Peculiar Journeys

Three quick stories from my day-to-day walk managing the casino floor. It is a complete change and yet strangely familiar.

Complete with an interruption by Siri that I intentionally left in to give you a moment of insight to the process of self podcasting. As I listened to it, it made me laugh harder each time so I left it in for you.

In this belated episode, I confront my lifelong inability to subsume my own life to prop up those desperately in need. It ain't pretty and I'm not exactly proud but it is what it is...

And here we go. Truly stories that could only be told from the casino floor (plus my latest toe-dip into the now divested public media landscape).

In this episode, I take you down the odd rabbit hole of finding and becoming a part of a Live Lit scene that is so small, so insular that only an asshole from Chicago could think he could walk into it with any fanfare whatsoever.

My career path (if that’s what you want to call it) is all over the place: professional jazz trumpeter, public school music teacher, part-time construction worker, gas station attendant, non-profit theater director/producer/actor, retail tobacconist, massage school facilities manager, NPR house manager, public radio Director of Events, Millennium Park House Manager, freelance events consultant. It makes sense, then, that my assumption of continuing on in the events field (specifically in the public media sphere) was probably misguided. I mean, it’s never worked that way before so why would it work that way now?

So, if not public media and not specifically events, what the flying fuck was I supposed to do for employment in my new city?

With traveling to a new city, the inevitable task at hand is gainful employment.

This episode follows both Don and his wife Dana as they navigate the hustle required to get work in a city with no one who knows them.

Moving a couple thousand miles across the country is trying in the best circumstances. When you do the same but with a roommate with some serious hoarding issues, it gets…complicated.

“Ten percent of stuff moved across states will be damaged or lost,” he said.

Ten percent sounds abstract but the loss of my grandfather’s WWII dispatch box with the treasures of personal stage contained within comprised a far higher price.

This week’s episode concludes my epic 32-hour trip from Chicago to Las Vegas. We join me at around 4AM in Oklahoma and, frankly, I’m starting to lose the tightest control of my mind...

After thirty years as a Chicagoan, Don has moved 2,000 miles away to sunny Las Vegas. In this first episode of Season Five, Don has recorded his random thoughts as he drove the full 2,000 in his Prius in a thirty-two hour Cannonball Run.