Living Old(er). More Lessons Learned.

“Eat Life like you're starving. You may feel full at the end of the day, but damn, it tasted good.” Antonio Ruiz

I remember the moment I touched down at Los Angeles Airport like it was yesterday. It was actually forty years ago, last June 26. There was such an emotional response that I’ve written about it often—the latest on the anniversary of my arrival. The emotions I felt then were not just that I had finally escaped what had been four of the worst years of my life up until that date (and that’s saying something). Still, it was the prospect of another opportunity to get it right, to put those four years behind me, maybe take some of the lessons learned over the previous thirty-five years and apply them to my California Dreams.

I arrived with one huge suitcase and a backpack at a minute past midnight, greeted by the one person I knew in Los Angeles, a welcoming smile, a comforting embrace, a hint that I wasn’t alone. Unafraid, at that moment, of the future because I was confident that it was not the first time I was starting over, albeit not three thousand miles from my first thirty-five years of life. As we headed in a convertible sports car with the top down to an apartment in Inglewood, the city lights, the freeway motion, and the sky clear, I let go of the past, even if it was for just that moment, and soaked in the optimism that I had come to expect from those California Dreams.

I bought into the so-called La La Land myth in those first few hours. I was one of millions of East Coast ex-pats who arrived believing that the Pacific Ocean, swaying palm trees, the beaches, the waves, the music, Hollywood, and the freeways were just there waiting for us to finally arrive so they could roll out the red carpet, paparazzi standing at attention, ready to shoot our pictures into the stars, with the sounds of Lights Camera Action ringing in our ears, we would be ready for our close-ups.

California Lesson Number One

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

As I said in my first article, Living Old(er). Learning Lessons. , wherever you go, there you are. All the ghosts that haunted me during my past rises and falls and rises again during my first thirty-five years hitched a ride on that plane that landed that June night forty years ago. They followed me through those first months as I struggled through a West Coast culture unlike the East Coast culture of New York and Washington, D.C. Everything here was miles upon miles, freeways upon freeways, rush hours that had no beginnings and no ends, cities whose borders never seemed clear to me, in a time before GPS and smartphones, where a book of maps, The Thomas Guide, was your only salvation from getting marooned every day of your life.

Those first few months were depressing,

California Lesson Number Two

There is no time for depression when you have a life to rebuild. Get up off your ass and do something.

Maybe, you can learn to ride a motorcycle to become a messenger. That sounded like an excellent first step. Ride like the wind. Ride that white line, baby, into an unknown future, but ride forward. The metaphor continued with becoming an Airport Shuttle driver. Move forward. Learn your way around this megalopolis. Meet as many people as possible, even if it’s just for a moment. Become a bartender. That’s another way to meet people (in retrospect, not a smart move when you’re an addict and alcoholic), but meet people I did. All kinds of people.

There were too many lessons in those first three years to list, but they were important lessons about doing what you must do to pay the rent, eat, and clothe yourself. There’s no time for ego. No one cares who and what you were on another coast, in another time. You are here now, and what you do here and now is the only thing that matters.

That drive to survive, to push forward through odd jobs, and finally losing that bartending job (there’s a lesson for bar owners: don’t hire an alcoholic and drug addict as a bartender) was what set me up for a future that I could not have seen coming.

I met a guy who knew a guy. And then I was working in Hollywood at a new cable network, which led to twenty-plus years as a producer, supervising producer, and an executive producer of live television, hours of red carpet live television, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, movie premiers, excitement, before the pressure and stress, pushed me into relapse and down the rabbit hole and finally, squashed me like a bug under the full weight of that addiction and alcoholism.

California Lesson Number Three

You either stay squashed, or you scoop yourself up, pull yourself together, accept that you’re getting too old for this self-abuse, and start all over again. However, it’s not all over again because you’ve been down this road enough times that you already have a blueprint, a life partner who still believes in you, responsibilities that need your attention, and a life worth saving.

September 11 will mark thirteen years of sobriety. During those thirteen years, I’ve resurrected myself from the living dead to return to college, graduate with honors, and set myself on a path to self-redemption. It has not been easy. There are no greater expectations than just being able to wake up every morning, breathe in life through my body, and push myself into and through a day, triumphantly, without alcohol or drugs. One day at a time.

Final California lesson

Don’t be surprised by what you can accomplish when you believe your choices are clear. Live or Die. Yeah, I’ll choose to live every time now. It’s so much more fun.