Now that I have this space, every sentence is a knot at the beginning of a yarn ball. I can begin to weave and crochet a story, but I just keep picking colors and securing the thread at the end (or the beginning?) As of now, I don’t have a stitch pattern, but surely it will come to me. Let’s start with some low-hanging fruit: a lament of the last 10 years and gratitude for the present diary entry.

After leaving San Diego and a short stint in Denver, I knew it was time to come back east. I landed where my mother was, the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania in 2016. At 26, I was convinced it would be a short stay until I started my next chapter. Finishing my degree was one of my main goals. I was flat broke, back in the town everyone in my family despised, and within three months of my return, I did the smartest thing anyone could do – I met a guy.

At this point in my career, I had managed a historic single screen in San Diego, worked multiple film festivals across the country, was a 35mm projectionist and overall held a knack for operations of events. I couldn’t even land a box office job at the local symphony, and spent the next four years working 4-5 jobs locally, taking any festival gig I could find, taking courses, one thing I could count on was being broke. I felt I was being purged from the Lehigh Valley, how could I be accepted in nearly every city and town other than the one I live in? It must be me, no, it must be this place. Can a place hold a grudge? Can a town suck so much that I became defensive of it to keep myself from imploding?

In 2017/2018, I wanted to move to the Hudson Valley, I felt the pull. The guy I was with and committed to make it quite clear there was nothing there for him, this valley in Pennsylvania is as far as he would go from his across-the-river-in-Jersey roots. I was getting more and more work in NYC, and one spring day in 2019, I was walking to the Village East Cinema when I caught a small spark, a spirit I believe only New York City can conjure. I felt illuminated, as if my surroundings cracked open and reformed into a custom fit for my future. I knew what to do.

With my 2020 Tribeca Festival check, I was going to enroll in Rochester’s Eastman-Kodak archival program. Let’s skip over that.

Becoming muzzled in Bethlehem, I carved out a space at a local non-profit for classical music. Which began five years of a psychological carnival. I would contract and manage high-maintenance orchestra members, verging at times on verbal abuse. A music stand light dies, their music wasn’t large enough to read. It’s too hot in the church, too cold in the church, move this podium, and mostly just sitting collecting dust in old churches and waiting to be needed. Standing by to standby is a surefire way to wither. I had been an integral part of a historic recording with no accrediation in the liner notes. The ever-heavy prescense of “someone with a music background may be more respected by the musicians” hung over each performanced I produced. A sexual harasser in the choir, a seemingly innocent audio engineer secretly checking me out when setting up, 40 nervous musicians-turned snapping turtles. I mean, how the fuck did I get here?

In 2022, my six-year relationship ended with a whimper. Sometimes I wonder if he ever liked me, or just liked the concept of me. I was a victim, always playing the victim, not sex-driven enough, always down on my luck, not social enough, not anything enough. In 2023, I left the job. I was a shell of a person with a drinking problem. I take full responsibility for staying in that town for so long. I do wonder if, for some people, the Lehigh Valley is like the quicksand Nickelodeon always warned us about in the nineties. It was for me, and I am thankful I was thrown a strong vine and pulled out.

I still haven’t finished my degree (but the goal remains). I now know what it feels like to be loved in a way that people dream of, and I wish everyone can feel and receive in their lifetime. I made it to the right valley in September. I’m convinced a part of me was awaiting my corpreal form to get here. I am home in so many forms now, and everything above (and more) had to happen to get here.