I had one goal: burn through every last dollar. Spent a year in Sedona pretending to find myself, then three more in Scottsdale pretending to be someone else—someone who had money, women, and all the time in the world. I drank. I socialized. I bought rounds for strangers who pretended to like me. I vacationed like an asshole. I drove drunk more times than I could count.
Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that the best way to go broke was to do it with intention, like some kind of spiritual cleansing through financial ruin. And it worked. One day, I woke up, checked my bank account, and realized the runway was ending.
No money, no career, no real skills left. I hadn’t done CAD drawings in years, hadn’t kept up with the semiconductor industry, didn’t know shit about what was relevant in my field anymore. I was an empty vessel, floating in the void of bad decisions.
So I figured I’d play the system. I needed a job that made just enough to qualify for a child support reduction. Did the math, punched in the numbers on the Oregon Child Support Calculator. Fifty grand a year should do it.
I found a job as a commercial property manager. It was a slow, soul-sucking death. Days stretched out like purgatory. The only good thing about it was that time stopped moving so damn fast.
Finally, I got my day in court. Some phone hearing with a judge who sounded like he’d rather be golfing.
“How much do you make?” he asked.
“Fifty thousand,” I said.
The idiot wrote down fifty thousand a month.
Who the fuck makes fifty thousand a month?
By the time they “corrected” my support payments, the system had already drained my entire paycheck. Then they found my checking account and drained that too. And just when I thought the universe couldn’t be more hilarious, my landlord called.
“Hey, just checking in. You’re usually ahead on rent, but it’s been three months. Everything okay?”
No. Everything was not okay.
But what was the point of going to work if I wasn’t getting paid? They’d take it all anyway. I appealed, sure, but by then I was already unemployed, broke, and about to be homeless.
And I did think it was hilarious.
Lucky for me, I had been dating a woman who was about to go to Paris for a few weeks.
“Watch my house, take care of my dog,” she said.
Perfect. I packed up my apartment, dumped everything into storage, ghosted my landlord, and disappeared into the hills like some degenerate monk.
That gave me time to figure things out.
Turns out, I didn’t want to be a commercial property manager. I also didn’t want to be an engineer. I didn’t know what I wanted to be.
Applied for a manufacturing engineer job. Woman looked at my resume, looked at me, and said, “Why the hell are you here? You should be running a business.”
Tried applying at Microchip and Intel—jobs I had literally built my own business around before—but they wouldn’t even interview me. No degree. No pedigree. No thanks.
So I started a boho clothing website called Lotus Wishes. It kept me busy but wasn’t making me any money.
And then the woman came back from Paris, and suddenly I felt like I was back in my early Navy days—stuck in a house with someone I wasn’t attracted to, serving out my sentence, trying to figure out my next move.
Then one day, a text. No name. No message. Just a picture of a palm tree.
Then another: You belong here.
I had no idea who the fuck it was.
Then more palm trees.
Then finally: No, seriously. You need to get here.
Turns out it was some woman I had met in Sedona at a meditation class.
She was convinced the universe had sent her a message.
“I was meditating, and I felt it,” she said. “I was supposed to reach out to you. You need to be here.”
I told her I couldn’t afford a flight.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I work for Hawaiian Airlines. I can get you a buddy pass. It won’t cost you anything.”
Next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Honolulu.
She picked me up, drove me around, showed me the sights. Took me to Haleiwa, where she lived in a three-bedroom shack crawling with cockroaches the size of small dogs and frogs that croaked all night like they were chanting some ancient Hawaiian curse.
I cracked open my laptop, stole some Wi-Fi, and started sending out resumes.
Craigslist.
HVAC designer.
Monday, I sent out applications.
Tuesday, I got an interview.
Then I got a call from some guy named Geoff—but spelled Geff, which should’ve been a red flag.
“Look, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “You seem smart, but you’ll either catch on quick or completely fail.”
Encouraging.
“But I’d like to talk to you about being a project engineer in wastewater.”
I figured, why the hell not?
Walked into his office the next day. He hit me with a dozen backhanded compliments and an offer:
“$100,000 to start.”
That was all I needed to hear.
Used the buddy pass to fly back to Arizona, packed up my shit, and made the move.
Slept on the couch of the woman who had brought me out there. No rent, no obligations, just some awkward sex three times in the house and once at the beach, like some kind of ceremonial tribute to the gods of one-night stands.
And just like that, I was in Hawaii.
The woman I had been living with back in Arizona was pissed. My daughter had just moved to Arizona and was finally thriving, and now I was leaving.
But this was my shot.
Six months as a project engineer.
Four and a half years as a project manager.
Five years in paradise.
An absolute fucking blessing.
