because, from my early experience, I also knew that my family didn’t have what most rich people had. While I had a pretty good upbringing, lots of friends and was happy, I knew there was a bigger world out there. Success, I had already began to see, was elusive and tenuous. I watched my parents work hard for very little reward; we weren’t able to do a lot of extra’s that cost additional money. Money was tight and they couldn’t seem to get out of the cycle of working paycheck to paycheck.
According to my parents, college was the way out of that cycle, at least until I found a different answer, so that was the path I took. With two years of college under my belt and $300 in my pocket, I left my small town home in South Dakota, determined to taste some freedom of my own. I wanted to see something new and exciting – for my best friend and me that meant Las Vegas. With no job or any sort of a plan, I enrolled at UNLV, put a deposit and first months rent down on an apartment and moved the big city. It took a couple months before I got my first job at the Children’s Museum. I had run out of money, had borrowed from a friend to pay rent and was starting to worry when this position came along. It was a great first learning experience (although I probably didn’t say great at the time) in dealing with the emotional roller coaster of money. A few months later I got a second job at a local bank.
And as “good girls” from South Dakota do, I also partied hard. Nearly every evening, I went out drinking with my girlfriends. On one such Friday night in December 1993, I walked into Dylan’s, where Josh had begun working as a bar back, and boy he was mesmerized (that’s a story for some other time!). We didn’t actually meet until 1995 (he had been sending me free drinks for 1.5 years), but we fell deeply in love very quickly, and five years later, we were married.
The Vacuum
Josh’s Story
Las Vegas is the world’s largest vacuum. Time doesn’t exist there – just look at any casino and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a window or a clock. That town sucks up everything in its wake, including your sense of personal responsibility, your decorum, any financial control, or your ability to keep your urges in check. It’s where you go to lose yourself, your money, or anything that’s important to you. That’s why “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
You can’t become a responsible adult when you grow up in that environment. Well, at least I certainly couldn’t.
At Dylan’s, my job included filling the house with thirsty customers, controlling inventory, ensuring our customers had the best possible experience, keeping the cash registers ringing, and, most importantly, guarding the cash. It was why I had a handgun, and it was why I continued studying martial arts. I had begun to be a martial athlete at age 17 when I had lived in Kona, Hawaii. I had studied the kickboxing and ground fighting discipline known as Paul Mills American Kenpo Karate.
Most 21-year-olds think they’re unstoppable, but the power I wielded as a gun-owning, martial arts-trained bartender and part nightclub-owner in Vegas convinced me that I was absolutely invincible. And maybe I was just plain crazy, which is pretty common in Las Vegas. An opportunity presented itself, and I opened my own nightclub, called JD’s, in the old Calamity Jane’s building on Fremont Street, complete with live bands and mosh pits that required almost nightly visits from the police. All the while, I was drinking and partying with the customers, matching shot for shot, spending my money on ridiculous toys, going on all-night runs, and telling myself, “I could do this forever,” as I convinced myself that I was the one person who had found all the keys to a perfect life.
Within a year’s time, I had run the club into the ground and had put my future, my health, and my relationship with Lisa in jeopardy.
For Lisa, life with me was a constant adrenaline rush, and like with anything else, adrenaline is great in small doses, but eventually it wears you out. She lived with steady, high doses of adrenaline, she began to lose her taste for the partying, and she could see that I was spinning out of control. It was a tough position for her to be in, considering that not long after we began dating, I began training her to bartend at Dylan’s. She was a witness firsthand to the dangers of intoxication, with both drinking and with the nightclub, partying lifestyle. A few years into it, she decided that this life wasn’t really for her. She decided to follow in her father’s footsteps instead, and took the tests necessary to become a commissioned law enforcement officer for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
She had joined the force out of her desire to find exciting work, but also to do work that inspired her and contributed to bettering the world in some way. She has always been a protector at heart, and this field suited her much more than slinging drinks and getting drunk.
She found all that, but she was also surprised to find that being in law enforcement, in itself, was an existence that was a little too stable for her liking. After all, Lisa was also exposed to the easy-cash, VIP-treatment lifestyle. Her fellow officers would talk about “putting in their twenty years” and making their career million. And Lisa’s first thought was, “Twenty years to make a million dollars? A million for your entire career?
Will a million dollars even be a lot of money in twenty years? Some people make a million dollars in a month!” While that was great money for law enforcement, it was not what she wanted to do for the next 20 years to earn it.
Like I said, she and I both see the world very differently from most people. Intuitively, even as she was establishing a good career as an officer, and enjoyed the work, the mission, and the power of her badge. But Lisa also knew that there was something else out there that suited her better. There had to be. Until then, this would do for the short term.
On a nightly basis, Lisa’s job in law enforcement meant anticipating the unexpected. She never knew who she was going to wind up interacting with each night, how they would act, or what bizarre situations they might be part of. Many of them were addicts, and many of them unpredictable and often dangerous. Then, she’d come home after a shift to face even worse: her own husband, fresh off a three-day run, hungover, hating himself, and pissed off at the world. Her worry was her constant companion; she expected that any day, she’d get the call reporting that I was dead or injured, or that I might end up in jail with her “customers.”
SIDEBAR:
I feel it’s important to state that
many are happy working a career
they love and the money that
goes with it. But also to look at
your dreams and long term goals
and ask yourself if the current
situation you are in is the means
or way you will get there. You can
then re-evaluate what your next
steps are on accomplishing your
dream, is it being an employee,
self-employed, business owner
or investor and what do you get
to do or change to get there. As
mentioned in the Introduction,
