Just like any place you’ve lived for a long time, Las Vegas, for me, is an archive of personal history. It’s that clingy email option to store anything you might need later but never do, so thousands of outdated messages, account confirmations and interactions are banked, no longer serving a purpose, stagnating. I have over 23,000 emails archived in one Gmail account alone, adding nothing to my life but virtual deadweight. Similarly, my Vegas life catalogues about six billion experiences that’re downright prehistoric in the span of my personal evolution and potential.
I’d go to the store where I used to work, or the restaurant where I served, drive by bars I drowned years in, and be rocketed back to “that time,” every time. My past felt so present in my day-to-day doings that my world got small. Relationships became false starts or dead ends. Work dwindled. Passion drained from my spirit. And it became apparent: Time to fly.
In different life stages, certain relationships “fit.” Jobs, circumstances, lifestyle choices—some good for a time, but then we change. The cicada sheds its skin and gets the hell outta dodge. The shell of its old self is evacuated and completely left behind. In this natural cycle, there’s no hemming and hawing about growth or transformation. The caterpillar doesn’t weigh the pros and cons of becoming a butterfly. Evolution is inevitable.
In my yard, there are bunnies scooting everywhere and birds nesting in a big, slanting saguaro cactus—the trendy kind on greeting cards, graphic tees and journals, usually drawn with two arms sticking up in “L”s. So many things have come to pass that I’ve adored and dreamed of and envisioned, but nothing in a specifically linear fashion. I didn’t bust ass or hustle hard to get here, but I did consistently seek joy and start clearly asking for things I wanted in my life. And then, of course, when the inspiration popped into my periphery, I acted. I followed through.
The universe definitely delivers in more brilliant ways than I could come up with, that surpass even my obsessive list-making and diehard dreamer expectations. The fun, winding (sometimes stressful-as-fuck) path into the unknown is where the joy is had.
For now, Vegas is behind me. The skin of my past life, abandoned. I’m lighter because of it. Possibility abounds. And boy it feels good, to be here, now.