CHAPTER 1
"IN THE BEGINNING IS ALWAYS CONFUSION"
'LIFE AS A WORK IN PROGRESS'
Doesn't everyone dream of or; dare imagining working for themselves? Running their own shows and taking charge of their own lives while living the dream of making the big bucks entrepreneurs claim as their own? Of positioning yourself, in the lucrative income streams of anything that requires working at all to be worthwhile? I have. That's what this story's about. And in this thirty-year process of self-discovey, trying to live the dream of my life, sold over sixteen tons of noodles, fourteen tons of rice and thousands and thousands of egg rolls trying to discover who I was. Or; in this case, who I wasn't, hence the title, because, I really am not Chinese. And it wasn't easy not being Chinese yet, ended up being one of the best parts of my life as I busied myself getting it all got done. And then that, dragged on as a reasonably successful business for thirty years. Keep in mind; that nothing ever gets done, or ever has, until it gets done, until progress of some kind has been made at getting something accomplished, whatever that 'it', may be. When you begin seeing yourself living your life from this perspective, it becomes obvious right away, that you, are your own work in progress, implying that whether or not you realize it, you're experiencing the inexorable effects of living your dreams. Of inter-acting with the world around you and; getting results. How you work with the results you get is what you, taking charge of your life and being you, is all about. This, is how I became not Chinese, from the beginning, it was me, experiencing the very 'unbearable lightness of being' that living can be when you decide to search for your own happiness. Inter-acting with the world around you is what fuels your experiences, and what fuels your experiences, is you, imagining living the dream of your life. Crazy huh? It's not so much a question of whether or not your cup's either half full or half empty so much as it's about, where do you go from there, living your life as a dream coming true. This is especially true if you're at all ambitious. Or motivated by believing and searching for that indescribable something you haven't yet experienced. Perhaps even benefiting from having something that's yours, and yours' alone, something you've created or built, something that drives you to keep looking forward, thinking about tomorrow, because success is more likely to be found by looking forward rather than backward. Therefore, it's pretty obvious that taking charge of the circumstances of your life becomes, the most essential element of progress in living it. I'd subscribe to that, maybe even urge you to consider considering it, because; if you don't know what's going on in your life, or feel like events and circumstances are out of control, relax, you're not alone. But before beginning at the beginning and starting to imagine your future, it becomes necessary for you to make peace with yourself about your past. Truth is; not knowing or reconciling yourself to your past makes it that much more likely you'll be repeating it again until you get yourself right. Though practice may make perfect, repeating things and not learning from your experiences, is not always a desirable option for living a satisfying life. And I'd agree; that life itself can sometimes get in the way of just living it, which increases the difficulty of having to learn some things twice. So, getting to know yourself first, suggests that your past is the key to imagining your future, to unlocking your potential, and begin living your dreams. I mean, what're you waiting for? You don't need to be some visionary or anything, you just put that key in that lock, set yourself free, and never look back or regret anything that helps you become who ever your are or want to be. Actually, even just thinking about that, springing that lock and setting yourself free by considering your dreams, is what progress is all about.
Considerations like these make clear the underlying need to stop doing things the same old way and trying to satisfy yourself with getting the same old results, and forcing yourself to believe you're happy with that, all the while believing there's something more. Recognizing instead, maybe even for the first time, the benefits of doing things in new ways, reveals everything the past is likely to bring back to you in the future, your future.
For example, after a while of living my dreams, I really needed to get away, not so much to think about the past, but for considering the future. I was looking forward to it, and had been for a long time.
The strangest thing about finally getting away from the last twenty-five years however, was the harder I tried not thinking about it, the more I thought of nothing else. I mean really, who in their right mind finally gets away from everything making them crazy, only to spend all their time thinking about what they were bothering to try getting away from, instead of looking forward to relaxing and enjoying themselves? About the only thing I was certain of at all; was that I hadn't wanted to get away, only to keep thinking about the same thing over and over every time I closed my eyes trying to relax. There was no denying the need to get away though, for taking time off to think about the future, for wanting to get some really needed perspective on life, my life. Which had begun feeling like an endless sit-com; strangers in the supermarket began asking me, if I was that 'Chinese' guy and I couldn't respond because I wasn't any longer even sure myself. Other shoppers overhearing this gave me really weird looks.
This is what success brings I remember thinking; believing I needed to escape from my own life. And to do that, while avoiding, as completely as possible, thinking about the 'great idea' that was supposed to bring me joy and fulfillment. You know, success, freeing me up, setting me up for living the good life in my older years. Well, that was then, which was a long time ago, and now, now was now, more than twenty-five years later, with lots of water having gone over the dam so to speak, and I wasn't feeling freed up as much as feeling trapped. I reasoned I wouldn't keep thinking the same things, over and over again like my brain was broken, if things were great. But they weren't, and I knew I'd gone almost full circle, knew also, that found at the end of every circle is truth, that's basic geometry. Work smarter, my inner voice kept telling me, when you're young, so you won't have to work that hard when you're older. Playing that same message over and over again like a loop tape in my psyche, isn't that pretty much the mantra? Made me sometimes wish my brain had a volume control, or a pause button or something. Well, time had passed and I wasn't young any longer, or feeling excessively peaceful about that either. And, to complicate that, every time I went on vacation and tried relaxing by a mountain stream or something, trying to forget, or remember, or meditate, stretched out there on some rocks in a sunbeam, eyes closed, trying to see the future, only a second or two would go by before finding myself remembering things I meant to never forget and forgetting things I'd promised myself I'd always remember. I couldn't stop thinking about how time had passed and I'd ended up here, with plenty of mixed feelings about success, all these years later. Hey, running a business of your own is exciting, it's wonderful, the cash is great, the events exciting; the people; I'll never forget them, but remember, it's work, just like any other job, only you're responsible for a whole lot more. I'd built a successful small business from nothing more than just an idea, but then, as time went by, felt something just wasn't any longer right and denying it to myself made me feel like I was losing my mind. Especially when I tried relaxing and forgetting about all the stuff that stressed me out, employees, deliveries, schedules, you name it. After all; who can ever know, or guess, where living the days of your life will lead, which is probably a better arrangement for us and most importantly, without us even knowing about it. Still, try imagining trying to find happiness in your life living with knowable expiration dates? But even the best plans and intentions are easily derailed by fate and circumstances, which can leave you sometimes at best, just following along, doing whatever you can to keep it all together. So now, there I was, those days having led to a place for considering everything that'd occurred so far in my life. Fate having me find myself where I did, helpless to resisting the endless wondering about success and failure every time I closed my eyes trying to see my way forward into the future. Looking back seemed no way for seeing my way into the future. Never, would I've guessed things could've played out as they had, that I'd be left feeling so unsure about everything. Success, I had always assured myself, was supposed to bring you up, to the next level of self-realization, self-actualization. The entire episode of my 'career' left me feeling a very unlikely business success story. On the other hand, had I not been even moderately successful, I probably wouldn't've remained in business for all those years, especially at the expense of making myself crazy. Secretly, I loved that which made me craziest, and because of that believed I'd earned my success, but now, looking back, trying to relax, realized I'd learned it, and earned it, and a lot of other lessons, the hard way.
Inheriting had never been an option, or family help of any kind, or anticipating anything for making life easier, you know, like a distant rich Uncle Freddie to count on when he ... you know, no longer needed it. But once I began putting my mind to it, using my ideas like a map or a reciepe, things began getting done and got done, by me, doing things my way, which believe it or not, wasn't always that bad. Truth is, I was making it up and faking it as I went along doing and saying whatever I needed to, to make things happen, all aimed at being successful. Things sometimes even just working out inspired me, making me hungry for more, and sometimes, even working out better than even I ever expected them to. Some things though, like taking charge of my life and working for myself, just made more sense, compared to thinking about getting a job, any job I might get, or all the rest of that static. Maybe I got lucky and made a bunch of right guesses, because success depends heavily on a good amount of guesswork, and more often than not, freaky good luck, but always, lots of motivated personality. And really, I'm not that lucky, I don't waste money I don't have, buying lottery tickets or gambling, hoping to get 'lucky'. Working for yourself is enough of a gamble. So, I've tried contenting myself with being happy, living my own best dream.
If anything, I've worked hard at making those dreams come true. I'm not saying I'm unlucky; stranger things than luck have happen in my life. What I'm saying is I've worked hard attempting to become successful at something I dreamed up and imagined as possible. Along the way, some things just seemed more obvious to me as better choices almost for certain, as if I'd intuited them, because, I've always had a 'feeling' about what might, or might not, be the right thing at the right time.
Especially a thing that's the right thing at the right time and in business, that's about taking advantage of opportunity. So, I'll tell you this: Trying to find yourself too late in life, after not believing enough in yourself for most of it, almost always sets you up for disappointment. Particularly forever wanting to know in the first place, but mostly, for waiting too long to get your life under way. You might be living like life was a forever thing until you come to know that it isn't, and from that moment on everything that happens onward into your future, is everything about who you've been, who you are and all the possibilities about who you might yet become or what you still might accomplish. It might be as simple as simply changing your mind about how you've been living your life and the choices you've already made. Because changing your mind and changing your thinking is the one thing you can always do to begin doing something to help yourself. Trust me on this, and this, is what I've learned, there's always a time for checking things out, and the sooner you figure out when those times are, the better off you're going to be. End; of sermon. Most times, in my experience, you've got to learn trusting in your own common sense, especially when no one around you is going to tell you, or even let on about anything that might jeprodise their own good fortune. 'You'll figure it out ...' they always say, as if that lets them off the hook for being helpful at all.
Truth is, most people feel helping someone out, unfairly disadvantages them; for doing a good deed. But, when it comes to doing business ... that's the way a lot of people begin thinking.
Listen, I'm no Einstien but after I started trying to operate a Szechuan take out concession profitably, even I figured out early in my concessionairing career that the time for checking things out at events wasn't when things were going full bang ahead. No, I'm not that kind of curious anyway; to me, work is work, either you're at work or you're not. And when I was at work, I was hard at work and my only interest primarily, was that the crowds of people at those shows we were doing, were the groups I'd identified as 'my people'. You try selling anything in the wrong market to people who don't take you or your product seriously, you're finished, so don't expect too much. Or, be prepared to work that much harder to compete with other business forces. Maybe that sounds a bit cynical, but that's just the way things are, harsh maybe, but true.
What I am, is a guy that doesn't like loosing after playing any game, as hard as a guy needs to play games that are that hard to play. And it was a game. A game I decided to get really good at playing. Really good at, as good as I could possibly get, but let me tell you, trying to be that good, at anything, is eventually bound, to piss somebody off, maybe even become the worst thing you could do for yourself working that hard to be successful. Imagine that?
Right away it became obvious that when you play someone else's games, the rules can be changed at any time, and you lose. No matter what, that's what happens when you're playing someone else's games. But when you play your own games, you can make the rules up, if you have to, as you go along, sometimes, even changing them when you need to, and if that doesn't sound like good incentive for being in business for yourself, you're probably late for work.
Besides, by the time any of these events I'm going to be telling you about, started really gathering momentum, say, along with the second or third band, with any luck, we'd be deep into crazy, and that's the way it went, usually, until the show was over. That was the way I liked it best. That, I discovered early on, was the way money was made, not by walking around looking to see what was going on with everybody else. At those times, things were just so busy, it didn't seem like work at all, and so focused was I on what we were doing, nothing else mattered. Except maybe, what time it was. I was well aware that the portal of profitability was only open for so long, and that's kind of why it was like being on an episode of Star Trek. We had to pass through that portal of profitability before the show ended and it closed back up, just like a black hole. So I guess I owe part of my success not only to Rock and Roll, but a deep understanding of science and Star Trek, too.
I don't even recall the music the shows were all about either, even as it was being played, even though musical events were our specialty. I just wasn't there to listen; it was just massive background noise, even though music is a very important part of my life, just not as much so when I'm at work. But musical-events were what we were all about. Especially two or three day shows with lots of repeat customers, customers who were an actual captive audience of hungry of partiers with money to spend on having a good time. Groups of folks, all kinds of folks, families all in tie dyed outfits, lots of them with kids, glad to see us back again, vending for another year. Friendships with people like these, at shows like these evolved over a number of years where we'd only see them once or twice a year for a day or two, but for the last twelve or fifteen years or longer. So, in total, our friendships were like less than a month old but were the basis of wonderful, enduring friendships. A lot of these folks were, older, straight type people you'd never suspect finding at a music festival, teachers, dentists, lawyers, hedge fund type professionals, all bare foot, wearing tie-dyed T- shirts, partying and just generally giving it up like they were still young. Cool, but pretty weird. God bless them, but they were my target audience. They afforded what is known as unrestrained discretionary spending.
I've often wondered if I'd be concerned if I knew my dentist was stoned as he yanked out a tooth? I guess I'm OK with that, as long as he is, and providing, I suppose, that he gets the right tooth. These people, were there to 'let go' and let their inner child run amok for two or three days without adult supervision, I was there to make sure they ate properly while they raved on.
