Rethinking Routine: My Continued Search for Self in Salt Lake City

I was excited to move to Salt Lake City, Utah. I had been learning a lot about myself and one of the most notable things was that exploring unfamiliar places gave me high. I didn’t know much about Salt Lake, outside of the Church of Latter-Day Saints being headquartered in the city. I was friends with a small handful of Mormons in Texas and had attended a service or two with them at their church. I was familiar of course with the Great Salt Lake, intellectually, but I’d never been. And I read, after deciding to move there, that the ‘outdoors’ scene was jutting. It was the outdoors scene where I had envisioned my niche. After moving to Utah, and before we moved into our apartment in West Jordan, we lived with Celeste’s aunt in Murray, Utah—basically Salt Lake City. Murray is south of Millcreek; Millcreek is south of South Salt Lake City, a city south of Salt Lake City. Adjacent Salt Lake City cities include Murray, Millcreek, South Salt Lake City, Bountiful, Cottonwood Heights, Draper, Holladay, Midvale, Sandy, Taylorsville, and West Jordan. Salt Lake City is a city of cities, like Denver, Las Angeles, Minneapolis, and so many others—but for whatever reason, with people from Salt Lake, it’s discomfited. I grew up in a town roughly thirty miles northwest of San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio has many cities that make up the metro area, far more than Salt Lake—but I don’t know, man, the idea of the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area started to annoy me immediately. It’s likely to do with how people in these cities outside Salt Lake City don’t consider themselves from Salt Lake City. Most take an almost gratingly proactive approach to not being from Salt Lake City. “I’m from Murray, Utah.” “Oh, Salt Lake! Awesome.” “No, no. I’m not from Salt Lake City. I’m from Murray.” “Right, so, you know, basically, Salt Lake.” And many of the people not from Salt Lake City I learned, can be aggressively not from Salt Lake. Meanwhile, somewhere thirty miles from the San Antonio city limits, someone is telling someone else who is resolutely not from Salt Lake that they’re from San Antonio.

          After moving to Salt Lake City, it took some time to find a job, and that was awkward because Celeste was going to school and while I was looking for work, I was also spending a lot of time with strangers who knew someone I also knew. Fortunately, Celeste and I lived in the basement and had some privacy, but still, it was awkward. I never could relax and always felt judged. In middle and high school, at that age, people will start to recognize the distinction between the habits, routines, and behaviors, that up to then, have been all we’ve known and that might be unique to your family; so, you start to explore and sample unfamiliar customs. I prefer cultivating those things with privacy in the comfort of solitude. I learned that about myself while always feeling assessed and seemingly alone in the basement. That was a new experience for me and therefore a new feeling. I know the feelings that shadowed me reflected only my insecurities and expectations nevertheless, they represent how I felt living in that situation. The only time I felt comfortable, and only because the news kept my mind off of how uncomfortable I was, was the day Heath Ledger died. I watched the footage in the basement while sitting on the couch. The house was built on a hill, and the basement was only partially underground. The wall to the left of me—sitting on the sofa—included large bay windows and a set of sliding doors that led to the deck outside, and beyond that was a pool I never felt comfortable swimming in. I watched the footage all day (covering Heath Ledger) and they covered it all day. I always liked Heath Ledger and following his roles in Brokeback Mountain and Candy, Ledger shifted from a charismatic character actor to a zealous method actor. Ledger certainly would have given us a range of remarkable performances had that morning gone differently.

          I soon found a job as a shift supervisor for a kind of concession stand at Larry Miller’s Megaplex Jordan Commons in Sandy, Utah— “No, no. Not Salt Lake City…Sandy, Utah.” Megaplex Jordan Commons is somewhat bombastic. The building is massive, and while there are only seventeen movie screens, they surround a central, unnecessarily large food court that operates a ‘50s American diner, a pizzeria, a Mexican food café, a Chinese food café, an ice cream booth, and your garden variety movie theatre concessions. I’m sure there was another option or two, but I can’t recall what they were or the names of each independent café. I don’t enjoy working with food, particularly other people’s food. Before Megaplex, I worked at a couple of Taco Bells of which I could stand for less than a month on the job between the two of them. I worked briefly at Baskin Robbins and later at Starbucks. And my first job, when I was sixteen or seventeen, was bussing tables and washing dishes at a long-time family friend's restaurant. That’s all the experience I had in the food service and that was enough, it was more than enough. But I needed a job and Larry Miller wanted to give me a job. I’m hard-pressed to call these eateries cafés, but to refer to them as “concessions” doesn’t quite hit the mark either. The café I was supervising was more or less Panda Express. As far as the food service went it was simple work. The most memorable thing about working the faux Panda Express at Larry Miller’s Megaplex Jordan Commons was that we sourced some of our ingredients from ConAgra Lamb Weston. Remember, I worked at ConAgra Lamb Weston. And before that, I worked on a potato harvest. I don’t know where Celeste’s grandfather sold his crop exactly, but having worked the harvest with the family and worked at a processing plant that cleaned, packed, and shipped the crop, and later worked somewhere selling that same product from the same processing plant where I spent my nights managing a packaging machine—I’ve always thought that was pretty neat.

          Working at Larry Miller’s Megaplex Jordan Commons, I went to scores of movies. I love those moving pictures. In grade school, my mom sometimes petitioned me to skip school and join her instead for a movie. In high school, my friends and I would go to movies weekly, and occasionally we went to a theatre in Helotes, Texas. Silverado theatres were unique because they positioned the first row of seats further back from the screen than any theatre I’ve been to. We would practically pack a picnic, including blankets, and sprawl out on the cement directly in front of the screen, while everyone else sat behind us in cushioned stadium seating. So, I fostered a relationship with the movies; growing up the experience encompassed more than the film itself. At Megaplex Jordan Commons, I would pay for a discounted movie ticket early in the day and then sneak into movies that started shortly after the last one ended. Again, I saw a lot of movies. I remember well before I started working for Larry Miller’s Megaplex, Larry Miller boycotted Brokeback Mountain, that film with Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Anne Hathaway, and so Focus Features, the production company that made the film, boycotted Larry Miller’s Megaplex theatres. There are at least seventeen Larry Miller theatres. Since boycotting Larry Miller’s theatres, Focus Features produced (I’m only going to list a few notable titles), Brick, Hollywoodland, Catch a Fire, Hot Fuzz, Evening, Talk to Me, Eastern Promises, Reservation Road, Atonement, In Bruges, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. And for a taste of how problematic being boycotted by Focus Features is, the production/distribution company is also responsible for Dazed and Confused, Mallrats, the Big Lebowski, Being John Malkovich, Wet Hot American Summer, Gosford Park, Possession, 8 Women, The Pianist, The Shape of Things, Lost in Translation, 21 Grams, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Motorcycle Diaries, Shaun of the Dead, Broken Flowers, The Constant Gardener, Pride & Prejudice (Keira Knightly), and The Ice Harvest. The boycott of Larry Miller’s Megaplex was a huge loss for the company. Focus Features lifted its boycott after Larry Miller's Megaplex theaters released the film Hamlet 2. Although initially produced by other companies, Focus Features had acquired the distribution rights for the movie, which lifted the tension between the two companies for some reason.

          After we moved out of the basement, Celeste started working at Larry Miller Megaplex Jordan Commons. I urged Celeste to apply to work in a department other than the faux Panda Express because that would have been a lot. It’s a lot to be around someone all the time. I wanted her to find a job anywhere other than where I worked. I’m an ambivert (you can read about what that means here). It’s difficult to explain to someone, especially when you’re twenty and are still learning about who you are—and even more so if they don’t want to hear it—how all people are not emotionally equal. People give off different energies, different energies might be preferable depending on specific moods, and sometimes when you spend every waking second with a person eventually all it feels like you’re doing is providing them with more ammunition to exploit you with later. In my youth, I made the mistake of putting too much of myself into something in the beginning, allowing enough time to pass to set the standard, then, after more time, I often—almost always—found myself needing to reconsider my expectations in the relationship. However, I rarely reconsidered my expectations in the relationships; instead, I generally left the relationships and conveniently forgot about whatever personal issues might have developed. That was a hard lesson for me to learn for some reason. I didn’t know I could sit down with Celeste and say, “I overextended myself; I think I need to readjust my relationship with our relationship.” The emotional seeds planted once you finally learn to communicate like that are invaluable. When you don’t communicate with that and things alike or along the spectrum, resentment—among other issues—swiftly develops. You start to see only the worst things about a person, and the worst things steadily worsen. In the meantime, I developed little crushes on my coworkers. Nikki, Heidi, and Cat. Cat especially, she later told me she had a thing for me—sad face. Being young and married while discovering new emotions, and further learning about yourself and your interests, is a strange dynamic. At that age, as you’re growing and developing, and learning how to start doing that consciously and with intention, you notice how different people illuminate new things about who you are and can be, without the difficulties of having to bring those characteristics out in yourself.

          Meanwhile, Celeste and I had moved into an apartment in West Jordan, Utah. I liked the apartment. It was a second-story, one-bedroom apartment, with a balcony outside our bedroom that we regretfully never used (well I used it once, and I’ll get to that later). Our apartment complex was at the corner of Redwood Road and 7000 S. There was a business park across the street that offered everything we needed, including a Blockbuster Video. Shortly before going out of business, Blockbuster had this program where one would pay a set price every month and be allowed to always have up to two or three videos in their possession. You can return one and take another with the swipe of a badge. It was a great program. On our evenings off, either Celeste or I would run across Redwood, get some food, change out a movie, often in our pajamas, and be positioned perfectly to channel that quintessential 20th-century American dream. Moving into the apartment in West Jordan was meant to be a kind of renewal for Celeste and me. We wanted it to be a clean slate. But it’s way too easy to allow the bad, or normal habits, behaviors, and ideas developed to perpetuate because it’s much easier, routine, and thoughtless than to figure out how to change. People tend to think about habits in the general sense when facing things like smoking, drinking, and working out. We rarely think about our emotional reactions and behaviors in this context, and that’s unfortunate because that’s where genuine change comes from. It’s also why we’ve all heard many times about how people can’t change. This type of change is possible but requires conscious effort, dedication, and patience, which most people hate, especially in today’s climate, and over the last fifteen years, and counting. I’m not implying Celeste needed to address some bad habits, though who can’t benefit from that? I’m focusing more on myself and my behaviors. And I definitely should have flipped the switch that would promise to redirect attention and reflection onto myself, focusing less on any or everyone else.

                The drama at Larry Miller's Megaplex Jordan Commons was becoming overwhelming, and I felt suffocated by the chaos, some of which I invented in my head. In search of a fresh perspective, I began to look for small ways to reinvent myself. As I made these efforts, new opportunities emerged, allowing me to explore life in exciting and unexpected ways.