CHAPTER 1

"I QUIT"

January 2008

My neck strained for the hundredth time, as I looked up at the clock teasing me from its perch on the wall. It was 6pm, and I was tired. My pen lay heavy in my hand, as I pushed to finish off my final piece of work for the day. I simply couldn’t be late for dinner. It was my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary and they had flown over to London so they could spend it with me.

I began to pack away my files, when I felt a sharp breeze run up my back as a shadow appeared over my desk.

“Shane. I need you to write a report for me on the Turner employee unfair dismissal case.”

I turned around to see my boss leaning over me. He tossed the Turner file on my desk and quickly turned to walk away.

“When do you need it by?” I asked.

He paused. His large frame expanded like a set of bagpipes, as he sighed at the nuisance of having to answer. He slowly turned around. “I am briefing the client at breakfast on his options. I need this first thing in the morning.”

“But I was supposed to be meeting my …”

Before I could finish he was gone, ducking away through the maze of cubicles. I sat and stared at my computer screen. My breathing tightened. I pushed my clenched fists against the desk and rose to my feet.

Inside my mind a debate raged:

“It is your choice to be here and you get paid damn good money for working as hard as you do.”

“But I signed up to work hard not to be treated like a mule.”

“Everyone goes through this. It is a rite of passage.”

“Why should everyone go through this? It’s a pointless ancient tradition.”

“Soon you will be the associate with the fat pay cheque and have your own employees to torment.”

“I don’t want that! I don’t want to torment anyone. There are ways to be successful without giving up your dignity.”

It was a debate I had many times before, always with the same outcome. I endured. This time the anger didn’t stop building. I tried to push it down, but like an overfilled suitcase it kept spilling out. My breathing quickened and my fists tightened around the papers on my desk. I tried to control it, to breathe calmly, to count to ten, but nothing worked. I spun around, grabbing the Turner file, and strode out of my cramped cubicle.

At the end of the corridor his office stood, throne like, above the grey lifeless cubicles where the rest of us worked. A gold nameplate hung on his door, a decadent blur in the distance. I took the first step and then the second. I was quickly gathering momentum. I reached the door, grabbed the handle, and turned. Inside he sat, leaning back, his feet up on his grand mahogany desk. He raised one finger, to signal that I should wait, and turned his back to me.

“So, we are still on for golf tomorrow then? Meet at midday?” He projected down the phone.

The Turner file was now stuck to my hand with perspiration. He laughed with a hyena’s guffaw into the phone. The sound resonated through my bones. I trembled with anger. The boiling temper inside me suddenly exploded through every orifice in my body. My arm jerked back and threw the file with all the power I could muster. It moved through the air like a cluster bomb, pieces of paper dispersing throughout the room.

He spun back around to see the final pieces of paper settling to the ground. His mouth dropped and eyes widened in disbelief. We stood facing each other not a word being spoken.

Me: with my shoulders hunched, breathing like a raging bull.
Him: sitting in utter bemusement like a deer in headlights.

Quickly the deer remembered he was the lion. “What the hell do you think you are doing?!? Have you gone mad?”

“No, this is the most sane thing I have done in the past three years. I QUIT!!”


********************


Rain streamed down the glass of the office block windows down onto the street and into the gutters. Black cabs splashed through the rain onto passing pedestrians, like kids playing in puddles. The wind hissed around corners, cruelly playing with skirts and toying with umbrellas.

I stood in the street outside Claridge’s. I held my briefcase above my head in a vain attempt to stop the water from drenching me. After ten minutes of standing in the rain, I finally went inside.

“Oh my, Shane, you are soaking!” My Mom said, as I arrived at table.

“It’s fine Mom, just a bit of water.” I took my coat off and handed it to the maître d'.

“You need to get yourself an umbrella.” My Dad said, as he held up an umbrella he had been given by a promotions person outside the train station. It was covered with logos for “FunTime Condoms - keeping you dry!”

“Jesus Dad, put that away in here for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh yes, I forgot we wouldn’t want to have any fun in a posh place like this! When did you lose your sense of humour?” He put the umbrella back under the table.

“Happy Anniversary by the way.”

We sat through dinner talking about the usual subjects:

How’s my sister getting on? Great, she’s seeing a new guy.
How’s Granny doing? She is fine. She’s seeing a new guy.
How’s the Dog? He is fine. He’s seeing the whole neighbourhood.

I deliberately avoided all talk of my job, but it inevitably came up.

“So, how’s the job going? Still making the big bucks?” My Dad asked, as he sipped his wine.

I didn’t respond.

“Oh, sorry I asked.”

“What’s wrong Shane?” My mom asked.

“Nothing.”

“Oh come on, something has been up with you all dinner.” She pressed.

“I just suppose, I have been thinking a lot about my choices in life recently.”

“Really?” My Dad looked up from his food.

“Do you remember how I ended up deciding to become a lawyer?”

“Well it certainly wasn’t because of pressure from us.” My Dad stated.

“You were always so competitive as a teenager. For some reason, you latched onto the idea that if you had money your problems would be solved. We had very little money but managed to save and send you to a good school. I think you became jealous of the other boys around you, who had money.” My mom said, as she looked away from me and down at her food.

“I quit my job.” I blurted out.

There was silence at the table.

“Well it was about bloody time!” My Dad said, as he sat back in his chair throwing his napkin on the table in relief.

“What do you mean?”

“I never thought that place was right for you. You have been in a daze the past three years. You never smile. You never laugh. You never seem to care about anything.”

“Yes I do!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. Look…” I plastered a grin from ear to ear showing off my recently whitened teeth.

“OK, answer me this …When was the last time you had a girlfriend?” My Dad pushed.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“In school you used to get crushes on girls all the time. Remember Rosie from next door?” My mom added.

“So what?”

“Well, when was the last time you had a proper girlfriend?” My Dad asked again.

“I was seeing Rachel for a few months. Remember her?”

“Oh yes, Rachel. The model, that dumped you for a banker who had even more money than you? Yes, that seemed like a really deep loving relationship.”

“Jesus Dad! That’s a bit harsh isn’t it?”

“What I think your father is trying to say is that you seem to have become a bit dead to the world. You just don’t seem to get excited about anything and your love life is a perfect example of that.”

I ordered another bottle of wine and knocked back the remainder of my glass. They were right. I had lost touch with life. I looked around the room at all the people around us. At the table next to us, a couple sat in complete silence, each checking emails on their BlackBerries. At the table behind us, there was a man talking as loudly as he could about the new Porsche he had just picked up. The only normal people in the room were the waiters. For the first time, I noticed a look of disdain beneath their formal smiles.

“Jesus, I need to get out of here.” I said, as I covered my face with my hands.

“Why don’t you try getting away for a while? You have enough money. Figure things out.” My Mom suggested.

“Yeah, maybe you are right. Anyway let’s forget about it for now. I don’t want to ruin the evening.”

After the meal, I said goodbye and took a long walk home. I walked down the Southbank, through the city where the office lights spilled into the suffocating street and through Soho where the drunken revellers fell from bar to bar. Finally, I walked the long stretch north to my apartment next to Regent’s Park. As I walked, I thought about all the choices I had made in my life and more importantly why I made them. I realised that since I left school, I had constantly made decisions based on what I thought other people wanted me to do. I got a good job, because I wanted my parents to be proud of me. I pursued attractive women, who I thought would impress my friends. I drove a nice car and wore designer clothes. I ate multivitamins religiously and went to the gym alone. I had lost who I was and what I really cared about.

When I got home, I was still questioning every single decision I had made in the last eight years. I stood alone in my magnolia-covered living room and saw my guitar hanging on my wall. I had put it on display to impress visitors. The reality was that I hadn’t touched it in over a year. I took it down and laid it on my lap. It didn’t fit comfortably like it used to. My newly expanded waist was now in the way. I began to strum softly. The feeling of the strings against my fingers felt so natural. The room filled with music and my heart slowly filled with conviction. I played for hours. I played all the songs, I learned as a kid. I played the guitar solos from my old favourite bands. I sang and sang and sang, until my fingers could play no more.

That night, I wrote the first song I had written in years. It became my mantra. It became my constitution, my promise to myself that I would make a change and try something new. It was called ‘Brand new’. And that’s how I felt, when I woke up the next morning with no job to go to and no plans for the future…but god, it felt great!

I had even more determination than the previous night. I grabbed a coffee, a pen, and paper then strolled to the park, where I sat on a bench. An open notebook was cradled in my hands with nothing written in it other than one solitary question: “What would make YOU happy?”

I sat on the same bench all day without an answer to the question. It became clear, that I simply didn’t know what would make me happy. Like Pavlov’s dogs, I had become conditioned to salivate over things, which actually wouldn’t make me happy. The only solution was to wipe clean the previous two years in London and start again, to try to re-train my mind to value the important things in life.

The one decision I did make was that I couldn’t do it in London. Although I loved the city, I simply couldn’t find myself here. I needed a fresh environment, a new scene, new people, new opinions, and new outlooks on life! I decided that I would give the dream I had valued so much as a teenager a shot and try to pursue a career in music. After talking it over with my parents, my Mom suggested San Francisco. Her sister had moved there over twenty years ago following her dream too. Generations of people had headed west to San Francisco in search of a new experience. It was perfect. I knew that even if I failed as a musician, it would be a great journey. I planned to spend two years taking each day as it came and see where I was then.

In a matter of weeks, I packed up my life and flew west.