“Chapter Two”. It
always follows that which came first. In my case, “Chapter Two” will encompass
what’s followed the first fifty years of my life.
2012, for me, was not
a typical year. After 35 years of a pack and a half a day habit, I successfully
quit smoking. At 10:53am on January 16 of this year, I crushed out what was to
be my final smoke. I’m immensely proud of that.
In February, for
reasons I won’t get into here, I left the employ of Taylor Guitars. It was a
dream job, to be sure. Hanging out in guitar stores for a living, hanging out
with Grammy winners and riding on (well, occasionally
riding on) the company jet were things which, up until I worked at Taylor, I
never thought would be a reality in my life. Yet, that’s exactly what my
reality became. My association with Taylor Guitars also allowed me to expand my
photographic exploits, and really allowed me the opportunity to get into concert
photography.
After leaving Taylor
Guitars, I stayed out of the job market. There were things I needed to work on,
which I won’t get into here, simply because of the deeply personal nature of
them. As with anything else, there was good and bad, and it was mostly the bad
which has propelled me into “Chapter Two”.
“Chapter Two” involves
me re-entering the world of the gainfully employed. It also involves me moving
from San Diego, California to Portland, Oregon. Alone. I’ll let you infer from
that what you will, but I can state, unequivocally, that I am a better man for
the past 28 years of my life, and because of who I was fortunate enough to
spend those years with. I will simply leave it at that.
But there’s another
chapter waiting to be written. The first 50 years of my life was Chapter One.
That was the chapter which includes everything from birth to high school to a
military career to a career in the music industry to no career at all to moving
to having a career again. It was all a long time coming, yet it passed in an
instant. In a mere blink of an eye, everything was different.
So, I’ll be packing my
truck and driving north, and I’ll put my foot on the brake when I get to
Portland, Oregon. I’m sitting in the middle seat of an otherwise empty row on
Southwest #741 out of Reno right now, returning to San Diego from Portland. I
have a job there. I have a place to hang my hat and call “home”, at least for
the time being. I have a life waiting to be lived there. I don’t know if
Portland is where I’ll stay. It may be, and it may not. But I know it’s where I
have to go, at least right now. Maybe one day I’ll end up in Florida. Or New
York. Or North Carolina. Or Vegas.
Right now, though, it
has to be Portland.
It certainly wasn’t my
first choice, but it’s what I now believe will be the right choice, all things
considered. Florida was my first choice, as I have family there. Chattanooga,
Tennessee was actually in the running, as well, as my good friend, photographer
Holt Webb, tried to lure me down there to go into business with him. Holt is
the one photographer I probably respect above all others, so that was quite a
tempting offer.
But in a moment of
lucidity and clarity, I realized that I couldn’t go to Florida, and I couldn’t
go to Tennessee. It became clear to me that the only reasonable, sane choice
was Portland.
And so I’ll go there.
And I’ll start writing “Chapter Two”…
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