I firmly believe that the Universe gives us signs. Really. I know it sounds all New Agey mystic woo woo crap, but, in all seriousness, I have seen it work in my life all too often.
When I was 30 and struggling to pay bills, I was offered an opportunity to go go dance at a bar called South Dakota. I figured it was an easy way to make money for one night only. I quickly was hired by a major nightlife promoter and enjoyed multiple nights in multiple clubs for many many months.
When I was 31 and still struggling to pay bills, I turned to sex work as a stop gap. I made crazy amounts of money and I found out that I was pretty good at it. ("pretty good" is my weird Midwestern way of saying I'm great at something but without saying it, btw).
Later in my 31st year, I was advised by the major nightlife promoter to 'do a couple of movies' in order to boost the sex work and go go boy appearances. I did that and well, you know what happened.
I kept kind of saying to God, "ok so anytime you want me to stop doing this, let me know", and then later that day, a director or two would call to book me for a couple more movies, bars would contact me to make appearances, and a magazine would show up in my mailbox with me on the cover. So, I'd look at that as the sign, because, really, how could you not?
And so on. You get the picture. Lots of crossroads over the past 21 years and, when I've encountered them, I was ready to declare that I'd had enough, and move on to the next thing. But always, Something stopped that from happening.
All in all, I look back and see that the Universe had some plans for me that I didn't know about or could not even conceive of. Who would have thought in 1995 that all of this stuff lay ahead of me? Certainly not I.
So, here we are. August 10th, 2016. I had stated earlier this summer that I would retire on my 21st anniversary, August 4th, 2016. But something strange happened along the way and that didn't happen.
Because some of the people involved in what I'm about to write are my friends and colleagues, I'm not going to go into minute detail on the specifics. We have some differing opinions about various things and I don't need to air them here (or at all), and I hope that we'll resume our friendship and/or professional relationship sometime in the future - so I'm not about to go into all the details (and frankly, no one in the situation comes off well, including me). But suffice to say that I basically have planned three 'retirement' parties this summer, and all three either didn't turn out as expected, or got changed, cancelled, etc.
So, I'm kind of left to wonder what message I'm supposed to be getting from this? I posed it to one friend who said "Wherever it happens, we will be there and will have been worth the wait. For now #WillLIVES".
And to be honest, I felt a weird relief.
I haven't had the time to attend to bloggety blogs the way I'd hoped to this summer (too much awful SHIT happening in the world and I've been too busy dealing with job hunting to really pay attention to writing as I'd thought I would) and although I don't know that I miss dealing with the absurdity of nightlife, I think that there might be more left for me to do despite evidence to the contrary.
So it struck me this morning (after a contentious conversation yesterday left me drained and depressed last night) that maybe I just let it ride. For now. I'm making myself and others crazy with a semi-self constructed, self dictated deadline, and it's clearly not lining up in the way that I wanted it to.
So, I either fade away like Scott Baio, thus paving the way to turn up at the future Presidential campaign of Brian Sims (swooon, my hero!) or I get back to work and figure out what my next move is.
Either way, for now, #WillLIVES .... this is so not the clean goodbye I'd envisioned (and it triggers all my OCD stuff) but, like many things in my life, the Universe seems to have other plans for me that I don't know anything about.
So, I guess, for now, I'll just continue to pedal my thoughts and experiences on Facebook and on this blog ..and see what happens. I seem to be saying that phrase a lot lately "..and see what happens". Because apparently, you never can say goodbye.
Will Clark
August 10, 2016
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