Pensacola: The Good, The Bad, and the Terribly Depressing

~Edd

I’m currently unemployed. It’s okay, I have savings—and an ever-growing sense of doom—and I’m taking the time to find a job that’s a right fit for the lifestyle I want to live. That’s incredibly hard, and yet more accessible than ever, these days. Over thanksgiving I was talking to my parents and my father said that the company he works for was looking for construction project managers. That’s pretty convenient, as I have an MBA in project management and a background in construction. The only catch is that the company is based out of Florida, so the vast majority of their jobs are down there.

Here’s the thing: I worked construction throughout college, and the two or so years following graduation. I had to move 6 times in two and half years, following the jobs the company sent me to. I had to start over, both professionally and socially, every single time. Nobody knew me, often not even my coworkers on the new projects. Since I changed paths I’ve put down roots, made friends, and come to love a place for the first time in nearly a decade. Am I ready to give that up for a job? The only way to know for sure was to go down and meet with them, see the area, and make my decision from there.

Pensacola ladies and gents

Pensacola, FL is 11 hours from Wilmington, NC. Riss offered to go with me, both to keep me company during the drive, and because she’d never been to Pensacola either and said “why the hell not?” The drive was just as long and boring as you can imagine. During the drive I’m thinking about making this drive regularly, and by myself. Both Pensacola and Wilmington are very small airports, so flights to/from start at over $400. My anxiety was mounting as we drove through Atlanta and down through Alabama, finally ending up at the very end of the panhandle at the self-proclaimed “Redneck Riviera.” My heart was all aflutter.

My father is working the same job site that I was supposed to meet with people, so I saved some money by just staying with him. My father can’t be called a “social butterfly” anything but sarcastically, but the place he’s staying takes the cake. As we’re pulling up Riss says, “It’s a good thing I already know you, because this driveway just screams ‘I’m going to murder you and nobody will ever know.’” Down there dad stays about 30 minutes outside
downtown Pensacola, in a—no lie—three bedroom, two bath house with 34 acres and 3 livings rooms. By himself. With no furniture. There was an 80’s style dining room table, his lazy-boy, a TV, and a bed. His alarm clock resides on a cardboard box next to his bed. Instead of curtains, he strung up blue tarps over the wall of windows in his bedroom because “the light was bothering him.”  To say it’s a bachelor pad does a disservice to self-respecting bachelors that don’t want to eat people. It was one newspaper-clipping-wall away from the lair the cops find in a CSI episode.

Pictured: The 11 hour snub

I went to talk to them the next morning. Everything had been arranged the week prior, and even my father had reminded them Friday before everyone left. I show up at the job site, find the poorly labeled office trailer and head inside. It’s empty, save for one guy who has no idea what I’m talking about. Great. Turns out the guy I was supposed to meet is in TEXAS and the 2^nd in command is in meetings nearly all day. Even better. I then do what anyone who drove eleven hours to get stood up at a job interview would do: I grabbed Riss and went to get brunch. Brunch was decent at The Ruby Slipper, a New Orleans style chain place that I’d never heard of with decent benedicts and overpriced, but strong, mimosas. I make some phone calls and leave some voicemails, and decide to use the time to explore the city.

The highlight of the trip was the Naval Air Museum, which is free and a really great place to visit. I could probably make an entire post just about it, but for now I’ll say that they have flight simulators, 4D movies, and planes from the invention of flight to now. I knew a surprising amount about the various planes. (Almost all my knowledge comes from video games. Who says they can’t make you smarter?) I’m sure I was entertaining to watch as I reached rain-man levels of knowledge about the various WWII crafts, forcing Riss to take my picture with several of them. On the way out I finally got a return call from the 2^nd in command and set up a time to meet him later that day.

In an effort at brevity, I turned down the job. Pensacola is not a place I see myself living for a year. It’s too far from the people I love. It would be starting over again, professionally and personally. After a year in Pensacola, I would be made to move to the next job, wherever that may be. I would have no “home base.” I’m a traveler. I love to see new things, live like the locals, and experience everything the world has to offer… But I need my “home base.” I know that Wilmington is a transition place, I seriously doubt I’ll be here forever, but the time to leave has not yet come.

I was talking to dad about this later that night. He said he understood, and that at the end of the day I need to do what makes me happy. I asked him during the conversation, “if you could go back and do it again, knowing what you know now, what would you do?” You know what his answer was? “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” I was confused. I pressed, “Well what did you want to do growing up?” He said, “I never knew anything else.” My dad is one of the most intelligent people I’ve met, and not because he’s my dad. He’s also hard working, honest, and dependable. He also has never had a dream. He’s old enough to join AARP, and he’s never had lofty goals, passions, something to strive towards. He’s a worker ant, droning on in a job that I know makes him miserable, because “that’s all he knows.” I cried that night. Riss asked me the last time I saw him get excited or hopeful about something. I have a 2^nd-hand story of him being excited to take a photo with Goofy in Disney World, but that story is 2^nd-hand and from 1996. As far as hobbies, dad likes to work on the farm. He seems to actually enjoy the time he spends out with his tractor, but that's about it.

On the way back from Pensacola we took the southern route, up through Jacksonville, FL. St. Augustine is only 30 miles south, so we spent the night there. It was amazing, and went a long way towards cheering me up. St. Augustine will get its own post, soon.

This is not a “follow your dreams” bullshit call to action. That kind of Disney Princess, feel-good crap is why we are a generation of barely employable liberal arts majors with no skills, writing blogs in coffee shops hoping to get paid doing it. (Yes, I understand the irony of that statement, that’s why I made it.) This is saying, know what you’re worth. Have a dream. Know if that dream is just a pipe-dream, but have it anyway. A kid that’s only 5’1” and has no coordination is not going to be a professional basketball player. A person with no sense of timing or rhythm won’t be a drummer. Face reality, but find something that you love. Find something that makes you happy and fucking do it. Hobbies exist for a reason. Volunteer if you want to help people. Join meetup groups and find like-minded people and get out there and LIVE dammit.