California / 30
To those not born there California is a siren. A warm heroin glow, women, weed, and weather. It offers nirvana, but not much else. Between the throngs of botox tightened, silicone plumped post-middle-aged: parade the beautiful nubile, and the hopelessly lost.
Once, on my daily commute home I saw one of the lost souls of CA screaming at the busy street, naked from the waist down, pour a full bottle of urine on his head. Another time, I sunset swam at Cresent Bay Beach in Laguna, mildly stoned in water that had warmed in the sun all day. The reflecting sunset made the water bounce continuously appearing and disappearing yellow streaks on a red surface with impossible smoothness.
On my morning commute at a bright and early 6:30 I watched a tweaker making a long arcing weave the wrong way down a one-way street. When he turned around and drove unimpressed into a red light, I watched him slam on his brakes and fly over his handlebars into the passenger door of a car which had come inches from destroying him, leaving a huge dent and a massive wound, respectively. I called 911 and held a dirty rag from his tweaker buddy on his seeping head while he moaned in pain, until the ambulance arrived. I hiked Half-Dome at Yosemite and dunked my head into an icy mountain stream, fantasizing about the Modelos swimming in ice water in the cooler waiting at the bottom.
I passed a man smoking crack from a pookie pipe in broad daylight next to the public library, the exhale glinted in the sun. I met a beautiful girl and fell in love with her. We liked poking around the Long Beach Flea Market, were regulars at the pool bar, sandwich shop around the corner, she came to all my beach soccer games and we had some luck learning to make French macarons.
I bought a condo from a man who got addicted to drugs and destroyed his own life. For months I had no sink, stove, microwave, and my dinners were Burger King eaten sitting on the ground in the middle of piles of cut and labeled plywood that I eventually turned into a kitchen. I made some friends but never felt at home. So, now I’m back in more familiar territory, beautiful girl in tow, starting to build a life in Cambridge, MA.
Today, it is my birthday and I am 30. The condo I gutted and built from scratch has a buyer, with whom I am 45 days in escrow. If you haven’t sold a place before that’s a long time. If you haven’t sold a place, without a job as a fallback plan and a pre-planned month-long European vacation, that’s an unpleasant long time. The loan officer, one year ago, was writing romance novels and is not good at his new job as a loan officer. Frankly, the situation has gotten a bit out of hand.
For the past six months I’ve been working on starting a company. Forming a C-Corporation able to handle equity distribution, holding money, disbursing money is surprisingly easy. It’s been a fun learning experience. Once the condo sale closes, with this buyer or another, be it in a week or in two months, I’ll have enough money to stay afloat for a year without a job, though I’m looking for some income here and there. I applied for an NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant and am in review. The idea is to take the system I built during grad school and apply it to protein production, making some very tedious, expensive manufacturing processes much easier and cheaper. It would be useful for pharma companies and industrial processes. I am confident the idea works on a technical level, is unique and valuable, makes financial sense and would open new markets for medical products, industrial products, etc. Finding money to prove it to the world is the hurdle I’m working on right now. I am making pitch decks, finding grants and startup programs to apply for, attending VC bootcamps, hunting for useful connections to get on board. If the SBIR works out, then I’m golden and get to start building a company. If I find a willing investor, or other means of funding than I’m also golden. If I don’t, it’ll be time to find a job. More on that coming, depending on how it goes.
I’ve got some other side projects cooking, to stay busy and maybe make a little money. It is an odd place to be on my 30th birthday, but so it goes. Onwards!