Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Decade Rewind: 2010. Buddha Begins

I picked up the violin again, continued studying Buddhism, and jumped between Miami and NYC. For work, I was a mystery shopping at different movie theatres, and temping at both Bard College and New School for Jazz...some times on the same day. On those doubleheader days, I would have to run from the Bard admissions office to the 1 train, cross my fingers, and hope to get downtown to my second job in time.

I got into a serious car accident that wrecked my mom's car. Fortunately, no one was hurt, it was 100% the other guy's fault, I was driving way below the speed limit (highly unusual), and chilling out while listening to James Taylor on a cool Miami evening when...WHAM!!! A car tried to cross Biscayne Boulevard right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The cop looked at the crime scene for 5 seconds, said it was 'the other driver's fault' and then wandered down the road to a second car accident that had just happened.

I returned to NYC and started temping. I was working in the Bard office when my phone rang. A Miami lawyer called to see if I wanted to sue the other driver. I declined. They insisted that I might have some 'unexplored, injuries...late on-set.' Hmmm...I briefly considered the chance to cash in on $10,000. But I couldn't do it. Another lawyer called as I was rushing to the 1 train to get downtown to my second job. And this continued for a few weeks. Ambulance chasers who read the police report and thought I could sue the other guy, get the insurance company to pay me $20,000 and they would take 30% or half.

After a few weeks of this, when an unknown caller showed up on my phone I assumed it was another lawyer...but it was a former producer for Michael Jackson. He was looking for a writer to adapt something. I was told the truth: I was a back-up choice to a few more successful writers. I appreciated his honesty, and we started a back-and-forth conversation about different songs. He sounded excited. Great great...and then I never heard from him again. Oh well, maybe one of the other writers took the job. I went back to temping.

By the end of the year, I was doing a cross-country road trip to deliver supplies to Arizona and help build houses for the start of a 3-year-retreat for my teacher and several others. We were told the 3 yrs would fly by...2011-2013. We should continue studying, do our own meditation retreats, and try to stay together.




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