After 9/11, my industry collapsed. Was working as a technical writer (writing software manuals) in NYC while playing music in the jazz clubs downtown. Feeling like I’d already failed at life, with everything I loved collapsing around me, I moved in with my folks in Boca Raton, FL

After I’d given up everything else, I got myself a job as a barista at Borders on 441. They didn’t want to hire me for the music or books section because I didn’t know a single thing about the books or music normal people bought.

Two months later, a beautiful girl showed up and got a job as the second barista.

The fist day I trained her on the machines. We were flirty. I said “let’s run away to San Francisco.”

She laughed and said I was insane; we’d only just met.

A few months later, we packed her car and drove cross-country to move to San Francisco.

But dating as adults while we both lived with our parents was a bit weird. We found these amazing old beachcomber motels. She’d bring her portable record player and some Hank Williams LPs.

In San Francisco we rented a great apartment on the first floor of a busy street around Union Square. Up and down the hills. The fog. The old dive bars in the Tenderloin with great, absurd jukeboxes.

We broke up; she returned to Florida. I stayed in San Francisco, and that’s when things started to get a lot more fun. Moved to North Beach, and then finally to a great place above a bar in the Mission. There was something so special about those couple of blocks at that time.

Anyway, this was just a snapshot that popped into my head. I’ve had a fairly interesting life. At least it’s been unpredictable. For better or worse, I’ve never had a vision of how my life would go, how I’d end up, or what would happen.

Perhaps this indicates a real deficiency, and that would be true, too. Would’ve been a lot better to’ve just planned and followed a schedule, in some ways; would’ve been less entertaining in others. Regrets? Maybe, maybe not. You can’t turn back the clock.