Today, I’m back in California – not as a resident, but as a visitor. As we get ready to produce Sixthman’s first West Coast cruise (beginning tonight with One Splendid Evening, and continuing tomorrow with the Mayercraft Carrier 2), I can’t help but think how much my life has changed over these past three years. Let’s hit the rewind button:
March 2006 - It’s three months before my college graduation, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with my life. My older brother Jack calls me from Chicago and says he’s sick of the cold and he needs somebody to move with him to San Diego. Let me check my schedule, yup! I’m open. Let’s roll the dice and try the West Coast. I’ve always wanted to live in Southern California and surf every day, so it looks like my dream will come true.
June 2006 - Already committed to moving, Jack and I fly out to L.A./San Diego and go through some job interviews. Still undecided with what I want to do with my life, I apply all over the place in multiple industries and end up taking a job in sales selling construction equipment. I tell the company I’ll be back in August.
August 2006 - The first of my cross-country drives in my beat-up car, a ‘94 Jimmy with 110,000 miles on it. At this point, the air conditioning is already starting to go and the heat doesn’t work either. Jack and I move into our new apartment which happens to be 30 yards from the beach. Jackpot.
September 2006 – I have this dream, and yet don’t realize for another year and a half how important my college friends are to me.
May 2007 – I’m promoted and given a company car – Ford F250! I note the massive tires, convenient beeping noise when I almost back over things, and a large truck bed. This is awesome.
September 2007 - I head back to Vanderbilt for Homecoming weekend and proceed to have the time of my life with my friends (this is our 5th reunion since graduating only a year earlier). On the last morning in Nashville, I’m asked by a good friend, “Steve, are you happy in California?” and for the first time in a year and a half, I finally admit that I’m not. “Why are you staying there then?” Hmmm, good question.
On my flight back to California that night, I’m terrified with where my life is going, I desperately miss my friends, and I almost have a mental breakdown on the plane. I get back to my apartment and hop on Google Chat. As it turns out, two of my best college friends are getting a place to live in Atlanta, and they need a third roommate. Within 24 hours, I make up my mind to move to Atlanta. When I tell Jack that I’m ditching him for the South he smiles and says, “hey man, you gotta do what you gotta do.”
November 2007 – As luck would have it, I had already booked a flight to visit my sister at UGA months in advance, so I use this weekend to line up a few interviews in Atlanta. One company looking for a new hire catches my eye, “Sixthman.” I shoot them a resume and tell them I’ll be in town, praying that it’s a legitimate job posting and the company actually exists.
After a number of phone calls, a phone interview, and emails with a girl named April, she tells me that Sixthman would like me to come in that weekend for a regular interview and a fun interview. What’s a fun interview? Well, mine involved bowling.
I get a call the day before Thanksgiving from April saying that they’d like me to come work for Sixthman. WAHOO! I immediately accept (I’m a terrible negotiator), then walk into my company’s office in San Diego and inform them that this day would be my last day of work. I go home, pack up my stuff, leaving behind my bed, television, desk, dresser, and surfboards. For the second time in two years, I’m moving cross country. The drive is miserable (really could have used heat in my car when it dropped into the 30s), but I have never felt more excited or alive. Atlanta and Sixthman, here I come!
December 2008-present: I have found my calling. Thanks Sixthman.
Looking back, my time in California wasn’t the fairy-tale dream I had imagined it’d be, but I have zero regrets. I’m glad I took the chance to move out there. I like to think that everything happens for a reason, and had I not moved to the West Coast, who knows where I’d be? I guarantee I would have never ended up with Sixthman, and I certainly wouldn’t be getting on a cruise with John Mayer, Guster, O.A.R., and a dozen other bands heading down to Cabo San Lucas tomorrow.
I realize I’m only 24 and only have two jobs out of college under my belt, but I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit over the past three years. If you’re getting ready to make a big life change…I say go for it. When you believe everything happens for a reason, every single decisionyou make, no matter how big or small, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, is simply a necessary step on the eventual path to complete happiness.
Make it happen!
-Steve
