House Of Pain

Thursday August 30th, 2007 - Salt Lake City, UT

I love Utah. It’s packed full of goofy white people and I fit right in. It’s a different world altogether and I got used to it when I lived here in 2000 and 2001. I really thought I’d stay out here for a long time and even bought a house to seal the deal. The radio business had a different plan and it turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I ever made and I have an impressive list of stupid mistakes to choose from. This one hurt a lot though and still does.

My hotel is about a mile from my old place so I walked by it this morning to see how it’s looking these days. I saw a sign in front of it from a distance and it looked like it was a for sale sign but it wasn’t. It was a commendation from the city of West Valley praising it as a ‘jewel of the city’ and it took first place in a contest the city had for the nicest yard. Wow.

I looked at the yard and it really was gorgeous. Someone moved in there and turned the yard into a show place with all kinds of rock formations and exotic flowers and the lawn is like the 18th green at Pebble Beach. I sure didn’t have it looking like that so I congratulate whomever moved in after I left. They probably got a very good deal on it and now it’s the showpiece of the neighborhood. It kind of hurt to see that at first but then I was happy for the people who live there now and realized I would never have gotten it looking like that.

Some things are meant to be and others aren’t. It wasn’t for me to be a homeowner here and I wish I’d have known that then. Actually I did have severe second thoughts about the whole thing back then but I did it anyway because everyone kept telling me how intelligent it was to buy a house and how ‘I couldn’t go wrong’ and all the other stuff that haunts me several years later. My life is full of ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ but it’s too late now. It’s all over and the only thing that remains of my Utah experience is my vaporized credit rating.

That doesn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the day today though so I did. I took a long walk on a sunny day and thought about my life now. It’s easy to enjoy life when things are flowing smoothly but when the rough waters come it’s a challenge to keep a cool head. I can feel a lifetime of hard knocks and mistakes and rough breaks taking their toll on me now. I am at a crucial time in life and if I’m going to make my mark I have to hurry up and do it soon.

I was in a full sweat by the time I got back to the hotel and my blood was pumping hard. The altitude of Salt Lake City is higher than Denver so the air is light and I could feel it in my shortness of breath. I cooled off by doing the USA Today crossword puzzle and then I sat down to get some comedy work done to make this day productive on multiple levels.

My schedule is pretty bare for the next few months and looking at my calendar made me realize that I need to get back in the booking game but quick. I kept it on the light side for way too long a time because I didn’t know what was going to happen with the radio job.

That’s not going to happen now so I need to start from ground zero and build up a new list of contacts that will give me work. I feel like I’m starting over again and in a sense I’m doing exactly that. I’ll use this weekend to start making my contacts and get it all rolling.