Pilgrimage to Las Vegas

One of my close friends whom I met while I lived in Las Vegas at the beginning of the last decade had decided to move back there to continue her education.  Now ten years older, with a child, she is making this pilgrimage west to the desert.  I didn’t realize that when I agreed to this journey that I would not only be documenting this road trip for Project Kinect, but I would also be looking at a similar path that I took almost ten years ago.

At age twenty-one, I had made the decision to move to Las Vegas.  That August, I helped my friend Corbin move back to Los Angeles for school and we stopped in Las Vegas so I could meet up with a couple different people in order to find somewhere to live when I moved.  Successfully, I met Darren and two weeks after September 11th, 2001, I moved to Sin City.

To do this exact same journey with someone who also took this journey ten years ago really makes you think.  I am shocked to know where I have come in that decade, the adult who I have become and what I have put out into the world.  Were my decisions wise or void of any pre-thought?  Did I get the most out of that time that I possibly could have?  Did I obtain the proper tools to handle what will come in the future?  The answers to these questions don’t really matter but if it caused you to ask yourself similar questions, then something is getting accomplished.  If you would like to continue this conversation with your answers, I would love to read them so feel free to email me at Gregg@projectkinect.com. I appreciate all involvement when it comes to Project Kinect.  WE ARE ALL INVOLVED!!!

For those of you who have asked and I refuse to share it with you, here is a small segment from my book, “I Have Three Kinds of Hiccups” that I shelved about a year ago.  Don’t worry, it will be moving forward again very shortly.

I don’t know why I chose to move to Vegas. People back home still ask me why I moved to Vegas and I always answer with some bull shit like I needed a change, it was inexpensive and I could find work or my best, I really like their theatre department at UNLV. I didn’t even look at their department until I began the transfer process that fall. I was fortunate though, it is an amazing program and I actually did get in.

The truth is, I don’t really know why I moved there. I do know however, that I was twenty years old and I was itching to conquer the world and when I was without a home for the following school year up at UWEC, I jumped. Yes, I was hurt by certain people in the process, but that little hiccup was nothing but a feather in the road as I approach thirty. That moment was one of the defining factors in my life. That moment is equivalent to me learning to walk or drive. I was learning a new vehicle in my life, the vehicle of self empowerment. This vehicle of self empowerment was not consciously inside me before that moment. This vehicle had been in its own little corner of my being and when it came out, it came out!

Once I said it, which was to one person at 9:30 am during an opening shift at Houlihan’s the last Sunday of Christmas break, it was done. My words came out of my mouth with no thought of the consequences they would have. “I’m gonna move to Las Vegas” I said, which was followed with some bull shit excuse, but that moment, that exact moment the words rolled off my tongue, that is when I decided to move to Vegas with no pre-meditated thought what-so-ever. At the end of the summer, after I studied in Cuba, after my over night trip with Corbin to see U2 in D.C., after I lived with the 2 Petes in the Dells, I was gonna move to Vegas. Holy Shit.