Thursday, January 21, 2016 — 2nd Day in the Bay
I pulled a wrinkled blazer from my overstuffed suitcase. A Ganesha figurine fell to my feet.
Libby gave it to me the day I left the Chopra Center. Ganesha, the Hindu God of new beginnings, the remover of obstacles. A sense of calm poured over me; chills trickled down my neck.
I remembered moving to San Diego four years ago.
After I graduated college, I started selling life insurance for a multi-level marketing company in Dallas. The job was mostly cold calling — hardcore sales. It was pay-to-play, which means I had to buy leads for anywhere between $5-$25 each. I was losing $500 per week, eating PB&Js every meal, making call after call after call, and getting cussed out and hung up on. The image of money burning in flames haunted my mind.
I knelt in the shower, pressed my nose to the floor, and thanked God for the water as it spilled over me. I was desperate and lost. So I headed west in search of myself.
I drove a beaten-to-shit Honda with no A/C through the deserts of west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in the height of the summer. To stay cool I dipped a towel in ice water, wrapped it around my head like a Muslim woman, and alternated between the agony of a whirling heat vortex with the windows down, and a broiling convection oven with the windows up.
After a 22-hour trek, I arrived in breezy, perfect San Diego with wide-eyed excitement and $60 in my pocket. The next time I tried to start my car, it was silent, without even a flicker of life. So I walked. I asked a passerby which way the beach was. She cocked her head like a confused dog, pointed, and said, “west.” Two miles later, I dug my toes in the sand, stared across the everlasting blue horizon, and laughed.
I thanked God for water; He gave me the ocean.
One thing I know for sure: the universe gives you exactly what you need, precisely when you need it, and not a moment before.
Now I’m here in the Bay, starting again. This time with no doubts. This time with surefire trust that everything will work out as it’s meant to. If I’m pushed to limits I’ve never surpassed, it’s merely preparation for a future trial. The facing of a challenge is a deposit of strength to be withdrawn at a later date.
So, I checked the bus schedule to plan my trip into the city for an interview with Zipcar.
I crammed a toothbrush, toothpaste, trail mix, and Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” into my jacket pockets, then pattered out the door. The nearest bus stop is next to the Marin City projects where Tupac spent his late teens and began his rise to fame. Needless to say, I was the only white boy in a full suit waiting on the project bus bench. I must have looked out of place, because a young black woman wearing a flat bill gave me a lingering sideways glance in between eating Cheetos.
When the bus arrived, I hopped on and asked, “is this going to San Francisco?” The driver replied, “Transbay Terminal.” I thought to myself, “I don’t know where the fuck that is, but it’s gotta be closer than where I am now.”
As we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and meandered in between the towering skyscrapers of the Financial District, I asked the driver to let me off. I stepped onto the sidewalk and turned full circle, taking in the sheer magnitude of the city as people bustled past me like schools of fish — then I spotted it. There it was. Right there. Zipcar’s office, less than a block away. I laughed and said, “thanks Ganesha.”