late blooming, my 20's, and one looooooooong post

"what you gonna be when you grow up? i'm all grown up and still don't know what."- atmosphere


i envy people who know what they wanna do with the rest of their lives. i'm still confused. not sure how at age 32, i haven't got this figured out yet.... when i was 17 all i wanted to do was write the next, 'pulp fiction,' or join the beastie boys. neither materialized. i guess that's what i get for dreaming about things with absolutely no hustle to make those things happen.

i went to community college for almost 2 semesters... i was confused... i forced myself to sign up for some kinda higher education after high school. i chose a major in 'liberal arts.' it couldn't be more obvious that i had no idea what i wanted out of life.

and then i dropped out... middle of the 2nd semester. and then drinking started happening. i was a late bloomer with the partying. i didn't drink a whole lot in high school. if i ever did, it was all peer pressure... just trying to fit in which lead to a lot of vomit.

but when i dropped out of college and got a job and started earning a modest paycheck, that's when i fell in love with booze. i fell hard. i was perfectly content to spend all i had on booze fueled good times... cuz it wasn't necessarily the booze i loved but the places it brought the party. everyone i knew was 17-19, shit was reckless and by reckless i mean really super awesome and fun.

and then i got another job, at a sheraton front desk. i worked there for 3 years. for all intent and purposes, i refer to these 3 years as my college years. i crashed cars, had sex, experimented with other drugs, and made my mom cry. i figured i could balance out the good times with the hotel job and that the hotel job would hold me down. i saw room for advancement and thought that i could make a career out of this. i saw kids with hotel management degrees that didn't mean shit to hotel mangers. i knew this was a great field for a college dropout to compete with the competition that had that piece of paper.

i didn't enjoy the work very much.... but i enjoyed pretty much everything else... i turned 21 at the sheraton. then i started hitting the bar scene with a vengeance. i practically had a different bar i went to for each night of the week.

still, no amount of good times could drown out how much i didn't enjoy the work that i did. so i took a chance and applied at a coconuts music store. they needed an assistant manager in their east hanover branch. interview went well and i got the job.

i thought this was it. assistant manager at a fucking music store! it's gonna be high fidelity and empire records every day. can't wait!

and it was awful. it was corporate. everything was handed down a chain of command to us from a district manager. i had 2 managers that walked the company line. one was cool, the other was an insufferable bitch of a middle aged woman.

there was jealousy when i got there. apparently people wanted the job i just received (this is where i learned it's really hard to be hired from the outside to tell other people what to do and i'll always have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone who ever has to go through the process). and i was a sucky manager. i suck at telling people what to do. i'm no authoritarian.

sometimes i would be left in charge of the store. those were the only times i enjoyed working there. i let the kids who worked under me pick cd's to play and we'd pretty much stand around and bs all day/night about music and movies. we'd get the store clean and stock stuff but that was about it.

i thought i was well liked by a few of the kids that worked there. but i found out months after quitting that job that they stole money on my shifts. bummer.

i quit that job with nothing else lined up. i found myself unemployed and desperate for a new job. i had to buy beer and put gas in my car somehow. so i fell back on my experience and applied at a bunch of hotels. one of them gave me a job but at a low pay rate.... i took it anyways... better than nothing.

job had a few notable highlights. i got drunk at work once. i met 3rd string wide receivers from the giants who would bust my chops about being a jets fan (but in a cool way). and i met a roadie for tom petty who gave me tom petty and bob dylan schwag.

manager asked me one day if i wanna work christmas. i said no. he said i'd have to but that he'd give me the late afternoon/evening shift. i said ok out loud but decided internally that i would not only NOT be there on christmas, but i would never go back there again.

boom. unemployed once more. but it didn't last long. i found work at a call center. and i'll be goddamned if 9 years later, i'm still at that call center doing office administrative/i'd describe my job more but you wouldn't understand-type stuff.

i was 23 going into the call center. i had a car. i had a girl. shit was starting to look good again and i got comfortable.

about a year into that, i was arrested. DUI. i was hammered. i had no business being behind the wheel. but up until that point i thought i was a good drunk driver which is a stupid thing to think.

that set me back quite a bit. a DUI is expensive. i lost my license. and suddenly i was paying a monthly insurance fine/fee because of it. i found myself forced to get my shit together on the bill paying front.

eventually i got my license back. a few months later i crashed my mom's car (with my girlfriend in shotgun, her side took the brunt of the damage... but she was okay... just fucking scary when it happened). my mom took it in stride but her insurance company didn't. they kicked me off her plan.

i had a car at the time (i drove my mom's cuz it was a nicer car... once again, what a stupid thing to think). when i lost my insurance, i decided to get rid of my car. with no car and no insurance payment, i could try and save up some money.

that worked out pretty well. one fateful day my buddy roy gave me an application for an apartment in the building he was the superintendent of. i jumped on it. i got the apartment and me and my girlfriend at the time moved in.

the apartment was awesome and it was awesome to be on my own. and the rent was super cheap (still is, i still live in that apartment, mainly cuz it's still super cheap.... never mind the old, dilapidated building falling apart around it).

but young love is fleeting. me and the girlfriend at the time lasted about six months. she moved out and it was ugly... or at least it was ugly for me. not so sure about her. but i fell into a depression that i didn't believe existed. this started to become an extremely dark time of my life and would plant the seeds of shit i feel like i'm still fighting.

my mind frame at the time was pretty much, fuck the world, i'm gonna be drunk as much as possible and i'm gonna keep drinking until the wheels fall off. i didn't care about my health. all i wanted was the comfort of an unending head buzz. at this point of my life, i'm about 25.

i also started doing cocaine... and a fair amount of it. the thing about having an apartment is i provide the place and everyone else provides the debauchery. and at this period in time, cocaine was all the rage in my circle of friends. i pulled all nighters and i'd cry the next day when i woke up at 8, 9pm and realized i lost an entire day. the grief wouldn't last for long. i'd wash it down with beer and paste a fake smile to my face. to the world, josh was a-ok.

and then i met someone else. it was st. patrick's day. i went to the parade in nyc with some friends and it looked like one of my other friends wanted to hook up with her. but somehow, someway a convo goes a certain way, and she ends up at my place with me that night.

i woke up and she was gone. but her phone number was on my table. i called her immediately.

she lived not far from me.... with her 2 year old son. she was in the middle of a divorce out of a nasty marriage. we hung out and i took to her. i'd sleep over and she'd cook me eggs and her son would throw stuff and jump on me and for some reason i was fucking happy. and she was nuts about me. i started feeling worth something.... like i didn't wanna drink till i die anymore.

the honeymoon didn't last long. it wasn't her fault. her ex-husband got jealous and started stalking me. he got my phone number. he'd stalk my myspace page. in one of the more brilliant moves i ever pulled off, i asked all my friends on myspace to write, "fuck you (name here)," on my page for him to read. he read it and got pissed (he got pissed at me when he shouldn't have been on my page in the first place... but anyways.. back to the point at hand).

this went on and i wasn't strong enough to deal with it. he'd tell me they were still together behind my back. he was persistent. and i was weak. i'd drink to try and forget about it. and just like that... i was all about the booze again.

we tried to make it work... but we couldn't do it. i wasn't tough enough at that point in my life to deal with that situation.

all the sudden i'm 26. what the fuck was i doing? i decided to throw myself into something... anything... so i took some improv comedy classes in nyc. i went through 3 levels of it which is 24 weeks of classes and 3 shows. i had fun with it and met some awesome people. but it didn't stick.

one momentous day i was in nyc with a friend... we were high as hell... and i said to him... 'hey man.... i got an idea. let's start a record label.'

we conversed with two other friends of ours and they were in. we were excited by the idea. they were all musicians. but i didn't have a discernible talent. i was gonna be the guy behind the boards (even though i didn't know shit about the science of music).

somewhere along the way we decided to start an open mic. they'd get to showcase their skills and the idea for me was to be the host. but i wanted to perform something. so i decided i'd either try stand up or poetry. i wrote a couple of poems and a few jokes... and on that first night i went head on with the jokes... and i've kinda never looked back (i've performed a poem here or there.. but not my strong suit, don't feel as natural about it).

i'm proud to say the open mic we started is still running to this day, sunday nights at the wild rover in guttenberg, nj.

however the record label fell apart. it never really came together in the first place. we bought a bunch of recording gear and never used it. we couldn't overcome certain internal disagreements and all momentum died.

during that time i met another girl and we had an awfully toxic relationship. i'll take the blame for some of it. i was still drinking heavily and there was still a part of me that wanted to do the whole live fast, die young thing. we didn't last.

but she ended up dating one of my best friends. this hurt a lot. i'd like to think that josh today wouldn't have been so hurt by it... i was extremely more sensitive at the time. i didn't have the ability to be like, 'fuck you both for being assholes.' i probably would've felt a whole lot better if i got that out of my system.

and there i was... single... feeling betrayed by a best friend. mourning the loss of a record label that never happened. and i wasn't even sure about stand up. what was i doing? i was still drinking a lot so i fell back into my old, negative "fuck the world, i wanna die young" mind state.

i also found myself sitting around and watching a disgusting amount of television. i noticed that i had developed a beer gut. i had taken being skinny for granted my whole life and now shit was starting to get serious.

it's the beer gut that finally made me sick with myself. it hit me hard. how did i let myself become this pathetic, alcohol soaked loser? and what the fuck did i plan to do about it?

and then one day i got up and went for a jog. it sucked. i had no stamina. i went home defeated. went to work the next day, got home and went for another jog.... a little longer of a distance this time but still not a whole lot.

but i kept going. and i loved it. the pain turned into transformation. i started to feel awesome about life. jogging not only had me feeling better physically, but mentally as well.

that was about age 28. i still jog. in fact i run now. i average 4-4.5 miles about 5-6 times a week. every so often i knock out a 6-8 mile run when i'm feeling up to it. this has been by far one of the greatest improvements in my life.

and those were my 20's. i guess you could throw quitting a 10 year cigarette habit in there somewhere as well (age 26).

but to this day, i still don't know what the fuck i wanna do with my life. i don't wanna call my 20's a complete waste... but i spent most of it in a boozy fog. 30 came quick and i had no plan other than to stick it out at the call center (which is an ok plan... just not living the dream).

i still do stand up.... i'd be lying if i said that's the plan though. i have fun with it but i don't go after it like it's the plan. sometimes i think about it and what it would take to make a living doing that and most of me wants no part of it... touring, no health care, working on holidays, always away from home, hecklers, and other asshole comics.

i like home. i like north bergen, nj. i've planted roots here. i have family and friends i love and are such a part of my life. i don't wanna leave this. if i can make something work, i want to make it work here.

i got some ideas. but there's nothing i grip on to and say, 'yea, that's what i'm doing with my life.'

whenever i begin to worry about it, i try and tell myself to not let the worry get the best of me. when i sit and consider what to do with my life, i need to realize that life is happening right now... and what i got isn't so bad.


Jules: I'll just walk the earth.
Vincent: What'cha mean walk the earth?
Jules: You know, walk the earth, meet people... get into adventures. Like Caine from "Kung Fu."

hey jules, if you need a buddy, let me know. until then, i'll be jogging at the lake at james j. braddock park trying my best to enjoy the ride.