Go west young man

fourth in a series of major life event/direction choices...

Big Choice #3 was in 1993 and big choice #4 was soon to follow in 1995.

In 1994 I was working on Capitol Hill, hoping to gain the invaluable "hill experience" that, coupled with my law degree would allow me to pounce on a good LA position. Personally, I had met a wonderful woman who was also working on the Hill, for another Senate Committee. We shared a tiny apartment a few blocks from the Senate office buildings. That summer, we went on a 2-week cross-country drive including a trip through the Badlands where I gave her her engagement ring. We planned to be married in the Spring.

The fall of the Democratic party in 1994 was a big deal for us. As Democrats, it was a huge disappointment, but as a practical matter it made my career prospects even dicier.

I could maintain my current position because it was a non partisan one, but that was not my dream at all. The job was a means to an end and now the end was much farther away. It was a very frustrating time...Having put up with a lot of difficulty to get a rather clerical job...And now, knowing it was not going to get any easier, made me feel like I was really in the wrong game.

Also, I felt discouraged that I had not had an opportunity to use any of my perceived intellectual skills. I had two degrees from one of the top undergraduate schools in the country and a law degree with honors. I was not afraid to get my hands dirty and pay my dues. But all around me, I saw younger people who had none of that succeeding based on luck and timing. I know life's not fair, but it had become to seem hopelessly unfair to achieve what I had hoped for and I was open to alternatives.

My fiance was also less than thrilled with her job. It had sounded good on paper, but in practice, it was mind-numbingly boring Committee work for an unpopular committee. She had started to look for jobs and was applying to law schools. She actually had an offer with the paralegal department of a small internet service provider that was starting up in Virginia called America Online. She was also accepted into law schools in New York City, San Francisco, and good ole Tacoma, WA.

Early in 1995, I made a really stupid move. My boss at the Committee who was in a non-partisan position and a well-connected guy, had talked with me and offered to help me stay on with the Committee as the staff transitioned to Republican control. He worked out a plan to get me a raise to a certain amount. We negotiated it and I thought we had agreement, but then he came back with a lesser amount from the new staff director. I walked into the director's office and handed him my letter of recommendation. My reasoning was that people who lost their jobs due to the power change were getting 2 months severance anyway and if they were going to nickel and dime me for few thousand dollars then it wasn't worth it to me.

I will not forget that meeting. It is embarrassing to remember. I was so stupid and arrogant. The staff director read my letter that I handed to him and said something to the effect of, "well, you know, I don't even know you. And when I read something like this, it just makes me want to say, FUCK YOU!" I mean the letter was not unprofessional or anything, but the context was. If I was going to do it, I should not have written the letter, I should have simply spoken to the man. It's like those annoying emails I've gotten from people over the years that sound innocent enough but are dripping with implied things. Everyone knows what you really mean by it. And it pisses people off righteously.

The greater infraction was my treatment of the guy who was trying to help me. He was mad at me for pulling a stunt like this as well. My actions were not expected; they did not know why I was doing this. They thought they were trying to help me and I was, for no rational reason, throwing it back in their faces.

I was thinking about a lot of things--it was not just mindless irrationality. But the problem was I was mostly thinking to myself and imagining all sorts of paranoid perceptions by other people. I was inventing motives and taking offense at things that did not even exist. I was over-estimating my importance and significance in a major way. Out of my frustration at many larger failed objectives, far beyond the scope or control of those present, I allowed myself to lash out in anger that was wrongly directed.

Amazingly, things worked out. We all talked it out and I basically got what I had hoped for in the deal; a salary increase and termination that allowed me to collect the severance package. But I swore after that I would never quit a job in anger again and certainly never without a viable alternative.

All of this was setting the stage for my fiance's and my joint decision of what to do next. The options were to stay in DC, with her foregoing lawschool and going to AOL and me looking for a new job on the Hill, or her going to law school wherever she got in and me starting over. We opted for the second choice. It seemed like time for a new beginning. Then the real choice became location which was a choice between New York City, San Francisco, or possibly Tacoma, WA.

The careful reader will recall my brief description of a relationship fiasco I had left behind in Washington State less than two years before and wonder that we were considering going there at all. Well, as I hope I made clear, my departure was not just running away from the ex-girlfriend. And furthermore, I would not have let that relationship ruin my new life with my wife. But alas, as I discovered one day, the ex was no longer in WA.

I periodically visited the Congressional offices I had some connection to in an effort to see if any new positions were opening up. One day, I was in one such office when I saw my old colleague who had been the state campaign coordinator for Tsongas in WA--now a press secretary. In the course of our conversation he noted that my ex had been in the office earlier that week. Yes, she had moved to Washington, D.C. She had opened up an espresso shop about a block and a half away from where I lived on Capitol Hill. Then, a few days later she dropped in on me at my office.

California was looking really good now. Not that San Francisco needs much to attract anyone. We thought about the whole lifestyle and where we wanted to be and pictured ourselves renting an apartment in Brooklyn, going back to Tacoma, or going to California and starting our lives together completely fresh...And California won easily.

So, as our jobs concluded, we sold everything we could, packed everything else into boxes and shipped them to a relative in Berkeley, and went to my wife's hometown to be married. After the wedding we packed the trusty Geo Metro up and drove 3000 miles back across America to begin our new lives in San Francisco.