2 Years of Change, Chaos, Bliss and now Settlement

2 Years ago. Might as well be 200 years ago. It feels like yesterday and forever at the same time. 2 years ago, today I was enjoying my last day of a week in Maui with my wife, one of my best friends Tony Gamboa and his girlfriend Christie. It was a great vacation. Spent a lot of time in the pool and ocean, sightseeing, eating good food and even got to see New Order in concert while we were there. Not bad at all. For all of 2018, Tony and I were working as Directors (He as Facilities Director and myself as IT Director) for Golden Shore Medical. Golden Shore was an offshoot of Molina Healthcare who we worked for previously. When Dr. Mario Molina was let go by the board of directors of Molina in May of 2017, he was given first right of refusal to purchase a line of business. He chose to purchase the existing Molina Clinics and rebranded them as Golden Shore. Tony and I loved working for Dr. Molina and we would have easily spent the rest of our careers working for him. However, things weren’t going so well financially and we were in a bad contract with Molina Healthcare (who provided the majority of the patients we saw). We knew there was a chance that we might have to fold. During this vacation there was a feeling that I should start looking now rather than wait for things to unfold. So I started looking on that vacation. I was open to relocating so besides LA, I was also applying in Seattle, Portland, Central Coast and since I was in Hawaii at that moment I decided to look there as well. I mean why the hell not! I have always loved visiting the islands and always wondered what It would be like to live there. So, to make a long story short, I applied for a job as a Director of IT for Hawaii Health Systems, I interviewed and I got the job and from January 2019 to March 2020, my wife and I lived in Hawaii. What a trip. I mean I never expected that as part of my journey. But this is only part of my story of the past 2 years.

My last day of vacation on Maui, 2 years ago exactly. Little did I know then my life was about to turn upside down.

 Now that I have been in Santa Barbara for 7 months, I can reflect a bit more about things. It was such a whirlwind. I was alone on the islands for 3 months before my wife and dogs arrived. That part was very challenging. I didn’t have any real friends on the island at that point so there was a lot of self-reflection going on. I was struggling as I just had weight loss surgery 2 months before I moved to Hawaii. Food was always how I coped with stress and to have so much stress on me without my typical coping mechanism I spiraled down into some depressive episodes. Here I am, living in paradise, but I am alone and pretty miserable. Wow, didn’t see that coming. I think there is this expectation that if you live in Hawaii that it is so beautiful that how can someone be sad there. Well you can, and I was. I can see it more clearly now that I needed to go through this. I needed to be miserable in paradise. I get it. It was an amazing life lesson. The perception and the reality didn’t match. I had to learn how to live with that. To understand that there is more to this than just moving to Hawaii and starting life over. That just because you have the ability to run to a beautiful island that while it does shake things up for a moment, when the dust settles, the same issues are still there and those need to be addressed no matter what the location. Sometimes though, it takes for one to remove everything from their lives to figure out what exactly what you need.

My going way party at re:love in the park. A wonderful day.

 The job in Hawaii was a big disappointment as well. Well, looking back I can see why. I wasn’t looking at the opportunity for career growth and knowledge. I was looking at the opportunity to move to Hawaii. Those are 2 different things. The position paid very well and it had great benefits as I was a state employee. The work wasn’t difficult but it also wasn’t’ challenging for the right reasons. I worked in an old hospital behind Diamondhead. I had a tiny office but a great view. I could see all of Waikiki from where my team sat. It was stunning. But the work wasn’t fun or rewarding. I was ready to make another move to another position pretty quickly but the challenge was to remain on the island for at least a year. I owed that to my wife. So, I needed a remote position. I reached out to a company in Oregon that was a vendor to us when I was working at Golden Shore and a lot of my staff ended up working there. There was a manager position open but it was a for a team that did Data Conversion work for EMRs. I knew very little about the work but I knew how to manage people so I figure I might as well try this out. This job was the complete opposite. I was challenged from the get go. I had to quickly find my footing. I knew immediately I really liked my team but there were some personality conflicts with executive leadership and those on my team that was beyond repair. All I could do is try to protect my team, stand up for them and set expectations correctly. I was working 10-12 hours days. Since I was getting up at around 5am to start my day due to the time difference between Honolulu and Portland.

The parking lot of my old job at HHSC which was located at Leahi Hospital behind Diamond Head.

 After my first week I was talking to my boss and we agreed to give it 3 months and see how things go. She made the caveat of, “unless I get my dream job”. Of course. How could anyone deny you taking your dream job. So, we shook on it. And it was going ok. Then on a Friday evening in the less than 2 months later in August, my boss calls and suggests a virtual happy hour. I pour a glass of whiskey and jump on a call with her. She lets me know that she landed her dream job and was going to put in her 2 weeks. So suddenly I felt alone on an island again. She was a great support system for me as I navigated around unknown waters in this new position. As soon as she announced her departure, I was given more money. I knew what that meant. I was about to have a lot more work piled on me. I felt the urge to get the fuck out of there. So, I started looking for work on the islands. I met some recruiters and they easily got me in for some interviews at Queens Medical (which is the largest medical group on the islands). I was on my way back to LA on August 15th to spend some time and also DJ. The day I took off I received an offer to work as a Project Manager on some expansion work. It was 6-month contract which would could be extended. For me this was perfect, it got me out of my current position, kept me on the island for 6 more months and then I can try to look for something back mainland. During my trip to LA, I had planned to fly to Oregon so I can visit my team and took this as an opportunity to give my 2 weeks in person. Well I resigned, I was countered, I still decided to leave. One of my employees wrote a very impassioned letter to my leadership about me leaving and the current situation. That weekend I was reached out to by the CEO of the company. She let me know that they would make any reasonable accommodation for me to consider staying on. I wrote down a list of requirements that I would need to stay on and they met every single one. Wow. I wasn’t expecting any of that. So, I turned down the contract in Hawaii and kept on plugging away at my current job.

During our last week as residents of Hawaii. Although we both feel Hawaii will always be home but Santa Barbara isn’t a bad place to be. And to be honest I like the weather better here.

Then a little over a week later, UCSB contacts me about a position that I applied for. I have always wanted to live in Santa Barbara and my mom and aunt have both worked in higher education during their careers and there are some clear benefits in working in the UC system. Again, another long story but here is the gist. I applied. It took 3 months and 3 interviews. They flew me out in November for an in-person interview. I fell in love with the campus, the team, the culture and the area. I flew back to Hawaii and awaited my offer. I finally got the offer a few days before Thanksgiving. There was a bit of back and forth and I had to do a pros and cons list. Ultimately, I left it to my wife. She didn’t want to leave Hawaii but she also didn’t want to go back to LA. She was over it and I can understand why. LA to me was always home though. We had both thought about retiring in the central coast though. That is where we got married and we loved the area. I gave her two options. We take the UCSB job and move to Santa Barbara by March 1 or we can stay in Hawaii for a few months but move to Portland or LA. She knew my choice but I wanted to make her a part of this, her choice would be to stay in Hawaii (at the time) but she knew that wasn’t really an option. Luckily for me and us, she chose wisely. After Thanksgiving I put in my notice. I gave them 4 weeks so I could tie things up and also I arranged to start in person on January 2nd at UCSB for 2 weeks and then fly back to Hawaii to do the whole move while working remotely for 6 weeks.

Home.

Then there was our home in San Gabriel. We put it up for rent when we moved to Hawaii and our tenants were great at the beginning and then in summer things turned. Although we had a property management company, I found being a landlord very difficult especially doing it from 2500 miles away. The tenants also wanted to get out of the lease so it worked to our benefit to allow it. We decided to put the house up for sale in February of this year and quickly got multiple offers. We selected a buyer and worked on getting the house ready for sale. On top of that I had to find a new place for us to live. When I was in SB in January I took some tours of some properties. Like Hawaii, it was very difficult to find a spot that would accept dogs. However, I found one about 5 min from campus. It is a new community and the amenities and grounds were very similar to the condo we rented in Hawaii Kai. So, we bit the bullet and we had our spot ready for a March 7th move in. The first week we got back the wife focused on moving the stuff in our garage out and I stayed in Santa Barbara and got things ready. Finally, on March 8th, my dogs, my wife and I moved in to our new spot in Goleta. Whew!!

And then COVID hit. Great. We closed on house on March 13th. The next week everything locked down. I am so grateful that we were able to close prior to the lock down and it appears we moved in the nick of time as well. Since then it has been crazy. I am sure it is crazy for you and I won’t bore you with the details. This post is long enough already. The main thing I wanted to convey was that this was 2 years of chaos. Ups and downs and sideways. It feels nice to finally feel settled. Even in the midst of a pandemic and our normal lives are now altered forever in some way, I still feel like I am settled and that is a nice feeling. Despite the political bullshit, the economic crisis, the lockdowns and the lack of social activities, I feel at peace finally. My wife, my dogs and I are happy and settled. I plan on keeping things this way for a while.