California
10 Feb 2006There are moments in life that belie comprehension. Coincidences that go beyond reason.
A good friend of mine got “restructured” out of his job this week. He is pretty upbeat about it all. It was kind of strange because the week before I told him I had been thinking about heading west (like a young man should) and he had said he wanted to as well, but that he had to wait a while to get a certain bonus or stock maturation or whatever.
Then just like that, he’s free.
Since we often talk about where we will work next and what we will do as well as reminisce about the past; talk turned to California. As a friend of mine says “The grass really is greener in California.”
A couple of years ago we went to California for E3. Our whole company went for it. It was a massive celebration event for the 11 months of overtime we had just battled through (our lightest work week was 40 hours in 3 days).
There were ten or eleven of us who decided to head out to Santa Monica and take in the sights as well as soaking up the beach life. After a bunch of wandering around, switching sides of the pier at the beach, etc, I was tired and wanted to sit and take a break. So my friend and I told everyone else to just go ahead and we’d catch up.
So there we were. Just sitting on the edge of a little strip of pavement running along the beach when these two stewardesses (they called themselves that) rolled up to us on roller skates. They asked us if we had some free time and if we would mind following them around and videotaping them.
Do the math. Two single guys who hadn’t been more than 100 feet away from a computer in almost a year + two beautiful stwardesses who want them to run around and videotape them = two guys following around two girls with a camera.
That’s how we spent the afternoon. Then the women took us out for beer. We all hit it off quite well, it’s too bad that we were only going to be down in LA for a couple more days.
It was a legendary event at the company (the legend was extended further after a trip to GDC a year later). The crew on the beach met up with us a few hours later and were all “What the hell? How did you do that? What’s the deal? Who were they?”
Forever the memory of meeting Missy and Erin will be immortalized by the word “Foamy”. There is a story to that, but it is neither interesting nor funny, so it will be skipped.
I am originally from the west, and it has always called to me. Maybe it’s time to answer? Maybe I haven’t gone far enough west? It is really just too hard to decide. All of the major decisions in my life are impulse decisions. I can agonize over what to eat for supper for three hours; but damn if I don’t just up and move myself across the country throwing my life into chaos “just because.”
I’m trying to reverse my decision making habits.