California Dreamin'

California sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Cold beer nestled in the sand. Golden Retriever bounding back  with his ball through the surf. Could it get any better than this? It's a question I often ask myself. It really seems like the answer should be a quick "NOPE" and I could get back to utter bliss. It just never seems to work out that way. It's not that I don't thoroughly enjoy the beautiful view, or the amber brew, or my furry best friend's company. It just always feels like there's an itch I'm not scratching. Somehow, I'm missing something important about how to enjoy life to the fullest. And I'm just the kind of person that won't leave well enough alone, quit while I'm ahead, and live the dream. I have to keep on dreaming for more. My name is Ryan Hughes, and I need to figure out my dreams.

I managed to secure my current digs by inventing things. I had noticed at an early age that people seemed fascinated by the funny little electronic and mechanical gadgets that were my constant hobby. When I was 7, the neighbor kid convinced me to take one dollar bill, a sticky handful of change, his skateboard, and a broken Fisher Price wind-up "tv-radio" in exchange for my first creation, an elastic-powered Tonka truck that drove itself for a few feet. I took the spring from the tv-radio, the axles from the skateboard, and some painted cardboard, and made a 4x4 that went even further than the Tonka truck. I traded that up too, and a few inventions later, I had a cap gun that created some fantastic sparks for Jamie Brown down the street, so that he would give me his busted Talking Whiz-Kid. I made some excellent deals for out-of-whack toys. After I cleared off the sensor on the Whiz-Kid, and got it working with the five chocolate-stained, bent-up program cards Jamie had thrown in, my little mind was blown to a whole new level. I spent hours painstakingly drawing out new bar codes on playing cards with white out and permanent marker, to see if I could discover new programs. It wasn't long before I had pried open the whiz kid and started using its circuits to drive various Rube Goldberg-esque projects.

My mom was an accountant and my dad was an electrician in the outskirts of Sacramento, and with me, my sister and my brother, they didn't have a whole lot of extra cash for fancy toys straight from the store. It didn't bother me, though, and my inventions, born from necessity, got me a job at a pawn shop when I turned fifteen. The old man who owned the place was a friend of my grandpa's, and he wanted me to make something out of the five rooms of old junk he had in the back of his place. He gave me a 50% commission on everything I made, and that seemed pretty fair to me. That job got me my first car, a run-down Cutlass that (of course) I fixed up and modified obsessively. It was that old boat that took me from Sactown to the Bay, because I just knew I was meant to be a part of the techy uprising that was going on in San Francisco. Silicon Valley was a young inventor's dream come true. I went to school for a few years at City college, got distracted, stopped going to school, made a few prototypes for start-ups that never quite made it. I never hit it big, but I never really cared, because I made enough to scrape by in the City by the Bay, and that in itself was a thing to be proud of, for me. I got an in-law suite in the Sunset three years ago, and a Golden puppy 6 months after that, and ever since I've been coasting, letting my brain take care of me and Koko. The industrial design projects from excited investors were easier for me than the wacky toys of my childhood, and soon I no longer had to worry about income. After a few successful working models, jobs started pouring in, and we were set. Mission accomplished.

Maybe it's just the ease of everything that has sort of fallen into my lap, or maybe it's the soft fog of the city, but lately I'm just not... satisfied. Everything that used to exhilarate me and light up my circuits, now seems a bit mundane. The joy I used to find in my inventions isn't anywhere to be found. It's been a slow build for a while now, this restless boredom, but it feels like it's peaking. I have trouble sleeping, and when I do I have crazy dreams. Vague dreams of struggle... of hunger and desperation. Such a contrast to my new, extremely comfortable life. The dreams leave me feeling drained and even more tired than when I go to bed. The most frustrating part is that I can't even really remember them when I wake up. It's just the residual feelings that get me. I've been doing some research over the past few days. I think I'll try keeping a dream journal to see if that helps - you're supposed to write down everything you can remember the second you wake up. At this point I'm willing to try just about anything.

Photo of Koko thanks to Graur Razvan Ionut and posted on freedigitalphotos.net