The fight for survival
I left for the West Coast in 1990 determined to find myself and instead I found someone else – this person who craved security and order and needed money in order to live. That was so not the person who left New Orleans. There in San Francisco, the living ain’t easy, yes there is abundance, but that bounty comes at too dear a cost. Daily life became the ritual of survival and how to make a buck. In my marriage at the time, we had come to an agreement to be able always to live off of one another’s salary so that we could always have breathing room for us both to pursue a life that we envisioned. This vision came crashing to a halt when the dotcommers exploded and ruined everyone’s life.
I came back to New Orleans to return to that simplicity and instead found myself fat from the west and carrying over my newly learned avarice unable to detach from money and its trappings. I built my house around that idea that what I had been striving for in the west would now happen in the Gulf South.
What kind of fool am I?
I’ve been clinging to someone else’s idea of success. I’ve been measuring myself by another culture’s benchmarks. I’ve been following the wrong gods.
The hurricane force that is trying to whip me back to my core is scaring the daylights out of me. But I say, bring it.