The Audacity of Hope

I've been thinking about my Palm Springs chapter lately - a friend of mine at work announced he's leaving government to pursue a business opportunity, and it all came rushing back.

The parallels between my friend and me are numerous - we both had jobs with the government which required the hatching and raising of ideas. I was a program manager of various Justice Department initiatives, such as efforts to coordinate law enforcement efforts across jurisdictional lines. I used to joke that I was the Henry Kissinger of law enforcement, and it was true: I had to use diplomacy so that years-long grudges between a sheriff's office and the FBI, for example, could be smoothed over and a spirit of cooperation could grow. Another example was when an anti-crime initiative was shoved down the throat of an inner city neighborhood, and I had to find common ground between a heavy-handed police department and a suspicious, even hostile, community. To say that these projects took good ideas and the finesse to implement them goes without saying.

It was an exciting time for me - lots of independence borne of a history of successes, the support of the bigwigs to do what I felt was right to do, and I was having a small but positive impact on the world around me.

But government is a funny place, with its own set of circumstances as they relate to employees. In almost any other environment, an employee who proves themselves to be creative and productive sees some sort of commensurate rise in their remuneration. Not necessarily so with the feds, where there's no such thing as bonuses tied to performance (well, now there are programs like that, but back in the day there wasn't). And a variety of things started to happen which helped propel me out the door.

First, the people I worked for derived great benefit from my work. Their futures were enhanced by the speeches they gave which I wrote, the programs they took credit for which I developed, and the ideas they capitalized on which I conjured. I mean, my bosses leapfrogged into prestigious judgeships and appointments in part because of my efforts.

Second, the more ideas I had, the greater the workload because there was nobody but me to implement them, yet the salary stayed the same.

Lastly, as my successes racked up and it became a given that whatever Stevie did was gonna be great, I started to resent the complacency of that. What had generated great delight in the eyes of others became the norm.

So I started to think, "Hey, why not work for myself?" I didn't really have a plan, a business in mind when I started to think this, but I had developed a great deal of confidence in my ability to hatch good ideas and believed that I could enjoy the fruits of my labor much more directly if I was self-employed.

I took the plunge - literally, as it turns out. I quit the government, moved to Palm Springs for a little much-needed rest and relaxation time, swam every day in my pool, and thought about my future. I was reimagining myself.

Oh, it was wonderful, especially after 15 years of non-stop work, of 10-hour days, 6 days a week, in a suit, sitting at a desk. I had never been particularly good at taking care of myself, so it was 15 years of cumulative job-related stress that needed to melt out of me in that sleepy desert resort. Which it did, like fat rendering out of a roast as it cooks in the oven.

A roasting piece of meat is an apt description: I lost over 100 pounds, got golden brown, and felt "done" - complete - in a way I had never felt before. There was something so right about it. Oh, I felt really good. I wore gauze shirts and khaki shorts and drove around town in a 1962 Olds 98 convertible. I breathed the fresh air and gazed at the mountains. I had a fling with the pool boy. I was reborn.

I was convinced that a huge part of my rebirth was the singing to myself I was doing while I floated about in that gorgeous pool (I lived in the guest house of an unoccupied, crumbling, walled estate built in the 30's). To the accompaniment of cooing doves and droning dragonflies, I sang along with new-agey music I played on the stereo and started to feel the vibrational energy working in all my cells. Struck by how great I was feeling, I pored over books on music therapy, tonal healing, chanting, all manner of ways people had been using sound to heal (it's a centuries-old practice) and got excited about the idea that I could help others the same way I was helping myself.

Somehow, I thought, I could make a business out of this in Palm Springs. After all, spas all over the area already catered to rich, self-pampering people open to new age ideas. I could create a whole new business offering vibrational therapy to people. I would be a new age therapist in an unlicensed field.

I would be a lullabiologist. Talk about the audacity of hope!

Oh, it was incredibly fun to hatch this plan. The idea was simply this: I would sing at people, bang a gong or two, tap a tuning fork or two, and make them better. I was completely earnest in this idea. I believed, and still do, that vibrational energy is a tremendous, untapped source of healing. How much better would it be, for example, that rather than having a huge latte to get ourselves going, we went into some booth for ten minutes and were given a big energizing dose of light and sound vibrations every morning? (I still think this is a great idea, by the way).

I gathered my set of tuning forks, three Tibetan singing bowls, found an office space, and placed an ad in Palm Springs Life magazine. A new age radio deejay saw the ad and I was a guest on her show, demonstrating my techniques. A woman called in and reported problems with her liver. I emitted a low tone, not unlike a hippo calling to his mate. She call in the next day to say she felt better. I was launched - I became a regular monthly guest on the program. The nurse in charge of a hospice heard me on the radio, contacted me and I was soon volunteering, going from bed to bed and doing my lullabiology. People actually seemed to like it. I contacted a famous spa and proposed the idea that, while people were getting mud treatments and massages, I could be sitting in the corner, doing a customized tonal treatment for them (at extra cost). The spa director thought it was a great idea. I got the job of singing the national anthem at games of our local minor league baseball team, in exchange for which I got a free ad in the program (not really my target audience, but still).

I wasn't making a living yet, but I had a few clients and the response was positive, so I kept at it, honed my technique and patter, and hoped for the best - that by the time my savings ran out, I would be making enough to cover the bills. The race was on.

And then I got a call from Deepak Chopra's institute in San Diego. One of my six clients apparently had raved about me, so I was called in for a meeting. I won't go into the details here, but after a number of discussions I ended up moving to San Diego and trying to develop something with the Institute that we could market under their successful umbrella of tapes, books, and lectures on all things metaphysical. After about three months, the spirit of the idea just faded away, for them and for me, I think it was just talked to death, and I found myself with a comatose idea, no money, and no idea where to go from there.

In desperation, I enrolled in design school (which I totally loved) and started looking around for part-time work. My friendly, handsome, talented new neighbor looked around my fabulously decorated desert chic apartment and suggested I help him come up with a plan to redecorate the restaurant he worked at. Our collaboration was a success: I loved working with him, we laughed all the time, the restaurant redo was a hit, and I left lullabiology far behind me. Eventually we had the opportunity to design a few vacation rental interiors for his uncle, and that lead to a full-time business managing oceanfront vacation properties. We had a great time. We worked hard. We did everything from design fliers to scrub toilets. We furnished something like 20 properties. You wouldn't believe the number of sofas and salad bowls we bought, the walls we painted, the hundreds of trips to Home Depot and Target and consignment stores and the Pier One clearance center. The number of sales pitches we made to prospective tenants. The trips back and forth to the beach at all hours of the day and night in response to plumbing problems and partying neighbors and locked out guests. Mostly I remember having great hope for the future. Look at how the Universe had smiled down upon me! And I was in love.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune came together for us in unexpected ways. My love was unrequited, the work which had started out to be so fun started to feel like drudgery, I dropped out of design school, regained the weight I lost in Palm Springs (along with my enthusiasm for living), and after four years, our business collapsed. It was a devastating experience. A complete crash and burn. It still fills me with sadness to think of the promise unfulfilled in our efforts, and I still mourn what could have been.

But that year in Palm Springs and the first couple of years in San Diego were by far the most wonderful years of my life. I was alive. I tasted the success of my efforts. I was creative and free. I came closer to loving myself than I ever had before or since. Things were dicey financially, but I was a butterfly. I danced in hope and joy.

Is it too late to recapture that audacious sense of hope? It's been seven years - can I do it again without throwing away the steady salary and health insurance? I have to believe it is possible.

It all started with reimagining my life as I floated in a pool in Palm Springs. I don't need the pool so much as I need the optimism to reignite. I wrote recently about when beautiful Sheila O'Malley visited me and we went to a gallery opening in Taos. I could see myself as one of the gallery goers, a creative, happy person in loose-fitting linen clothing, just like I wore in Palm Springs during my lullabiology days. I had a glimmer of hope then, a moment of thinking, hey, I could be that person again.

I think maybe hope is the missing ingredient in my present life.