2 road rage incidences, being scammed, one girl running out in front of my car in the middle of the street at night and almost getting run over by me, having my car hit two times (from the front and back) and being cut off every single time I get on the highway, I'm starting to adopt the belief that this place can be crazier than most. With its "lawlessness" as house guests have described and "laziness" when you see Wal-Mart carts scattered throughout the whole parking lot besides the place where the carts are actually supposed to go, one remains skeptical of calling this place home. I sure have. Common courtesy much? Dare I say Viva...Las Vegas!!?
But I am still hopeful that this new beginning will simply lead to another even better one that I can visualize even better than the last one.
Some great experiences have included the following work adventures like: a stint working at a dancer agency as a phone call girl who made appointments for the escorts. Auditions included talking like Marilyn Munroe or a high-pitched ditzy high school cheerleader because according to the other phone girls, men like "ditzy" and "stupid" when selling appointments over the phone. I was amused by the role and further interested in living this job that was outside of who I am and what I had ever done before. I continued to embrace the work reality until my bills caught up to me faster than the men on the other line would bite for the appointments with "Misty", "Tatiana", or "Nadia". And continued onto something more innocent and in line with my nature.
On-call babysitting, short-term nannying, pet-sitting and just about anything else that could fall from the sky into my lap was where I delightfully ended up. The kids indulged me with wanting to "play catch", "bake cookies", "take pictures", go on field trips, down the slide at the playground or me catching a ball the 7-year old would drop from his parent's room loft and purposely drop it somewhere I had to run to instead of in front of me. Lol-- this was my life as I knew it. Simple and sweet. I once interviewed for a production company to be a recruiter, recruiting anything from stagehands to performers but didn't get a call back after the second interview. I interviewed to be a personal assistant of a self-indulgent singer, reporter, radio show host and writer-- to be juggling her appointments. I gladly did not get a call back as she already set an appointment for me to show up on Friday because she was not confident in the candidates she made me call up who were on their way to interview with me after. I could tell and feel she was the type of person who would try to take advantage of me and emphatically moved forward. I co-mingled with so many small business owners and met a CEO of a big corporation who was reengineering all of the old downtown part of Las Vegas. I had also met his driver, who was also formerly Etta James's driver and spoke of how she was the kind of star who would try to sign her autograph for every fan that approached her. She sounded like a true blue people person who truly appreciated her fans and had a voice of gold. I met and briefly dated a guy who worked the head of security for MGM and had run into many stars from Don Cheadle, Kelly Rowland and Beyonce and had developed perceptions of each from having real conversations with them. But most of all, I liked how anyone out here whom I told "I am a nanny," they would all have accepting responses like, "That so cool!" or, "I wish I could be a nanny, that seems like fun." As opposed to the East coast, where the general reaction was one of distaste, judgment or disapproval. Out here, it seems like many actually like their jobs and don't care what other people think about what they do. It isn't about status, its about art or creating who you are. In the end, this is just a way I make money. I realized more fully, that I don't identify myself with what I do for a living. I never have. However, I want whatever I do to enhance the lives of others and myself in adding life to it or in being of service to others. I don't need to make alot of money and have further realized that to me, time is the most valuable thing because you can never ever get it back. There's always more money to be made.
I have valued my relationships with the people I have worked with, the small businesses I have supported, the bosses who only wanted their team to get along and would be bothered to tears when the team didn't. I have seen a different side of what the workplace can be out here as opposed to what I have seen when I worked in the highly populated corporate America of the East coast. I am so grateful for having these experiences, these contrasts that I would have only gotten if I had moved. I think its important to get out and move around and see what the world is like in your eyes than letting people tell you what it is based on their experiences. This is how we develop our truth. With our own minds and eyes and visions.
Needless to say, I liked the experiences and variety. They were all things I had daydreamed about one time or another when I was a child in grade school. I had alot of time by myself, riding the bus, walking home, doing my homework locked in my room until dinner to let my mind wander to everyone else's stories of life. I was always curious as to what it would be like to be somebody else....and not because I didn't like me, I didn't like my life. So, as a child I'd create all kinds of fantasies of living in other places or see people working jobs and wonder what it was like to be a cook, a teacher, a painter, a singer, a dancer, a principal, the post man or postwoman. My mind was the best place to escape to...all my life felt like a dream anyway. And part of me would know and feel that this place isn't completely real. So why not journey and explore?
With that being said, I was so excited to continue my journey driving from Montana to Las Vegas to meet up with my best friend who I hadn't seen for years. I was so excited. I was picking her up the night she arrived which was the same day I arrived. It felt like fate. Or so I thought. I just knew, I could no longer stay in Montana. The city I was in started to feel like a place people get stuck in. And after not being able to find a job in four weeks I didn't like the pace nor the mentality and figured it was time to leave. Plus, I was starting to feel as if I was overstaying my welcome. So I continued the journey that was another 14 hours and some 800 miles to my next best option of continuing life better than I knew it...Las Vegas.
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Besties til the End?
It will never cease to amaze me how friends can feel like you know them so well over the phone but when you meet them in person, its like you are strangers that outgrew each other. This happened once back in Montana and I ended up losing a friend (of 8 years) because of who I thought he was. And now here I was in Las Vegas with my "best friend" and our first interaction was an argument about who was picking her up at the airport after we had already discussed it thoroughly for about 5 minutes the night prior. But, I shrugged it off as I ended up picking her up in spite of her back up plans that were primary plans then back up plans again. When I arrived, we shrieked and squealed and all was good in the world after hugs and compliments, bags in back trunks and looks exchanged with each other where we remembered the other person was real. Not just someone we dreamt up or talked about or to, that lived miles and miles away. We were both real. And, for a long time I finally felt I had a companion as we started out mapping our life in Vegas out together. Taking turns driving each other places, eating dinner and buying meals with and for the other, staying at each other's places, job-hunting and surviving together. It felt good to have a partner in all of life battles that I had fought alone before. This was so new to me to have a really close friend that lived where I lived and perhaps we lost our boundaries somewhere along the way. Because along with the lost boundaries, went respect, honesty, tolerance, acceptance and forgiveness out the window. And even, if I was doing my part, I realized I couldn't make my best friend do what I wanted her to do. So slowly, but surely, we fell apart, especially after I realized that we were spending more time apart than together after constantly inviting her to spend time with me. And thats when I realized my needs more. That to me, having the time and being available to others is what I would like for them to do for me. Be available for me if you love me. So, we went our separate ways and have not spoken since. And, with that example, I imagine thats how marriages end. Two people, if away from each other long enough-- or not present enough with the other in their reality and our own, we can lose the visions we had together if we see that one or both parties were not true to themselves. Thats how we can get "lost in translation". So, I lost my best friend.
I learned the hard way, "that sometimes its not the time that you have known someone to be your friend, its their character" and the way they consistently treat you, and you them. Thats most important.
Life is a series of letting things go......
Along with our friendship, also died "Conversations with K&K". It was my vision and our execution. I was so excited when we first started our radio show that I would listen to the playback three times and giggle to myself! We had finally captured all of our friendship on one recording at a time and shared the connection we had with all of our listeners. Together, we had a good "synergy" as my "best friend" liked to put it. We were most honest to ourselves and each other on the recorded radio show. Our words, even our hesitations can never be taken back. It was so real, candid and entertaining, even people that I included in the show enjoyed listening as well. I was most proud of creating and producing that show together. It was such a work of art that I had such a vision for and now, like many things in life, we must continue forward with new plans. I'm starting to see some of the truest lessons in being an adult is being able to move forward without the people that you love. And, that being able to survive alone is one's greatest asset. And to never clutch so hard onto any one or any thing. It could easily be the end of you. I think it best to learn that now, than later. Don't you?
Before and during my journey out west, I also had made new friends ironically, before I left Virginia. Months before my departure from Virginia, Sunday evenings were filled with aromas of ethnic meals being cooked for the roommates and non-roommates in a big beautiful house in Fairfax. We each took turns cooking and sat at a picnic table as the dining room table with significant others or singles sharing jokes of sex, love, romance, bodily functions, weight loss, diets, etc. We danced and drank and smoked. And all was merry! I miss them.
Or, the other new friend I always bumped into at the gym and then outside the house I worked at while she was walking the dog. She was my neighbor who lived next to the house I nannied at. We were at the same competitions together and shared mutual acquaintances whom we wished we'd never met after standing up for each other. Certainly, we were meant to bump into each other again and make Vegas memories. :)
Or the new friend, Lena, back in Montana, who housed me for two weeks at her and her parents house after my friend of 8 years dumped me and I could no longer stay with his second mother because she had turned into someone who seemed demonically possessed. (I can't help but be candid as far as my travels go. It would be inauthentic to say anything less than what actually happened.) I started to realize and see people for what they showed me, rather than what they consistently spoke to me about. And, in them doing so, it also solidified my character even more of who I want to be ideally and who I can live up to being. And, now that I am away from all of the most familiar people I have known I make sure to meet them face to face when they visit town. Its most important now, because I realize how we forsake seeing each other in the flesh because of technology or distance when we live in the same state or vicinity. But if that gap can ever be bridged its best to see people and meet them and most of all spend time with them because we all have messages for each other to help us out on our journeys and paths. And these messages help to elevate every one of us to the next level of wherever we need to go. That, to me, is fate. So, in driving almost three thousand miles away from home to find myself, my destiny, my fate, my purpose and deeper sense of myself (that I could be proud of), I have re-learned that I most proud of myself and feel purposed when I am serving others. Being honest, transparent, authentic, keeping my word, living up to my own ideals. And, the best way to do that is in giving our time, sharing our lessons, nurturing our people through words, actions, and best of all, through example. And, thats one thing I want to be remembered for wherever I go. Being the real deal.
What do you want to be remembered for?
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