If It Feels Good Do It

When that company fired me in September of 2008, I was devastated. I had never been fired before. The work at my prior job was boring, but they liked me. Now suddenly here I had done nothing right. I had been making around $100k. It was a lot of income to say goodbye to.

What hurt the most though, was I had failed.

But I was also relieved.

I didn’t have to get yelled at by that Executive Vice President again.

I didn’t have to walk through that anonymous office park in the Sausage Fest of the Silicon Valley again.

I no longer had to have conversations with corporate executives with names like, “Fred.” Again.

And fuck that company. I didn’t care about comparison shopping. Especially when I knew I had been helping line the pockets of corporate executives with names like, “Fred.”

That’s why I was relieved.

Then I went home and watched Monday Night Football. It was the first time in five years I was home early enough to see the whole game. Then I went to cafes. Lay on the grass. Looked at the sky. Got drunk. All my favorite things.

I went to Portland, Las Vegas, Japan, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Taiwan and New Orleans.

I was having fun, but I was also having devastation.

I was now terrified of the I.T. industry. It had brought me four years of depression. When I looked at descriptions of Web Development jobs I felt sick to my stomach. In offices I became anxious. I couldn’t stop thinking of my failures.

I applied to teach English in Japan. When it came time for the one-on-one interview, I freaked out. The same smell was there. The same fake smiles. I left the interview feeling relieved.

Since the job interview was in Southern California, I went to go see my dad. We hadn’t spoken in more than a year, or seen each other in more than four — a major source of angst. But on that day I was very happy to see him. I was glad to have him in my life again.

But I found out two weeks later I didn’t get the job. When that happened I felt like an idiot. I didn’t get the job. Everyone wanted to know how I didn’t get the job. Or why I didn’t get the job. I didn’t know.

I applied for another English position with a less respectable company. I showed up late to the interview because well, I don’t remember why.

Then they offered me a job, but not in September of 2009 as originally stated. The offer was for April, 2010.

What would I do until then, I wondered. Then I realized I could do whatever I wanted to do.

I liked Southern California, so I moved down to Long Beach in June of 2009. Some people think I moved down solely because of a girl who lived there. Judy. I was excited to be closer to her, but I moved to Southern California to be in Southern California. So many people asked me about that girl though, and I told them that it was true I was happy to be near her. Right on, they said. That’s great. I also said it was great. Judy said it was great too. But then Judy had other plans.

First she acted like she was being stalked by someone else. She was a victim, she said. She wanted to be with me instead, she said. Her and that guy weren’t talking, she said. OK, I said.

Oh wait, she said. Me and that guy are talking now. Oh I am so sad, she said. I miss being with him. Or wait actually me and him were together this whole time, she said. My bad. I was actually secretly maintaining this whole other relationship. Well, she didn’t say that. I just sort of figured it out.

Then 24 hours later: “Let’s have dinner. Let’s have dinner and come over to my place, Ian. I miss you! I want to be with you! What? What’s the problem.”

That’s Judy. That’s what happened with Judy. Like five times.

Then she was terrified that I would write about it on here. She didn’t want that other guy to learn “things he shouldn’t know.” She wanted to “protect him.”

There are people who want to do whatever they want to do. Then they get mad when you simply describe what they are doing.

Well, that’s just too fucking bad.

So no more Judy. Goodbye Judy. But I was already in Long Beach and I wasn’t going away. So I stayed there, living below poverty level on the edge of the ghetto. I slowly made some friends. My roommate was my friend. My neighbors were my friends. We could get drunk. We could be real. There were no excuses needed. There were less excuses offered.

But I didn’t have much going on.

I volunteered at the Long Beach Boys and Girls Club. That was the best thing I did. I helped those kids learn math, reading, science and joke delivery. But the thing they really wanted to do was use a computer.

“I want to go to the Jonas Brothers Website!”

“I want to use Microsoft Paint.”

Their demands were not extravagant. But those computers were not extravagant either. Or completely functional. Sometimes those computers would have problems. For example, they wouldn’t be able to load a webpage called Google. Google where my beloved ex-girlfriend worked. I missed her more than ever. Where was I? I was not working. I was volunteering. I was trying to help kids. But no one from my old life was looking. None of them saw me there in Long Beach with those broken computers.

I looked for work. I ran out of unemployment insurance. I stopped drinking. Well, Monday through Friday afternoon. Well, for the most part. Then I was more able to complete tasks. I was now able to sustain a week of constructive activity.

What was I doing with my life? What could I do to support myself?

I started going to church. Not a temple or a synagogue. Church with Jesus Christ. And I started praying a lot.

I started doing stand-up. That was another good thing I did. The audience at an open-mic was there for everyone, but not everyone had the balls to get up in front of them. Not everyone was me. That was the point. I was me, I said, and here I am, I said, standing in front of you with a microphone. People criticized me. But those people couldn’t do what I was doing so fuck them.

Instead of sending in short stories to magazines and waiting around to be rejected, I could just get up on stage and express myself. I was happy to have a place to do that.

I really wanted to find a temporary or part-time job until I moved to Japan. But there wasn’t much temporary or part-time work I could do besides software development. In fact, I couldn’t even find temporary or part-time software development work. I found out that being overqualified was a real thing. I would have done just about any writing job. But no writing job would hire me.

I applied to a full-time web development job. It was in Santa Monica. Cool, I could move to Santa Monica, I thought. But then I felt sick applying for it. I felt sick interviewing for it. I felt sick going home and thinking about it. I didn’t care if I got it. And I didn’t get it. Or well, I never heard back.

Some days I would put my head down on a table. And I’d keep my head there for a long time.

Then I had an idea.

I found  someone who needed help with Computer Science. I began tutoring him. Then I found I liked it. The hourly pay was good. I was tutoring general theoretical concepts, and C++. I missed those things. I missed my ex-girlfriend, C++, and general theoretical concepts. I enjoyed getting drunk. I missed reading about math. I did not miss doing Web Development.I missed studying interactive computer graphics algorithms. I did not miss working at a comparison shopping website and lining the pockets of corporate executives with names like, “Fred.”

I went home and typed “C++” into craigslist. And I saw this:

A laboratory at UCLA seeks a graphics programmer to develop, test, and deploy 3D software for interactive database-driven visualization of brain imaging data and results. Must have a masters degree in computer science and 3 years of experience in graphical programming. Skills in C++ and standard 3D programming languages (e.g. OpenGL) preferred. Applications should include a CV, key examples from a portfolio of work in 3D graphical application programming.

I had all that stuff. I had a masters degree in computer science. In grad school I  specialized in visualization of, among other things, brain imaging data. My thesis was called, Performance Analysis and Automated Resource Selection for Distributed Visualization Pipelines.

I stood up. Then I left my body there. I did not sit down for a long time. I knew I would be working for UCLA.

Well, as long as the craigslist ad was real. I thought it might not be. I emailed that anonymous craigslist address my thesis, and hoped for the best.

A few days later I got an email. Hello from UCLA. “When can you come in for an interview?”

Well, I could come in for an interview soon, as it turned out.

“Great. Bring some code that you worked on. We very much look forward to meeting you.”

Well, first I needed to find that code from the grad school era. Then I did. Then I had to search through the code for cuss words. There were a lot. Then I searched through the code and deleted “badboy.” Badboy was all over that code. There was more badboy than cuss words. I was really into saying “badboy” when I was in grad school. Badboy, and ninja. Those were my two favorite words from 2002 – 2004.

Then during all that deleting and recompiling something else happened. “Ahh. Graphics algorithms. Math.” My synapses were firing again. “I missed you guys! I’m back! Let’s party!” It was all the stuff I wanted to do five years ago. Instead I had graduated and began working at a printer company. Then I quit and began working at a web development company. And I did those things because I thought I had to. I didn’t think there was a job where I could work on visualization or graphics.

I went to the interview at UCLA.

The interview was more like a tour. The tour was more like a formality. And the formality was more like a job offer that I received one week later.

I called my parents and told them I had a job again. My mother started crying. My father thought he was even more awesome than before. My Chinese step-dad turned up KOIT on the way to work. Then at lunch he poured more salt than usual on his baby bok choy.

I called up my sister, who started at UCLA in the fall. I told her I’d be near her. Fuck yeah and shit, she said. I can’t fuckin wait. And shit. She said.

OK she didn’t really say that. But she was into it.

I looked for an apartment in Westwood, the part of Los Angeles that UCLA is at. Westwood is about thirty miles northwest of Long Beach. That’s more than an hour in LA traffic. Westwood is next to Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and near Hollywood and Culver City. So, the Westwood area has plenty of writing and stand-up going on.

So, I could continue my writing and stand-up.

The only sad moment was when I went into the Long Beach Boys and Girls Club for the last time. We had done good work there. I had seen one girl go from not even knowing how to spell her own name to reading at near grade level. She was in third grade. This one boy I helped with his drawing. Just by coincidence he always asked me to show him things I could do, like wings and eyeballs. He gave me a drawing which I hung on my wall. Another kid showed me how to make a bunch of paper airplanes. I put one of them in my room, too. There were a few kids that just wanted someone to spend time with them. It didn’t matter what we worked on. That was fine with me because during a year full of self-doubt, I wanted to spend time with someone too.

The head manager of the club said whenever I felt like it I could show up on Saturdays. And I will.

Then on November 16th I went in for my first day of work at UCLA.

My supervisor was positive and relaxed. It was about time I had a supervisor like that. He was from Seattle, but acted very Los Angeles.

He spent about an hour describing the nature of my work at the lab.

Then he gave me my first assignment:

“Alright, let’s solve this badboy,” he said.

Clearly I had come to the right place.

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