Jalpuna! | From '94 To '04

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From '94 To '04

I remember the very first time the show 'Friends' came on TV. I'd recently graduated college & was living in Pittsburgh while interning at a radio station there.

It was the fall of 1994 & I was a TV junkie. I was recording as much as I could to collect silly quotes for use in radio station ID's and such.

I usually got the best quotes from the worst shows. Shows like Wild Oats... remember that one? I didn't think so. What about "Hardball"? Right. Each probably aired less than a year. I recall thinking "This new 'Friends' show has to suck! A pretentious one-word title and a cast of nobodies. Great." You bet'cher ass I taped that one.

Of course, it didn't suck. In fact, it was pretty good - and the show built from there - for ten years.

And what did *I* do with the next ten years? My life was pretty good back in the fall of '94... so ripe with promise and potential... What did I build?

REWINDING MY TAPE BACK TO FALL, 1994:

LOVE

I'd been saving money for months because I was going to ask the girl I'd been dating during my last year in college if she'd marry me. I was very poor. I remember picking up the phone to order a pizza one night... I had the receiver in my hand & I was staring at the buttons... I wanted to dial, but I couldn't help thinking "it's six dollars I shouldn't be spending."

I hung up the phone.

We never did get married - but it's worth noting that the engagement ring was stunning. STUNNING. ...So much for the love life... ten years later, I'm still single.

CAREER

In the fall of '94, I was working for free as an intern at a radio station in Pittsburgh. I was so cocky back then. I knew I was talented, but I wasn't patient enough while paying my dues. Three years later, I was interviewing for a six figure radio gig in Los Angeles. My career was incredibly rewarding - and yet, just referred to it in the past tense. "It was..." I had good reason to leave radio behind... I wanted a life. Moving city to city every few years isn't the best way to build one.

Today, I'm freelancing while trying to figure out what comes next. I'm not foolish enough to think that 'whatever comes next' is just going to happen... I have to make it happen... So be it.

LIFE

At least here I can say I've made real progress. In the fall of '94, I was just getting my career started. The girlfriend became a fiance, and the career took off. We moved to Georgia. We moved to Florida. We moved back to Pittsburgh. Then she moved out & I moved to Houston. I buried myself so deep in my work that it never dawned on me that I had no life. What was I doing? What was I becoming? Interviewing in Los Angeles was like a giant wake-up call for me.

I can think of no city that I'd detest living in more than L.A., and yet - there I was... interviewing for a job. I returned to Houston determined to stay there until I found a city I'd want to live in... which is - more or less - how I found Portland. And it's how I lost Portland. I moved here without a plan to KEEP myself here. When my radio job didn't work out, I had a noncompete clause in my contract that prevented me from finding another radio job in town... which explains how I ended up living in Dallas.

FAST-FORWARD BACK TO THE PRESENT:

HO - LEE - CRAP! Where DID the years go? It's not that I have any regrets... The past ten years have been good to me... or at least, they've been more good than bad, and they led me here.

*I* led me here, and I like it here. Portland feels like the place I was meant to live... and *MY* friends are wonderful people [though I've married none of them, nor lost any to a lesbian lover. No babies either].

So, tonight I'll watch the final episode of Friends as if I've been watching the show all along, even though I haven't. It's the end of an era on TV, but looking at my own life, I feel as if I'm at the beginning of a new era for me.

...but what will I say ten years from now? I wonder...