A shot in Kansas before my car and life broke.
Where I slept the night before.
The end of that car.
So, this post is fairly personal, but I feel like it is one of those things we all need to be reminded of every once in a while.
A few years ago I lived in Austin, TX. The reason why I went there in the first place and what I was trying to do while I was there basically just didn’t work. Every time something seemed like it was working out - 3 things would happen to knock me down… you name it, cars, girls, apartments, jobs, rain…. whatever. I really liked Austin, but Austin didn’t like me…
Anyway, I finally went broke living there - totally broke - living on a credit card broke…. and decided to move home. It got to the point where it felt like my only option.
I packed up my 96 Lincoln Towncar and left right after the Austin Film Festival. The story of how I even ended up with that car is totally ridiculous and involves me taking an 8 hour bus ride into Mexico and rollerblading on gravel roads just to find the car in the first place and then having to haul an air compressor a mile just to fill up the air in the tires to drive it home… but that’s a different story.
I use to write - a lot. In fact, I wrote every single day for almost seven years (another long story… to save for later.) But, I looked back through my journal from that time period and found what I wrote about what happened with my car.
Here’s what I wrote:
“Well, it’s been a month since I left Austin and Texas. I have been putting off writing this entry for a while because I think honestly it was weighing heavier on my spirits then I would’ve liked to admit. As I left Texas I was feeling good about my choice to move on and hopefully forward. As I drove late into the night I was pulled over by a Texas state trooper because I had a tail light out and because I think he was racially profiling my car. Which was a 96 Lincoln Towncar with all tinted windows and was really lowered because my suspension was out and everything I owned was in the car weighing it down.
This was a minor issue to start out my trip. I continued to drive all night stopping to sleep at 5:00am at a truck stop in Kansas. I woke up feeling good and hoping to make it all the way home in one more day. A few hours later I got a flat tire. Of course I had no jack and only a tiny spare. So, I waited and in a fairly short amount of time an old man with a strong Kansas accent helped me out. Since I only had a temporary spare tire I needed to get another one for the rest of my trip home. After driving all around the small Kansas town I finally stopped at a Wal-Mart for a cheap new tire. The tires guys were not in a hurry. After about 6 or so hours from when I first got my flat I was back on the road. However, 30 minutes later I got another flat tire; the front right tire. Only this time things were worse, much worse. Not only did I get a second flat tire (of course I didn’t get another spare tire or a jack, thinking who gets two flat tires in one day; right?), but my car destroyed itself. When the tire went flat the tread came off ripping the wheel well off and out to the side of the car. Along with the wheel well came all of the electrical wiring, the motherboard, and all of the fuses for the car. When this happened the car went dead and I skid off to the side of the road. I was screwed.
I sat on the top of my car and a Mexican guy picked my up who had just quit his job. I went to a gas station and called a tow-truck driver who picked up my car and took it to the last open service station in the town. The mechanic took one look at it and laughed. He said it could take a week or so to find all the parts and it would probably cost more than a grand to fix it. Having no money, no job, no-where to stay in Kansas, I had no choice but to figure out a way to get ride of it. In the end I sold it to the lady who owned the service station for 250 bucks even though it was worth close to $3,000 only a couple hours beforehand. And it had one new tire on it as well. That night I stayed in a hotel near by. I was very hungry and tired. I walked across the street to get a take out breakfast from an all night truck stop. I overheard the nice women who took my order telling a regular that she was very sick, but had no health insurance for the medicine that she needed and couldn’t take the night off because she was a single mother. My order came to 7 dollars, but I gave her a 20 dollar tip because I figured that as long as my day couldn’t get any worse I might as well try to make someone else’s better. In the morning I went to the local court house to transfer the title and the women at the service station gave me the money which I turned around to use to pay for the rental car I needed to get home. I transferred all my stuff into the rental and took off for home.
At least it was a nice fall day as I was leaving Newton, Kansas. I drove for 13 hours and pulled into my parent’s house around 11:00pm.
On the bright side I could say that everyone who helped me out in KS was very nice and the rest of my drive home was problem free. But, the fatality of my car sort of represented the deeper sense of failure my whole Texas experience has felt like for me. In a way, it was like one last kick in the nuts from Texas. I didn’t really show any emotional reaction to my situation, I didn’t get really pissed, or cry, or freak out, but I was very bummed. Although, I didn’t really react to my trip home my spirit was totally and completely broken. I was literally penniless, had built up debt for the first time in my life from the many other car related problems I had experienced over the last year, I hadn’t accomplished what I set out to do in Austin, and I was heading home only a couple weeks before winter. I hate winter. It has taken me a couple weeks to start to move forward again, and I must admit I don’t think I’m totally over how stuck I feel being back in MN. I don’t want to see my friends, because I have to explain to them why I’m back. My feeling of failure even haunts me in my sleep. I was having many strange dreams that repeatedly involved falling trees. Finally, I looked into the meaning behind this and simply put, it means you feel like you are heading in the wrong direction and that your life is a lowly mess. Yep, that about sums up my thoughts on that.”
Looking back at it now I think that that was the most depressed I’ve ever been and I’ve had some really bad things happen to me in the past - near death kind of stuff - but those things don’t make you feel like a failure.
It took me a good year and half to just get back on my feet. And another to be heading down the track I am now.
But, I’m really glad it happened. Nick and I named our studio Defiance for a reason - because we both have had these kinds of experiences - that really test your will - and in the end they do make you stronger, more confident, more focused on what you really want, - getting really knocked down lets you know how low you can go and still bounce back even if it takes three years.
Right now - as in right now - I feel like I’m totally on track - I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing to be where I want to be in the future. But, I know I’ll likely be knocked down just has hard or harder than I have been in the past - but I say bring it on - try to get me down. Defiance.
