage of whatever opportunity you have, and basically not worry one bit how it looks while you're going through the process of getting where you want to get to. It's not something anyone wants to hear, especially while you're going through the rough, ugly part of this particular process. But going through ugliness or unpleasantness, or even randomness, tends to bring us to opportunities we didn't plan on hoping for, and that can lead us to discover things about ourselves that we may not have realized otherwise.

It can, of course, also break us and ruin the opportunities we thought we would have, and leave us clawing through the remaining opportunities. And when that happens, we have to push through with whatever we have left to work with. And that is easier said than done basically every time. It is tough to stay positive before, during, and after the fall, except to acknowledge that what you're dealing with 1. probably won't kill you, 2. hasn't killed you yet, or 3. didn't actually kill you even though maybe it still will slowly without you realizing it. And I know this might not sound overly positive, even though I kind of do mean it in a positive way.

Okay, let's try to explain this a different way.

A while back, I got dragged to shopping at the Designer Shoe Warehouse with my wife, who was at the time my fiancee. I'm fairly sure it was in 2016, the year before we were to be married, and I was all about doing things for her and spending time with her but still very much not a fan of shoe shopping. Come to think of it, I've been in the stage of hating shoe shopping since before I met her. I think I was born there, and I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. But there I was, on a football Sunday afternoon, stalking my fantasy teams while wandering up and down the wide aisles, aimlessly and apathetically while Tara was in her zone trying to find options to match several of her outfits and all this other stuff I really couldn't bring myself to focus on.

I remember being a bit mad at myself for allowing her to bring me out of the house at this particular time, regardless of how much I love her. I remember quite specifically that the Packers were playing, and it was a good game, whoever they were playing, and here I was, trying to give as little pushback to whatever my wife-to-be said so we could get out of there and back before at least the 4th quarter. I also remember being mad at others in the store with me, both male and female, that were wearing Packers gear. I mean, what kind of shit is that? You'll go out and buy the Clinton-Dix jersey and then not sit and watch the only game of the week that the guy wearing that shirt appears in? What kind of lame poser punk-ass mother-...see, I need to stop for a second, it's still fresh in my mind. Gotta just bring it back calm and remind myself that this is how much I must love my wife, to be discussing the colors of heels and cross trainers on any given Sunday.

There was another reason this day stuck out to me. Don't ask me why, but there was a DJ working at the shoe store on a Sunday afternoon. No crowd dancing, no hype man, no one singing or rapping or playing alone. Just a dude with two turntables set up about 20 feet in front of the entrance, with a little mini light show going along with his beats. Probably the lamest possible setup for a performance of any kind (I understand if you want to debate that DJing is ACTUALLY a performance, but that's not the point here). I mean, the light show was a sign that this guy might have had promise, a sad reminder of how out of place this set up was, and completely useless with the overhead lights all at once. Encouraging, dismaying, and curious all in one fell swoop.

Here's the thing, I was half paying attention to what he was spinning, and I must say, this dude was actually setting up a good vibe, all things considered. I found myself nodding back and forth to some of the tunes, even mouthing out some of the words, which meant I knew lyrics to whatever he was putting down. So regardless of not really enjoying shoe shopping, not wanting to miss watching a football game and not wanting to be a punk to my future wife, for several moments I found something to enjoy at the Designer Shoe Warehouse on this chilly afternoon.

At one point, he played the Cha-cha slide, and I lost some respect for him. But that means I had respect for him to be lost. He was DJing at the god damn DSW during the Packers game, and he still made his way up the ranks in my book. And it reinforced a valuable lesson for me: You better make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. I had to tip my hat to him as we walked out, because not everyone can take a job like that seriously and still thrive. Because he could have showed up drunk, or messed up on mollies and been just a shitshow. He could have panned to his demographic and played overly emotional pop songs to further emphasize feminine vibes where it was clearly already the main focus of everyone in the building. Hell, he could have played stuff just to mess with everyone there, like orchestral opera or Himalayan monk chanting, or playing popular records backwards and pretending it sounded normal. But he didn't. He earned that check and grooved his ass off and damnit if I didn't get a bit inspired from it.

My point in all of this is that this DJ almost certainly had other shit he'd rather be doing. I really hope so, anyway. The DJ that turns down other gigs to play records at a shoe store on a Sunday afternoon, he's not thinking too far down the road, is he? But the dude, he showed up, and did what he does, and he converted a skeptical bystander, me, which means he can probably do this kind of thing in a better environment. And don't get me wrong, this guy may have gone home that night and smoked a ton of meth because this was his last night of sanity before a breaking bad moment. But maybe, years later, he will look back at that same afternoon as one of the reasons he grinded through a relatively less successful part of his career like a god damn champ.

And truth be told, I'm now a bit let down when I get dragged shoe shopping and there's not a DJ now. Payless needs to step their damn game up.

Bubye now.