The Van Wilder Crossroads

(Warning: Zero poker content. Slightly intoxicated author.)

I don't think it's wrong that I can relate to a dumb movie.

In the last several months, I've ignored, or grappled with, the concept of overcoming fear and moving on with one's life. I consider this the central theme to the movie Van Wilder... the guy that stays in college for seven years to avoid going "out into the real world", because his father is work and only work.

My own father wrote me an email two days ago, about my job search. But first, I must paint a backstory...

Right before Christmas of '03, I lost my job. More to the point, I threw it away. I enjoyed my job as a field sales rep for an analytical chemistry equipment company. A week before Christmas, I drove drunk in my company car (the only car I had). On my way home from a bar in Huntington Beach, I rummaged through the back seat looking for a map, and piloted my car straight, while the road curved. I hopped the curb and ran into a chain link fence, managing to prop my car up on a concrete abutment. Thankfully nobody was walking on the sidewalk at 2am, but I couldn't move the car. I wandered around a nearby apartment complex, while the HB cops (whose headquarters were only four blocks away) arrived in short order, found me, and asked me if that was my car.

So you're drunk, still. And the cops ask you if that's your car. Your company car. You think "Maybe I can lie. But if I do, what will happen to the company car? This could get ugly. I'd better tell the truth."

On Monday, you've got a horrible story to tell your boss. Ten days later, your boss visits. Sure enough, she's there to take your laptop and tell you the company no longer needs your services.

That Christmas sucked. The best present I got was the company sending me back the laptop, which was a relic anyway, after deleting all of the work-related info.

The next several months were spent attending meetings and jumping through the hoops that the DMV and State of California set in front of me. It's quite humbling to listen the stories of alcoholics five days a week for six weeks. And to think that you're not like them, but that what seperates you isn't so wide a chasm.

I went without a car in southern California for about three months. I lost 15 pounds walking and riding my bike everywhere. The supermarket was two miles away - I'd push the cart all the way home, and one evening I got stopped by the cops. They told me I "fit the description of somebody who was wanted for carjacking". They let me go. I'm pretty sure a Master Carjacker would be smart enough to drive away, rather than attempt to hide himself by pushing a full shopping cart. On foot.

I got a job waiting tables, and rode my bike 4 miles to work. Once again, I was hanging around 20-year-olds.. only I was much older now, and stupid, and no longer proud. Working a job simply to pay the bills.

I jumped through all the hoops by March 7, the day that my valid driver's license arrived from the DMV. On June 9, I arrived back in Orange County with a car of my own that wasn't a complete embarassment, or an unreliable hunk of metal.

It's July 17, and I'm still working at the same restaurant. They're going to let me train to be a bartender in the next few weeks... but really, why am I still here?

In the last few months, I've asked myself that question. I fear moving on, back into the "real world". I have a chemistry degree and field sales experience (and the specter of a DUI), and I think I'd do well in the arena of pharmaceutical sales. On one of my trips to the DMV, I met a Novartis pharma rep and talked about my situation. She suggested that I find a smaller pharma company, which could hire me as a rep, offering me a traveling stipend, rather than a company car. Most of the big pharmas have company cars, and therefore company insurance, and policies against hiring anyone with a DUI on their record, no matter how good their sales numbers were, or how badly they wanted the job.

So it's been months, and I haven't even applied to a pharma sales position. Frankly, I'm afraid. Suppose the industry rejects me and my big black mark. What then?

What is Plan B, exactly?

When I graduated from UNC, I thought that my life's work might mirror my father's. Where bastketball was his game, soccer is mine. While neither one of us had the physical skills to dominate, we had the sharp mind to understand and teach the game we loved. My plan then was to become a math or science teacher and coach soccer. The sales job came up and looked too good, so I took it. I even had a taste of what I loved, while I still worked in Inside Sales. I volunteered as a coach in the YMCA league. They needed coaches for the 5 & 6 year olds, so that's what I did. The two girls on my team were my best players, and everybody cheered the loudest when the "slow" kid scored a goal. I divided playing time mathematically, and no parents complained to me. It was a great time, but it taught me that coaching is more work than it seems. Very rewarding though.

Plan B-2 is to involve myself in poker. Sure, I love it, and I've hosted games for over a year now. I've seriously considered moving to Las Vegas, waiting tables right away, and eventually becoming a poker dealer at a casino.

So this is where I'm at. I watched a dumb movie tonight, and related it to an email my father wrote me. He had been thinking about my job search, and wanted to impart some fatherly wisdom. I'm old enough and humble enough to want to listen. His idea is that perhaps sales isn't the field I should be looking at. That perhaps I should do what makes me happy, what I would truly enjoy, and let the money issues sort themselves out.

So I'm at a crossroads in my life. I'm 29 years old, and I've been standing at this crossroads for too long now, looking around cluelessly.

I've always sorted it out before. But usually it hasn't taken me this long.