Getting Back Up, III: Luck, Arriving

I freaked out and left college my senior year, without graduating. I fled to the Bay Area. I had no idea why I was going to school. I wasn’t feeling it. The entire reason I was there was conceptual, and had no basis in my drive or my will, just my belief that I was supposed to be there without a real sense of what I wanted to be there for.

I ran to San Francisco to spin my wheels. I applied for school again a few years later—the shoulds, oughts and musts caught up with me and I was getting restless. I had NO idea what I was doing with myself.

And that’s when the Universe planted a boot on my backside and knocked me onto my face. I got routed into a club where Lindy Hop was being danced. And the Universe grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed. THAT, my brain shouted at me in the most assured voice of authority. A whisper that rattled around in my gut and chest til it bellowed behind my ears. “I have to do THAT before I die.” Those exact words. I can still hear them. There was no debate. Had I not been there, I’d have never seen it, and I’d have never heard the voice. But the Universe put me there, so I found what I needed.