CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

I solved some amazing, interesting technical challenges for the Sales and Marketing department at ARAMARK, but I’ve created bad blood with my former colleagues in the IT department. Company politics got unpleasant. I resigned my job in December. But I feel ‘successful.’ In 5 years, I’d managed to get promoted 4 times and quadruple my original starting salary, paying off my debts and saving a good sum of money. Oh… and I started This Here Blog Thingy™.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2004 – it was written in the future.]

I migrated again, with my employer, ARAMARK: I went into the Sales and Marketing department. I developed the infamous National Accounts Data Analysis (NADA) intranet site for my company on my own, and it was a huge hit. I was promoted and recognized for this. I reflected, ‘Failure in life…  success in business.’ I moved into the tiny house next to my dad’s on the hill in Highland Park. I took my first trip to Australia to visit my mother.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2003 – it was written in the future.]

I rented a horrible apartment in North Hollywood. I lived alone, enjoying the company of my eccentric cat, Bernardo O’Higgins. All cats are eccentric. I was turning into the ‘loner-nerd’ I’d always worried I’d become. Work, however, was going well – workaholically, in fact. I developed a habit of working on Saturdays, and taking time off while at work to go to the infinityplex in Burbank a few blocks from work and watching a movie – so I watched a lot of movies.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2002 – it was written in the future.]

At my work at ARAMARK, I migrated from the finance department into the IT department. I started working as a programmer. I studied SQL programming and accounting, and combine these disparate fields into a pretty good understanding of my employer’s business model.  I took many long drives around Southern California. I accepted the fact that I was meant to be alone in the world. I deleted a novel I was writing from my computer in disgust.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2001 – it was written in the future.]

A programmer at my place of work becomes slightly famous for creating a non-Y2K-compliant application after January 1, 2000. In June, Michelle committed suicide. It was as if to say, ‘So there!’ or ‘Take that!’ That’s how suicide works. I worked hard at ARAMARK. I bought my Nissan pickup truck, which was the first and only time I ever bought a new car.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2000 – it was written in the future.]

I started working at ARAMARK Corporation in Burbank, as a temp in the finance department. I proved sufficiently competent that they offered me a permanent position. Michelle and I occasionally discussed getting back together. We had long, drawn out, long-distance telephone conversations, her still in Philly and me in L.A. (well, Burbank). We both clearly had difficult-to resolve ‘issues.’ I told Michelle that I didn’t think it could work out.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1999 – it was written in the future.]

Things began to break down with Michelle and I wasn’t doing very well with it. In August, we decided on a “trial separation,” but I wasn’t willing to  approach this methodically, and by September, I had quit my teaching job and I ran off (somewhat irresponsibly, I realize) to stay on my uncle Arthur’s land in Alaska. I cut trees and brush with a chainsaw (in the rain), and shoveled gravel (in the rain), and wrote a novel (sitting in a white van, in the rain). In November, I gave up on Alaska and on solitude, and I went to LA to stay with my father, who had recently divorced my stepmother of 21 years, whom I sometimes idolized. This was a very bad period for me, and so, closing out the year with a bang, I attempted suicide while parked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway north of San Simeon, and I nearly succeeded. I spent time in a mental hospital (the parallels with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are, um, disconcerting).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1998 – it was written in the future.]