CREATIVE DRIVE

The newsletter that's designed to move you

NUMBER 61

Don't be afraid. Change can be fun.

Change is a big idea for many people. It can be positive or negative, but without one or the other we fail to see whether anything has occurred. Change has to be real, like a shift in direction. However abrupt or gradual it is, you'll realize that something or some aspect of your being has been transformed.

The shift can manifest as a coincidence. My wife and I found our first home that way. We had decided to buy a house, and we'd "settled" on the area north of Los Angeles. Ahem . . . . That was quite a big area, and the bank I'd visited merely said, "We'll lend you enough for a condo." Well, we wanted more than a converted apartment, so we decided to push the boundary a little. One Sunday morning we hopped into the Saab (a Cessna on four wheels) and left Glendale far behind. We rolled north on the 101 Freeway, thinking we'd explore Camarillo or maybe Ojai.

Have you checked the prices of real estate in Camarillo and Ojai!? Yikes! Anyway, as we cruised up the 101 on that fabulously bright day, we saw a sign not far ahead: Fillmore Exit. We'd seen the sign hundreds of times in our lives, but suddenly it looked different to us. "Let's go," we said.

A Surprise Just up the Road

Sunday drives were the way my wife's Irish family explored their new life in California, so she'd been up and down the coast and visited every conceivable attraction there. My family had gone from Long Beach to Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and San Francisco on several occasions, often to visit one or more of my siblings at school. Neither of us, though, had been to Fillmore. Well, what a surprise it was to find this little Southern California town full of vintage Craftsman-style homes surrounded by miles of citrus groves and white-fenced horse ranches. We eased our machine along the highway's modest commercial strip and then chose Central Avenue for a ninety-degree turn.

The town had that "Leave It to Beaver" look. It wasn't as humble as the backwoods of Andy Griffith's "Mayberry," but it was just as quaint. We weren't the kind of couple that would expect everything–including a new house–to be so new, but Fillmore had the 1950s baked in. We picked Third Street next, and seconds later we found it.

Who Knew!

We spotted a big "OPEN HOUSE," so I made a quick U-turn and parked at the curb in front of a faded-yellow Craftsman with a deep front porch and a pecan-colored oak door. We got out of the car, and . . . . Wow! The breeze was scented with orange blossoms! There was a line of roses down one side of the house too, and they smelled like apricots. I was amazed!

We walked up to the house and stepped inside, where a smiling real-estate agent greeted us. She was as pleasant as could be, and the house seemed like a good bet. The hardwood floor had several aged layers of paint, but I could remove all of that. There was an unessential partition wall that blocked the flow of light, but again we could fix it. The roof was good, and the garage had been converted for use as a workshop. Nice. We checked everything out, including the big backyard, and said we'd be in touch. The only question was whether Fillmore was too distant from my design group's activities out at the beach. Would phone and fax be sufficient when I couldn't take the car? Soon we answered that one, and within a few weeks we closed escrow. The place was ours.

We loved our cozy little town. The people were friendly, the streets were shaded by beautiful old trees, and we had an awesome view of the mountains from the windows over the kitchen counter. One of the neighbor's many cats became our cat's best friend. It was heavenly.

The Fact of Imperfection

Heaven, of course, is a fair distance away. Any place we find here, however perfect we want it to be, can only be so in relative terms. I was young and overly trusting, and after a year or so the leader of my design group started to experience difficulty. It became a struggle to secure payment for my copywriting. The money went to him first, and then I had to beg or threaten legal action in order to get what I'd earned.

Change was needed. The situation was urgent, but I wasn't sure how I'd rescue myself. In any case, the first step was to take stock of my experiences and attributes. Magazine journalism, in-house editorial direction, copywriting (including the year in Japan) and the cycles of revisions to which some clients were prone collectively hinted at a viable avenue. It was also fortunate that I, as a stubbornly independent learner and thinker, had cultivated a relationship with a Japanese provider of language services. I'd managed to serve their needs concurrently with those of the design group, and all of my work was delivered via my fax machine. In fact, it was that small but well-connected Japanese company that brought another change to my business:

The phone rang one afternoon, and it was my Japanese client calling. "Larry-san," she said, "we want you to use a new way of handling our documents. It's called . . . e-mail, and . . . ."

[Cue the dramatic musical salvo of concert basses and tympanies]

DUNH-DA-DUUUUUNHHH!

Always More to Learn

"E-mail?" I replied. "I've heard of it, but I've never used it before. Will it change how I work? Will you still need me?"

"Oh, yes!" she said with a laugh. "We will need you even more because our customers will send us more work to do. You will just do the editing on your computer, the same as you do your copywriting."

"Well, if that's all . . . . Okay, let's use e-mail."

She gave me the steps I'd take to set up something called an account, and then she sent a test file. Once I saw that, I knew the fax machine's useful life would soon expire.

My wife and I placed our house on the market, and for the open house we prepared every aspect of the presentation. I had the most luscious music going–a favorite CD I'd discovered at the famous WAVE store in Tokyo–along with cinnamon buns and freshly brewed coffee. We set triplets of our apricot-scented roses on the table, and we swung open the big windows above the kitchen counter. Then we went out for a drive.

The agent received a full-price offer from the first person who toured our little house. In fact, everything happened so quickly that we had too little time to find another place. There was just one thing to do: make another change.

[Cue the concert basses and tympanies; add a crash of cymbals]

DUNH-DA-DUNH-DUUUUUUNNNNN . . . SSSSSPPLLAAAAASSSSHH!

Another, Please

New England! I mean, why not!? I was self-employed and therefore characterized as something of a free spirit, and e-mail had given me the power to be within easy reach of any client or prospective customer. Besides, we'd visited western Massachusetts and loved it. So, off we went.

DUNH, DA . . . DUUUUUUNNNHH!

"Dear God: Why must every change bring such upheaval? I've been good, I've worked hard, I've been friendly to people. Did you really have to send hordes of bloodthirsty mosquitoes into the hills of Massachusetts, where they could drain a person of life in less time than it takes to sneeze!? Please answer soon. Yours sincerely, LP"

Our first summer in New England was, to put it politely, nightmarish. We had rented a house through a real-estate agent; an old cottage tucked up against a hillside covered in trees and bramble. That place, however, was haunted. It Was HAUNTED. One night as I lay awake in bed–I'm a very light sleeper–my glasses skittered across the nightstand. Our whippet, who was next to the bed, became vigilant as he scanned the room for any sign of motion. A week or so later I awoke and saw the dim figure of an old man, bent with arthritis, glide past the foot of the bed and through the doorway. On another occasion, while my wife and I were at the supermarket, something moved a heavy chair across the shag carpet, cranked open a window and removed the screen. Our dog disappeared too, and later it cost me fifty bucks to release him from the dog catcher's place. The topper was the time a driver came to refill the fuel tank. We had no experience with fuel tanks and didn't know where it was, but eventually he found it. The guy pumped oil for about forty minutes, and the house reeked of fumes. Then, once he figured the job was done, he left. His boss then called and accused us of removing the cap from the oil tank, causing a flood in the supply room. We didn't even know where the supply room was! Anyway, the house smelled for a week, but we had no choice but to stay. The weather was turning.

Damnable Weather

Cold is the operative description for any New England season but summer. If you've been on the slopes above Lake Tahoe, you'll know that it gets warm enough to ski in a t-shirt and parachute pants. That is not the case in New England. The cold starts in the ground below your feet and creeps upward, freezing your calves and knees (watch out!) until it reaches the hem of whatever jacket you've been lucky enough to find. If you're smart, you'll keep those pajamas on beneath your clothes or stock up on underlayers at Costco. Winter gloves won't fully protect your hands, either. They'll taper toward the fingertips, leaving you with too little insulation at points critical for any manual task. "Honey, I can't feel the car key. Is it really in my hand, or is this another crazy dream?"

It took me a while to acclimate, but I managed to do so. I grew tired of my refusal to love what was lovable and to trust what was simply good for me. I had to let go of the continual comparisons between what I'd known and what I had in the present. I had to change my perception of the circumstances. After a year–during which we very thankfully found a much nicer house to rent–we bought an antique farmhouse on a quiet street. It had more room than we needed, but that gave us room to express ourselves. I even learned how to fix old plumbing, put up wallpaper and install a fence. In the summer, slight sprigs in the lawn revealed themselves to be asparagus, and our acre of wild blackberries drew small crowds of pickers. Lesson: Establish a value for something, or it will be taken whether you like it or not.

The World Is Not Our Own

Change is constant, of course. We sold that wonderful old home, returned to the West, spent a couple of years at Lake Tahoe, moved back to Massachusetts, raised two beautiful children, got older and grew wiser. New chapters and opportunities present themselves, often without prior notice, and ideas occur every day.

Life goes on, doesn't it?

THANK YOU for reading this issue of Creative Drive. I'll see you next time.

Copyright ©2024 by Lawrence Payne. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, machine-learned or distributed without permission from the author.