At the end of the road…

This Wastin’ Away Again story has been told out of sequence, as you may have noticed, much like one of my favorite movies from the early 2000s, Pulp Fiction. This story has jumped through time and order to tell a tale of a kid who lacked direction, stuck in his hometown of New Rochelle, New York. Stuck in a job, stuck in love, stuck in life, stuck in a world that did not feel like his own and definitely didn’t feel like home.

I plotted and schemed, I read books by Kerouac, Henry Miller, Henry Rollins, like Get In The Van. These travelers, moving through the world, paving their own way into the future. I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. Where it would lead, but I knew that staying was not an option. When the moment came, living in Pelham, NY in a nice big apartment, I had two jobs. I worked at the trophy and awards shop doing computer engraving by day and I drove a taxi, or Cab as I call it, for Peltown. By far one of the worst jobs I ever had. When you are driving people with money getting off the train after commuting home from New York City to their big homes in Pelham, and you are hoping for a dollar tip, it can make you feel very small. Stacking up your money pile dollar bill at a time. Well, that didn’t add up very fast.

One day in the middle of the night, the phone rang. It was Tom; he was driving from Denmark, through Germany, to hop a flight to New York, JFK specifically. On that night, on that phone call, we hatched the great escape.

The two-week vacation that is still going on, I collected all my money, I sold my car, my TV, and everything else I owned. One night I moved out of the apartment with the help of Tom and moved everything I couldn’t sell into a storage facility.

I might as well have moved it into the dump, as I never went back and after a while, I stopped paying the bill. Everything I had owned was sold or thrown away so the next person could store their own unwanted belongings.

With about $2000 in hand, which was a lot of money for me in the ’90s, I finally came to a point where I was going to make a move. That move would take me all over America. From the 24-hour sunlit days of Anchorage in the summer, to San Francisco with the gutter punks, to South Lake Tahoe, to the Southernmost Point (Key West), and the hell that was Austin, Texas.

Then came Los Angeles, a city that held awe and love for me. My good friends were Will and Jason Mewes, yes, Jason Mewes, or Jay from Jay and Silent Bob from Clerks, Mallrats and many other movies. For a few months in LA, the stars aligned, and I felt like a king driving Jay around to Disney Studios, hanging out in his hotel in Beverly Hills. How that all happened and the stories I can tell are for another time.

But after LA and 3000 miles away in Duck Key, FL, I found myself as a clerk at the local gas station and bait shop. I wrote a movie script there as I went through a period where I wrote 15 or so movie scripts, this one was called Chum Bag. It took place in the Keys during Fantasy Fest time and was a murder mystery. I still have it in the boxes in my closet downstairs in my office with everything else I wrote but have not thrown away.

After the gas station, I worked at a restaurant right next door called The Wreck. The girl I was with at the time was a waitress, and I ended up in the back as a short order cook. There is a pattern here if you can see it.

I worked in that place for a short time; I got into a verbal fight with the head of the kitchen, Matt I think his name was. He was a friend, and what I thought was a friendly fight turned into me getting suspended from work.

And this was the best thing that ever happened to me…

Frustrated and in fear of not having a job, I decided to cross the street from the place I lived in Grassy Key, or as I called it, Assy Key, as when the tides went out the smell would come and loom over the place, and it smelled like ass.

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Crossing the street to the entrance of Hawk’s Cay Resort, this would change my life forever. I went to the Marina store and asked if they had any job openings. I was desperate, and if I had to be a clerk again, well, I might as well do it here at this resort. They sent me to the HR office, and I filled out an application. The HR person, Jill, I will always remember her name, reviewed my resume. She asked, “You have computer experience?” I did, I did from way back I said. I was using a computer since the ’80s. I was familiar with Microsoft Office or Microsoft Works, which was around before Microsoft Word. I had more computer experience than anyone else who wandered into that place.

It just so happens that the Director of IT, Mr. Todd Erickson, was looking for an assistant. Jill sent me to the main building of Hawk’s Cay, a beautiful place, and an amazing building, a nice resort. I was told to go to Room 244. I was confused, why was I going to a hotel room?

I knocked on that door and eventually, Todd opened it up and escorted me into Room 244.

Walking into 244, I was amazed. What I saw was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. This was not your ordinary hotel room. This was a totally gutted room turned into a small data center. With server racks filled with servers and a giant old Mitel phone system mounted on the wall. Walls of telephone punch-down blocks filled with cat 3 wiring. The entire resort and all its technology, phones, credit card processing, and everything else technical led to this room.

I was amazed, I was like a little kid getting a Commodore 64, I was living a real-life adventure game. This was the world I wanted to be in. Before I could even say a word, that was it—I was in technology. From that day forward, I have done nothing else. All the shitty jobs, all the trips across America from east to west, from north to south brought me here to Room 244 at mile marker 61 on the Overseas Highway. Or as I felt at the time, I was in heaven.

Todd was by far the biggest talker I had ever met, thank God for him. He talked so much over the next few years that 10% of what he said sunk in, and I learned so much from him. He was the greatest mentor I ever had. Smart, funny, loved Metallica, rode a motorcycle. This guy was from outer space. I sucked up every piece of info, every crumb he dropped, and I became the Assistant Director of Technology.

I learned about Server OS, NT4 at that time. I learned about phones and how to run cabling. I learned about thin clients and I learned about Citrix. Citrix would dominate my entire career, to this day I work on Citrix every day I am working. It is what I do, it is how I connect to work, it is what I support. It is what I know.

Todd and Citrix changed my life and gave me everything I have today. Thank you, Todd. Thank you, Citrix. Thank you for helping me build a life.

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More about me can be found on my LinkedIn page @ www.linkedin.com/in/boehmjesse

Email me @ IAM@jesseboehm.com