Apparently, nothing

I gave up asking why ages ago. Still, I can’t help but wonder how things can often happen in the most bizarrely particular manner possible. Like today.

Through a “random coincidence,” I found myself having coffee with a certain person. He’s held a few distinctions in his life. Among them: The guy that hijacked a job away from me over five years ago now.

It’s the longest fucking story ever, but by doing a distant acquaintance at best a solid, I inadvertently signed my own death warrant.

Needless to say, this person and most anyone remotely close to the situation became part and parcel of my shit-list.

It wasn’t until I had a series of profound circumstances result in me becoming (drum roll please) a different person.

Basically, I genuinely let go of a lifetime worth of baggage—including the burning, white-hot hatred I’d harbored for this person for so fucking long.

So there we were. Having coffee. There has always been an easy rapport between us. But as we talked, I could quite clearly see our differences. This was a guy all about making IT happen, but only through the least effort possible. And not in a good way. Cheap, fast, never as easy as it looks and generally shoddy all around—this guy was akin to the Ikea of employees.

Ikea sells a shit-load of furniture. Our boss quickly kicked my high-maintenance ass to the curb and went with the cheap Swedish shit. Bad times.

Today, that whole camp wishes they were even a shell of their former selves. It’s all over but the shouting, as “they” say.

As we discussed what happened back in the day, he hit me with a line that kind of summed up my entire L.A. experience:

“Well, I nailed it with that first project,” he half-boasted wearily. “But that was about that. It’s not like I really had anything else to bring to the table.”

There it was. Once again, I found a way to put myself in a situation where success was not based on merit or ability, but smoke and mirrors. AKA bullshit.

It was and is common knowledge that I possess a bounty to bring to this particular table. Yet the “powers that be” decided to go with the lesser of two talents. Sound familiar? I thought so.

So when I think back to all of the time and energy I spent hating and brooding and seething and moaning my way into a deep, dark hole it’s taken forever to finally climb the fuck out of—they were off burning through the money, the legacy, all of it with nary a care in the world. The drugs, the trips, the women. The last I heard, my former boss had to sell his kitchen table to pay a utility bill.

Karma is real. And unlike anything else in life, has a tendency to be unequivocally fair. Imagine that.