Fifty-Four Years Doesn’t Seem Like That Long: What I Absorbed In the Past 365 Days
By Don Hall
Every birthday since I was in eighth grade, I have spent some going through the year I just ended and looked for the lessons it held for me. Today, I turn to page fifty-four in the Book, so here are the lessons of Year 54. I recognize first, that a few of these lessons have been lessons learned over and over for years and second, that some lessons are contradictory with others. Such is the road I travel and it’s a fair guess we all travel.
Year 54 was a trip. As in, literally a trip to the desert. After thirty years in Chicago, Dana and I packed our shit, hopped in vehicles, and traveled 2,000 miles west to up-end our lives and forge new territory. It was a year of jumping of a cliff. It was year of lotsa moving. It was a year of lessons.
As I started Year 54, I was living in a bedroom in Humboldt Park in the home of the guy we were moving with to Vegas. We had already gone there and found a house. We had an arrangement to help him move his ridiculous mountain of stuff, he would pay for the move, and we’d take on a portion of the mortgage as co-owners once we settled.
LESSON #1: There’s No Such Thing As Free.
Yes, we agreed to the move. It was much less expensive to get our home across the country in exchange for labor and the agreement to share a home. We had no idea how much labor would be involved and how little input we would have concerning living arrangements.
There were the flags of crimson that popped up.
For Christmas, he wanted a tree. He and Dana went to Home Depot (a place of almost religious fervor for him) and, in her impatience as he limped through the aisles looking for random tools and containers to impulse buy, she grabbed a tree, paid for it, and took it out to his truck. He was so upset that it wasn’t exactly the tree he wanted, he pouted like a child for three days. He didn’t decorate with us. When we went to Kansas, he took the tree down almost immediately and, in the process, haphazardly combined all of our legacy and family ornaments into a box that went rogue by the time we arrived in Vegas a month later. Grown men don’t act like this, I thought, but we were already in for a pound.
When he flew to Nevada and Dana and Kelli (his long-time roommate) drove his truck out there, I was left to get all of his stuff and our stuff on the moving truck and clean his now sold home spotless. He woefully underestimated the amount of shit he had to move and, as a result, I had to drop a grand to make sure the moving company didn’t just drop all of it off in an alley.
Combining this with the very trappings of Las Vegas where every offer of free play is merely an invitation to get hooked on the buzz of slots and spend your kid’s leukemia money, the idea that anything is free is just silly. Everything in life has fine print somewhere and, baby, you get exactly what you pay for. The delusion of free feels nice until the hidden bill comes.
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Once in Vegas, I had set up a number of interviews and meetings in order to land some quality money-making gigs. I interviewed at the MGM Grand, Caesar’s Palace, the UFC, the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I had meetings with KNPR, UNLV, and The Black Mountain Institute. I had all the expectation that my Chicago street cred would get me into the places I was looking at.
LESSON #2: High Expectations Amount to Big Disappointments.
It turned out that while I was well-received, no one would hire me. It took me a bit to figure out that my Chicago experience didn’t really translate well to this new area and that my decade with public radio basically made me too expensive for the more academic crowd.
When I finally figured out that freelancing events in Vegas was far more daunting than my high expectations warranted (EX: In Chicago, an Events Representative was a job that entailed, you know, working on events. In Vegas, an Events Representative is the guy holding a spinning sign outside a business) I started looking for just about any gig that paid.
LESSON #3: Ego Is the Fucking Worst Baggage You’ll Carry.
Starting over from scratch is the bargain we made but my perception of myself was from my thirty years in Chicago. Here, while I had no bridges burned I also had no reputation of any kind and it was a struggle to reconcile these things. At this point the most difficult challenge was to ignore my ego and sack up. There were a few days when I couldn’t get past the reality that these fucking people didn’t know who I was. The ego developed over thirty years in the Chi was a bitch to ditch. I had to accept the reality that starting over was exactly that.
Dana landed a job at a casino bowling alley that was far beneath her perceived value. I bounced from working as a window sales rep
LESSON #4: Any Job That Requires You Wear a Lime Green Polo Shirt is Bullshit.
and quit after three weeks. I found a job at a high-end hat store in the Venetian (part time) and settled in a bit.
Backing at the Hoarder Ranch (later to known as Trash Island) our Christmas Tree Pouter was in full swing. He often slept during the day in the living room and would go out to the shed he built to work on random projects in the middle of the night. As Dana and I opted to move into the tiny box one-bedroom converted garage to have some privacy and some escape, he loitered around, demanding attention, and trying to pay us to go out and get him cigarettes and Mountain Dew.
LESSON #5: A Transactional Relationship Will Always Be Transactional.
LESSON #6: Jumping Off a Cliff Is Only Scary the Moment Before You Jump. The Rest Is Simply Navigation.
It’s sort of that Hannibal thing where you burn the bridges behind you so there’s only the forward road to take. Once you’re committed to the journey, the only real choices are figuring out how you land. The number of times I went back to re-examine our choices leading up to moving was staggering — late nights as Dana slept peacefully in the crummy bedroom and I sat in my robe at a desk in the next room wondering “What the fuck have I done? What am I supposed to do now?” It reminded me of both my divorces and the final break up with Alice in that, in the absence of the malicious relationship that had defined my every waking moment, I longed for more of it to cover me up in a soiled, stinking blanket. Familiarity, regardless of the quality of it, is a salve to uncertainty.
The first four months were peppered with whole days seeped in self doubt. Spending two weeks with nothing more than $1.42 in my bank account. Looking at my Prius and begging whatever arcane gods exist that it last just a few more days. Putting on the optimistic pose for Dana as her naturally pessimistic outlook felt like that moment driving in the dark when you seriously ponder the possibility of just turning off the headlights and gunning the accelerator and crashing yourself on the rocks of “At least I get to control this outcome.”
Leaving Chicago was a divorce. A disengaging with the reality that, in a life of not truly fitting in with any crowd, I no longer fit in with an entire city.
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In the face of the fact that my resume and reputation from Chicago meant fuckall to employers in Vegas, I applied to a host of places—restaurant management positions, public school positions, retail, and briefly flirted with Uber and Lyft. A Days Inn attached to a small casino called about interviewing for an Assistant Hotel Manager gig. I went in. The Manager and I talked. I was comfortable enough at the Hat Shop so the prospect of working at a hotel off the strip was mostly about making more dough. The next day, I was asked to come in again. This Director told me flat out he thought I was all wrong for the hotel but had I considered casino management?
One more interview with the General Manager and I was offered an opportunity. Operations Manager of a casino in Las Vegas. Entry level pay but, given my utter absence of any experience in a casino, it felt like being noticed. I mean, in Vegas, casino is the primary business so getting in on that at 53 years old was very intriguing. Certainly a tiny, dive bar version of a casino but complete with slot machines, a bar, and a Sportsbook, this felt as if I was going to Casino College. I left the Hat Shop the next day.
LESSON #7: Take the Job That Seems the Most Interesting Because All Jobs Are Just Jobs But Interesting Jobs Have the Most To Give.
While I started at the Wild Wild West and a modest income started flowing in, Dana decided she’d had all she could stand at the bowling alley (she simply has no patience for bad managers). We also decided to move (again) to remove ourselves from Trash Island, the increasingly hostile (now) landlord (who, in a fit of pique, turned off our internet), and the east side of Las Vegas (a place Dana described as “the ass end of broke dick.”).
Framing the casino management gig as both a means to learn this business and make some cash doing it and the makings of a really fun book about this sub-sub-set of casino life made it an easy choice to make. Jump into the dingy pond of the West and drink heartily from its possibilities.
LESSON #8: While Still Just Stuff, Your Own Stuff Provides Stability and Comfort.
Finding an apartment was surprisingly easy. The place was small but far larger than the garage we’d grown accustomed to and the complex had two swimming pools and much closer proximity to my work and humanity. The move was a bit fraught as I was hellbent to get as far away from the Crippled Dick (who stood by as we packed our things into a rented U-Haul with a pistol on his hip as if we suddenly represented a threat).
In no time, we were surrounded by furniture and things we brought from Chicago — our stuff. As we expanded into our new digs, the feeling of having finally arrived in Vegas started to creep in and the freedom of making our own way dawned.
Back in the days before the move but after the ignoble dismissal from the public radio sphere vocationally, I decided that working for myself was the thing. I worked that freelance dance with gusto. Sure, I was taken advantage of by major Chicago institutions (Chicago History Museum, anyone?) and found that getting paid was like extracting teeth but I leapt into it.
Freelancing in a new city with a completely different definition of events proved more daunting.
LESSON #9: Freelancing is Three Times as Much Work as Working for the Man
I love the seeming freedom of freelance work. Getting up when you want to, working often from home, the sense of the hustle. Were I single, it might be exactly how I’d pursue the day but I’m not. I have a larger responsibility to a partnership and providing regular money at regular intervals is a part of the bargain. A more selfish me would leap into the almost non-existent LiveLit scene and forge what I had forged in Chicago and there is a bit of a siren song to gravitate to that lifestyle.
Turns out that I prefer working with a definite paycheck, easily deposited in my bank account every two weeks, than the fucking scramble to achieve financial freedom on a twenty-four hour basis. It’s good to have those freelance skills but it’s also good to be able to relax into a day job. Dana thought she was looking for a day job and discovered she prefers freelance.
The best lesson is that no matter how broke you are, no matter how destitute you might flirt on the edge with, there is almost always a way through unless you simply give up. If I decided tomorrow to quit the gig in the casino, devote my golden years to writing the Great American Novel or caring for the homeless, I would find a way to feed myself, provide a roof over my head, and carry on. Dana is an amazing partner and we got this.
LESSON #10: No Matter How Broke You Are, There is Almost Always a Way Through Unless You Simply Give Up.
In addition to my own experience, I learned and re-learned this from the patrons of the casino. Sure, there are plenty of compulsive gamblers on property and it is my job to make sure their experience is positive. There are far more who have really lived some life and continue to get up, go to work, then come and have a few drinks and try their hand at some potential winnings. Gambling is all about hope — hope that it’s your day to hit the jackpot, hope that that next hand is the one to create the windfall, hope that you can be a winner.
Giving up is an absence of hope. I’m fucking surrounded by hope tinted with despair every day now.
The “training” I received for the management gig was completely half-assed. More of a Here are a Few Things You Have to Know, Don’t Do This No Matter What, Now GO!! This approach is a bit teetery, especially considering that I’m dealing with incredible complex Nevada Gaming Laws and the constant presence of surveillance cameras. Fuck up and you’re fired and we’re watching you all the time.
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LESSON #11: Online Friends Are Rarely your Actual Friends.
I’ve known this for a long time now but it didn’t really land until this year.
At one point in the second half of the year, I realized that Facebook was becoming more burden than tool. So I unfriended over 4,000 people (most of whom I had never met) and kept about 500 who I could pick out in a line-up. I did it in an impulse at the poolside of the Stratosphere on a 112-degree day. I could barely see the screen on my iPhone as the sun was so incredibly bright.
The first bit of impact was that all of a sudden I was seeing posts from people I knew but had not heard from in a long time. The glut of too many strangers was clogging up the view; the overshare of thousands of voices was too loud to allow those smaller moments of “Ah! He has a kid now!” and “Whoa! She’s a conservative?”
The second occurred as I culled the list. The number of people whom I saw as friends wasn’t honest. I harbored great resentment toward those whom rode that social fence and watched as I was bullied and flamed by assholes in Chicago so I erased them from my online roll call. The climate of high partisan morality meant that there were a few whom I have genuine affection for but whom I cannot have a rational online discussion (Jesus. That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one!) so I eliminated them but with the quick message explaining that I cared too much for them as a person to continue to be present for their online daily performative diary.
The tool of Social Media is now a bit more manageable and a bit less present.
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Based on lessons of the past, I really dug into my previous assertion to be less Kirk, more Spock. As a younger man, I was a whole buncha angry and reactionary. I sought fairness and achievement. My social capital was extremely important (even into my fifties this was true). I feel as if I’ve been getting closer to some sort of line in the sand to cross over, one side that signals me as Strident Idealist, the other that holds the trappings of Optimistic Pragmatist. I have been the former, I’m becoming the latter.
It all boils down in the sauce pan to the rue of choice.
LESSON #12: Your Emotional State, Just Like Your Life Circumstances, Just Like What You Have for Lunch, Is a Choice.
If I’m angry and aggrieved, I chose to be that. If I am filled with anxiety—over my past, over the news, over money — I must want to be anxious because I chose it.
At fifty-four, I hope wisdom comes in making better choices both minuscule and epic in scale.
By the time I hit the Fall of 2019, things were groovin’. Dana was finding freelance gigs and it turns out, I’m damn good at casino management. And, oh my gawd, the stories!
LESSON #13: Every Person You Encounter Is a Story. Pay Attention and the Mysteries of the Universe Will Unfold.
I don’t know how long my tenure at the Wild Wild West will be. Las Vegas is a city of hustle and transience and the act of moving from one experience to the next is embedded in the DNA of every business, every venue, every stretch of road. It is also a place of a truly American mise-en-scéne. The casino is the Melting Pot writ large in bygone times. Rich, poor, men, women, heterosexual and homo, black, white, foreign and domestic, Left, Right, and Libertarian all participating in the hopeful pursuit of the payout of capitalism.
I’ve had long conversations with:
A twenty-three-year-old prostitute from Idaho who came here to be a spokesmodel and made some pretty poor choices along the way.
A sixty-six-year-old millionaire Big Oil executive with more money and time on his hands yet still feeling a need to hide from the world.
A thirty-five-year-old limo driver with dreams of hitting it big on sports betting so he can start his own fleet of cars.
A fifty-three-year-old TimeShare saleswoman whose husband left her a few years back and she’s happier than ever to be alone.
A thirty-year-old construction journeyman in town to work on the Raiders Stadium who spends his off-time shooting his collection of guns at local ranges and playing video poker. He’s also incredible worried he’ll be a terrible father to the baby that’s coming soon.
A seventy-seven-year-old retired economics professor who is living out his last days (his words) analyzing the workings of craps and visiting the desert nature with his wife of fifty years.
The ridiculous, wonderful quilt of human existence wanders into this tiny dive bar casino and its Days Inn from everywhere in the world and covers me in stories every day. I don’t know if there are answers to the Big Questions of Life and It’s Meaning but if I am to find them, I’m pretty sure their right here in the people I dance in tandem with daily.
Once I do leave the Wild Wild West Gambling Hall for some other place in Vegas, I’ll take a month or so and write a book about it. Like so many places I’ve never even imagined, this place is like a Roald Dahl invention and I’m digging my own personal Chocolate Factory.
LESSON #14: Management Is About Fostering Trust Rather Than Intimidation
As a younger man I’ll admit I was a bit...angry. Demanding. Aggressively pushing my agenda forward. You know... typical male. I used to say that more people left WNEP Theater because I lost temper than for any other reason. Not a pretty picture in hindsight despite the many great successes artistically.
As a casino manager I’ve found that I’m the “nice manager” and a large part of that comes from my understanding that, in an environment of constant surveillance and a draconian process of administrative discipline, I’d rather my staff trust me than work in fear of making mistakes. The flip side is that some staff members and guests take advantage of my softer approach but I’d rather be taken advantage of once in a while than rule by an iron hand.
This approach is at odds with the corporate policies more often than not. The casino business is built in part on an intentional distrust of everyone involved. There are patrons who are so seeped in the get mine at the expense of everyone else mentality that sniffing out the folks who claim the machine stole their money and faking a fall in order to get a free hotel room for the night is a necessary skill to develop. The staff member who clocks in just a bit early and just a bit late to pad their paycheck a bit is always going to be there.
These people are not, in my experience, in the majority and changing my approach to protect against the few only to punish the many is a poor strategy in life.
LESSON #15: I’d Rather Let the World Change Around Me Than Have the World Wear Me Down
Imagine a rock in a river. The water rushes past and due to the presence of the rock, must diverge its forward push to accommodate the obstacle. Certainly, over time, the water reshapes the rock’s edges but the fundamental nature of the rock is that the outer edges protect the inner strength.
Being surrounded by gamblers, grifters, pessimists, and cynics the temptation is to adapt to reflect the reality these people puke out. It is a reality that posits kindness as weakness, justice as a sword rather than a scale, honesty as vulnerability, and shame as a weapon. The easier road to travel is the one that acquiesces to these concepts and allowing the water to fundamentally change your behavior to reflect these noxious values. I reject that easier road. The water will divert its path to accommodate my optimism, good humor, and fundamental belief in humanity.
A substantial part of this lesson is rooted in the expectation theory which is at odds with Lesson #2. The theory (one I learned in college) is simply that if we have low expectations for people, people will accommodate that. If we have high expectations, the result will match that. The idea is that people around us respond to our expectations of them in remarkable ways. It is all on how perceive them and concomitantly treat them.
I know I will be cheated, betrayed, lied to, and assaulted with negativity but I will continue to expect better rather resign myself to the inevitability of those behaviors.
As Fall hit Vegas, the days blended into one another. Routine set in. I’m a creature of routine. It provides me with a sense of control and security. Certain benchmarks in time become either more or less important depending on the day and frame of mind. I worked on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Day for the first times in my life. In the day-to-day grind of living check-to-check, the realization that these Holy Days are a luxury strikes hard when confronting the cultural universality of them. Not spending time with my family was jarring but Dana and I made our own holiness.
Not to be too dramatic but it reminded me of the image of Charlie Chaplin in some movie as The Tramp treating a single bean as a full meal. He gets out a knife and fork, a napkin over his shirt, and proceeds to take his time eating that single bean, gingerly slicing it like a steak.
LESSON #16: In the Absence of Luxury, How We Treat What We Have Can Either Elevate Its Value or Dismiss It Altogether.
When working hard for the money to pay your rent, you choose to either practice gratitude for the simple pleasure of going to a park, taking a hot shower, taking a nap on a couch, or you ignore that simplicity with the gnawing anxiety of want for more. I believe that treating the smallest of gifts we receive as bounty reflects upon how we view those moments of need in longer term ways.
LESSON #17: The iPad Pro is Perfectly Capable of Replacing a Desktop Computer or a Laptop.
Not so much a lesson as an observation subject to disbelief, at one point in our Vegas autumn, my 2011 iMac took a massive shit and died. All I had was my iPad Pro and I had to make due. Turns out, this enlarged iPhone is actually a fairly powerful computer and manages to handle my substantial computing needs with ease. A few workarounds, an app or two navigate limitations, and I may never get another desktop.
LESSON #18: "You’ll stop caring what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do." — David Foster Wallace
If I were still getting tattoos on my birthdays, this would be the one I’d ink this year.
LESSON #19: You Don’t Need to Announce to the World That You’re Reclaiming the Best of You Have Been After Being Wounded. You Just Need to Sack Up and Get it Done.
LESSON #20: Everyone You Know or Have Known is Going to Die and You Have No Idea When and Have No Control Over It. Proceed Accordingly.
Had a few people whom I cared about croak this year. As I age, I’m a thousand percent certain I’ll have some more. Soon enough I’ll be on the In Memoriam list and you, Gentle Reader, will acknowledge my passing with a post on my Facebook wall that will live on past my demise like a fucking morbid remember that the digital self never decays.
That’s it. I’m sure there were more lessons than twenty but those are the stand outs. Seriously, I recommend that you (one of the ten or fifteen who will actually read this) try the exercise. Look at your year on your birthday and ask yourself what you learned. It’s all fucking naval-gazing and staring into a pond at your own reflection but the benefits, while difficult to describe, are nonetheless remarkable.
Every day is a gift. Every bean is a meal. Every breath is a choice.
