Up the River
Life happens when you're busy making plans.
Anyone who’s done it knows that the drive north on I-87 along New York’s Hudson River is one of the most beautiful stretches of road in the US.
If you are lucky enough to have done it in autumn you would agree that there are few places that can match the beauty of the Catskill mountains in full fall explosion.
Hayley and I had just pointed our car north for a much-needed weekend getaway in Montreal.
The children had been left with someone in our house in Woodstock (may have been the UPS person, not sure, didn’t care) and we had four days of freedom with nothing but the road ahead and we got to talking…
—
I had spent the previous ten years working in an industry that I had long regarded as a pinnacle of creative ability, the entertainment business.
While my contribution to ‘the biz’ (that’s what I call it…) was on the periphery, working with a team of talented producers, editors and designers making theatrical trailers and TV spots, I nonetheless, was cocksure in my ability to identify critical ingredients that threaded the needle between the thrill of unbridled creative expression and strict marketing objectives required by the studio marketing execs…
During my time there I had gone from my roaring twenties and early thirties as an irresponsible, joyous, experience-seeking and entirely insufferable young professional that New York City grows like weeds to having met my partner, had a son, moved from Williamsburg to Park Slope (as you do), a daughter that then made the city impossible to navigate and relocating life to the quiet, picturesque foothills of the Catskill mountains and Woodstock, NY.
That relocation, though, required a conversation with my place of employment long before COVID helped to tip the balance of power toward remote working.
After some haggling and even more hoping, we came to an agreement that allowed me to work from home Monday and Friday and in the office the middle part of the week.
In hindsight, it is easy look back and see exactly how my toddler-addled, diaper-soaked, dad brain looked at what was on offer and registered, ‘three days a week on my own in the city, where do I sign?, rather than the reality of what that would mean.
I had no place to stay.
My choices boiled down to the comfort of strangers - I saw that Venice movie… no thank you, New York City.
The slowly gentrifying Bowery - not fast enough, believe me.
Or the couches and kindness of friends. Unsurprisingly, the last quickly became a race between which would end first, the offer or the friendship.
Presented with these options, I did the next stupidest thing.
Slowly, quietly, I began to move into the office on the days I spent in the city.
At first, I tried to be clever, present myself as, ‘oh so busy’ and stay past everyone else’s end of day. Not an easy thing when most of your clients are on west coast time, their day ending three hours after New York’s. Not to mention a business that has a long-standing and notorious reputation for a complete disregard of the time space continuum or anything resembling basic human rights.
That said, they do pay time-and-a half overtime (retro-active double time if you work all the way around to the next day) for your soul.
Which is, uh, nice…?
Once the office was quiet I would slip into an edit suite with a decent-sized couch, set my alarm for way too early and be up and out to the ‘gym’ - read ‘shower’, before anyone was the wiser.
The funny thing is, from the outset, everyone was the wiser… except maybe me. There was just a tacit, look-the-other-way agreement that this was the price of asking to work from home.
A price I gladly paid… for a while.
As this routine turned from weeks to months and then a year my ability to maintain this grind was quickly - or slowly, I guess - becoming unsustainable.
—
It was in this mental state that found Hayley and I driving north to Montreal, breathing in the brisk fall air and openly questioning the choices we had made, the direction we were taking and if it was at all possible to make things better.
In that five hour drive we decided to jump.
The shifting of tectonic plates can come as slow, deep rumbles of earth or violent cracks of foundation-rattling upheaval.
I would have bet the house on this shift being the latter… CRACK…
Logistics, citizenship, visas and life, however, meant nearly another two years would pass before I would even get the whiff of a chance to walk into my bosses’ office with Johnny Paycheck’s voice playing in my head and tell everyone what they could do with their job… my job… RUMBLE…
I say ‘nearly’ two years because about 22 months on I was called into same said office and summarily - and entirely unexpectedly - shit-canned…
Best laid plans something, something…
A short, or long (I honestly have no idea) couple of hours later, spinning, rattled and more than a little lost, I was on a Greyhound bus headed north on I-87, the Hudson River on my right, commuting home to Woodstock for the last time.
The low October sun shone warm on my face and the trees outside were afire with their annual seasonal showcase.
If you are lucky enough to have done it in autumn you would agree that there are very few places that can match the beauty of the Catskill mountains in full fall explosion.
Three months later our house would be sold, we’d be on the precipice of a road trip of unknown length with the only certainty being it would eventually end on the far side of the world.
…CRACK…
Extremely well written. Wow. Great story, even if I heard it for the third time (This had WAY more context/detail though). Oh, Happy Thanksgiving!
Funny how all those sacrifices "the biz" ask of us, rarely, if ever, pay off. I'm sorry you experienced that, and interested in how your story unfolds.