I put out my cigarette on the tread of my car tire and stuck the butt in the ashtray. I felt like I had a little bit more direction now. This whole not-sure-where-I’m-going-or-what-I’m-doing thing, this was normal. This was my Saturn return. Which meant, it would end.

I guess I thought since I’d already gone through all of this same shit when I left college, that things would go smoothly from there. I thought that life could only drag me through so much shit, through so many “bad matches”. I’d been through enough crap in my childhood to last a lifetime. The tarot reader had even said so. Other than the poor decision to start smoking again, I had been going to yoga class, reading books like One Day My Soul Just Opened Up and Be Here Now, and I was working diligently at my job as a youth counselor. I took bubble baths and swam laps at the Y. Life was supposed to be peaceful by now.  It wasn’t. Luckily, I was pro-active. I didn’t just float along. I wouldn’t just float along.

As I pulled my car away from the curb, I thought about a time in my hometown when I was hanging with some buddies at a skate park. Actually it was a business park, but people skated there. A lot of homeless people hung around there too. I was dragging on a cigarette and staring shyly at my childhood crush, who sat across from me, his skateboard leaning against a concrete wall. A woman in clothing that might have actually been a vibrant color previously, but was now just a rainbow of dirt, waltzed by with her long-haired companion, who was carrying an unmistakable paperbag forty ounce beer, I noticed.

“Hey!” She hollered at me, pointing, “You’re gonna be somebody someday!”

She said those words with such conviction, that even though I should know better than to think this woman was some guardian angel or fortune teller, rather than some drunk just spouting shit, I still like to think that maybe she was on to something. I find myself remembering this day. And then taking another step in the right direction. I’m gonna be somebody. I mean we’re all somebody, but somehow, I knew exactly what that lady was talking about.