Seems that all I write lately has been about losing parts of my life.  I’ve lost yet another one, but it may be to my benefit.

To make a long story short, folks found out why I never wanted to be a programmer. I discovered weeks too late and thousands of dollars against the company later that I had screwed up on two project deployments and then didn’t follow-up on them properly, which would have caught and corrected the error much sooner.

The end result was that my contract was terminated for cause yesterday. I was called into a quick meeting with the development lead and the recruiter, told the news, given time to pack my personals, and then escorted out of the building.  I had never before been fired from a job; I had always been able to leave under my own terms.

I deeply appreciate the support that the leadership of the dedicated carrier team showed for me in the meeting that was held earlier in the day about my fate (without me present), but the decision wasn’t theirs to make.  The decision was made by the CTO (who, ironically, is also a contractor).  He felt that contractors should be held to a higher standard than regular employees and that the mistakes I made were preventable (I agree with the latter part of that statement).  He made the decision he felt was in the best interest of the client relationship and I accept it.

One of my guiding principles has been to own up to my mistakes and accept responsibility for them, regardless of the consequences. Mistakes in my personal life cost me my house, my marriage and my family, and now a professional mistake has cost me a good paying job. Sometimes life sucks; we learn to deal with it.

So—next steps?

I’ve decided to go back “home” to Southern California, where I was born and raised. I’m packing up some clothes, my laptops, shipping a printer, and riding the scoot cross-country back home with what little financial resources I have left. I’m looking for a place I can stay while I look for a new job in California.

Basically, I’m starting over.  Florida was not kind to me; it took away everything I ever had. It’s time to go back home.

If there was any doubt as to whether I am sometimes impulsive, this past weekend should have removed those doubts in a hurry.

First, the news. I am in a committed relationship again, and I couldn’t imagine anyone better to be in it with. We were actually classmates in junior high school, lost track of each other for the past decade or more, and through circumstances that could only have been divinely orchestrated, we reconnected from across the miles this past month.

To borrow from Yogi Berra, “It’s like déjà-vu all over again.” Except unlike last time, we actually know each other. We’ve been on the phone and/or on IM nearly every night since.

Friday night, at 11:30 that night, I was on Hotwire booking a flight from Orlando to San Diego that was scheduled to take off in seven hours. Something (or Someone) deep inside of me said I needed to be in California. Yes, I wanted to see “Vee” in person, but there was some other reason that, at the time, I couldn’t put my finger on.

After a stopover in Las Vegas—perhaps the only airport in the country with slot machines in the terminals—I landed in San Diego around 1:45 in the afternoon, and Vee took my breath away meeting me in baggage claim. We talked the entire drive from San Diego to Orange County, where she lives and I grew up. We drove around the old neighborhood and saw the house I grew up in, saw how much had changed in the eight years since I left southern California. The old Lucky supermarket is now split into a Petco and a Trader Joe’s. South Coast Plaza seems to have remodeled from the ground up. The highways now actually have numbered exits (about time!). Traffic didn’t seem any better or worse than when I left it, but it was the weekend.

We spent the afternoon at South Coast Plaza walking around and checking out shops, and taking a break on a bench to share pictures. I hadn’t experienced someone’s head on my should in such a long time that it surprised me when Vee snuggled up and rested on my shoulder to see the pictures with me.

Saturday night we drove up to another friend’s apartment in Fullerton for dinner and drinks (only one glass of wine and some water for me—I knew I was going to be driving). We had the chance to love on her three-month-old baby girl, and the chance to love on our friend. If Vee’s my lover, Chaunté is my sister. I dropped by her house growing up when times were rough on her, and Saturday night the three of us sat outside on the wall and talked and shared and encouraged and just listened.

Vee, Me, and Chaunté

Sitting out there talking like “old times,” three friends reconnecting after so many years. I so needed this. I was “home” for the first time in over ten years. This is what I had been missing. This is why I needed to book that flight at the last minute.

The rest of the weekend was Vee and me simply enjoying each other’s company, spending a Sunday afternoon watching NASCAR together (she may be in California, but she’s still got Alabama in her). The hardest drive was the drive from Orange County back toward San Diego for the flight back to Florida on Monday afternoon. I didn’t want to let go as I held her at the curb.

My weekend ended with a rather profound cognitive dissonance. My heart received so much healing from the weekend, but at the same time I left southern California for Florida with a very broken heart. Not so much because I had to leave the one I love behind, but because the trip as a whole made me realize how sheltered of a life I have been living these last several years and how much more complicated and painful “reality” has become. I can’t imagine how people can live through most of it without some kind of spiritual anchor to keep themselves centered.

I have decided that I must go back to California. The sooner, the better. As much as I love and enjoy living in Florida, its beauty, the lower cost of living, this has never been “home.” And after this past weekend, it can never be “home” again. Instead of coming back home, I’ve left my true home to come back to Florida.