About six years ago, I travelled to San Francisco for a job fair. While I was there, I met this guy selling his photos in Union Square. I found this something of a mystery. I had just graduated college and was still under the presumption that nobody could truly support themselves simply by being an artist, certainly not the nomadic sort that wandered from city to city selling their pictures on the street. Anybody pretending to do this with any degree of success was actually supporting themselves through some other means.

"What do you do to support this?" I asked.

The man did not smile. He was not sure where this was going and probably didn't want to know. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, I mean . . . how do you support your . . . self?"

The guy looked at me with something like comtempt. (Funny that I was surprised by this reaction.) "I um . . . " he took a moment to find the right way to phrase what he wanted to say to me, then said, "I do exactly this." Tired. Exasperated.

Let me back up. At that time I was waiting tables and tending bar in a restaurant in Dallas in order so that I might write. Yes. A wonderful and poetic clich￩, I agree. Nevertheless, it's true and I'm willing to admit to the sheer gracelessness in which I ultimately failed in this endeavor.

This is what I know now:
I failed because I was not ready to write.
I was not ready to write because I still had not lived.
I had not lived because all I had done was strived for academic success so that one day I might . . . succeed.
I had not defined what it meant to me, this 'success.'
And there it was.

I had actually travelled to San Francisco for a teaching job fair, because all creative writing students faced with the terrible realization that they somehow needed to support themselves after college always turned first to the teaching profession.

After the short conversation I had with the guy selling art in Union Square, I felt I had exposed to him a gnawing truth, an aching reality: I was hiding from doing what I wanted to do by pursuing something that made more sense. At first, I was guilty about this. I suffered some minor shame. Then I promptly let it go and decided there was no need for it.

Here's the funny part:
The number of hours I actually spent at the job fair: maybe 2.
The number of hours I spent wandering San Francisco, reading in coffee houses, visiting museums, talking to strangers, and occassionally sleeping: about 94.

Looking back, I think that the San Francisco trip was a success of sorts. I realized that my idea that I would embark upon teaching students that were, at that time, barely younger than me was an absurdity and I would put an end to those thoughts presently. I realized I was actually enjoying the freedom bartending gave me and I should do more of it . . and enjoy it. I realized that somehow the guy selling his art in Union Square and living out of his van was a tremendous success in his own right and somehow I wasn't quite ready for that yet.

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I spent most of the weekend ridding my computer of the dreaded OS called Windows ME; yes, I've applied a fresh W2K installation to my now-happy harddrive. It's been a long time coming that I've needed to do this, but just didn't want to deal with the hassle of re-installing my programs, re-applying my settings, and all the other rebuilding that comes with reformatting your hard drive and starting from scratch. But there have been way to many OS crashes lately under the old ME regime, unnecessary stalling, infuriating diversion tactics. Alas, it was time for aggressive action. Today, in the wake of fierce battle, I'm seeing a rolling end to the campaign, a little worn and tired, but far, far less prone to unpleasant downtimes.

Note: The passage above is a good example of what happens to your brain (and your prose) on CNN. Children be warned.

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I'm wondering how long it will take somebody to sit next to me. As it is, I've got a pretty good seat: second row, aisle, nobody next to me. There's a woman by the window, but she's reading a book. No chance of conversation here. I hide in my book and wait. . . .

The plane is filling up. It's the Austin - Dallas special, always crowded, never fizzy.

'Sir, can we buy you a drink for you to move over in that seat,' the flight attendant points to the area of Southwest planes that I call the 'so close you can smell me section.' This is where two seats face the back of the plane and three seats face the front and all of them face each other. Some of these areas are a little larger than others, making the whole experience nicer, but this was one of the cramped ones - where everybody has to find places to put their legs without actually resting them in each other's lap. The seat she is pointing to is the middle seat in the row of three, a perfect spot for my 6'1" body. I can hear the others in the 'smell me' section groan at the thought of my imminent arrival in their already cramped quarters. The flight attendant leans closer to me. 'We have a grandmother with a little girl and it would be nice if they could sit together.'

I smile graciously. 'Of course,' I say.

Did I mention I'm a damn nice guy? You have to ask yourself, however, did I really have that much of a choice but to be nice? Well, not really, right? I mean I could have said no, but that would have just screwed me. I mean, forget the drink, the free scotch I wound up slamming back like a cowboy in a western movie - that was irrelevant, could you imagine if I had simply looked at that flight attendant and said, 'No.' Actually, if I had said no, it would be something more like: 'Are you kidding me? There is a reason I got here early and was 6th in line for boarding this cattle car you call a plane, and it wasn't to sit for 50 minutes with my knees in another man's groin.'

Ahhh. The roles we play in our imagination.

No, I couldn't really say this, could I? Aside from not getting a free drink (which really didn't matter that much to me, but had a certain appeal given the situation) my rudeness would be frowned upon by all those sitting around me. I could imagine the weight of their disapproving stares. It was not a pretty fate. Besides that, I might actually be considered 'hostile' in today's post 9-11 climate.

So in the end I agreed to the switch with gusto, that's right, downright enthusiasm, all the while cursing my bad luck. I stood in front of the two people blocking me: a kid reading a fantasy novel and another all-to-proper woman who seemed to take it as a personal affront that she was being subjected to these unbearable circumstances. When you sit in the 'smell me' section on a Southwest flight, you pretty much know you're going to be rubbing elbows. . . and knees . . . and maybe playing some footsie. Best thing to do is just roll with it. This woman actually thought she could avoid this by sliding all the way over in her chair and keeping her left hand on her right armrest at all times. I smiled at her as I performed some simple calisthenics to achieve the goal of my seat, stradling her legs like a male stripper. After some work, I plopped into my seat and moved around in such a way as to physically nudge everybody around me at least once. I pretended this was an accident.

Behind me and to my left a delighted grandmother and her daughter were happily getting situated in my old seat.

Commuter plane travel is a bitch.

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