You won't look good in my clothes...

"What brings you around?
Did you lose something the last time you were here?
You’ll never find it now
It’s buried deep with your identity
So stand aside and let the next one pass
Don’t let the door kick you in the ass"
- Green Day

I’ve been flying as long as I can remember. I’ve been flying so long I don’t even look out the window when I sit by it. I’ve had a steak grilled in front of me on a TWA flight and I’ve paid $19 to fly to Rochester on People Express. I get that it’s a crazy industry and unless your run the ship like Southwest does, I’m not sure how you make a dime. I never got the business model where you had to produce billions of dollars in revenue just to make a few million in profit. Then you have the FAA, watching 5000 flights in the air at any given time (please tell me someone is working on the transporter, like they had on Star Trek). Of course you have Homeland security, which wants to make sure you stuff your entire life into a 3.4 oz bottle.

//Side Note: Why not 3.5? Do studies indicate that there is a tremendous advantage to bomb makers if they used a 3.5 bottle of whatever they use to make a bomb. Security Theater, Security Theater I tell you!//

Yes, I’ve been in the air a lot and I’m a study of processes and how things work. When you think of the moving pieces, and consider the industry in general, it’s amazing the only thing that’s happened to me in the last 10 years of traveling is that United Airlines lost my luggage a few weeks ago. Not “they lost my bag and it showed up the next day,” kinda lost my luggage, more like “we have no holy hell idea where the hell your bag is!!!!” kinda of lost it. Disappeared! Vanished! Gone forever! Where was I traveling to you ask? Kenya to New Zealand? Chicago to Nepal? Yea right! My bag disappeared off the face of the earth on a trip from Phoenix to Burlington, VT. How boring is that?

This post however isn’t about losing my bag. It isn’t a bitch session about the airline industry. Again, when you think of the complex process the airline industry is, and how much I’ve traveled in my life, I feel blessed and thankful for my experience, thus far…

This post is about how we identify ourselves and how we can lose part of it, just like that. Imagine someone came to you and said, “Please pick out every cool piece of clothing you would bring on a 12 day trip that is both personal and professional. Please make sure you pick out your favorite jeans, your favorite t-shirts, your best sweaters, your coolest dress up shirts, and your best suit. You should throw in your favorite jackets, in case it’s cold.” Now picture that person piling it all up in the center of a room, drowsing it with kerosene and lighting it on fire! That’s what happened to me.

I lost clothes I’ve collected over the past several years, important years. The years where I stood up fought back, and started over. Clothes that helped me reestablish who I was. I lost memories; things that reminded me of one day or an event. I lost the long sleeve shirt that kept me warm on a drive up Highway One on that cool summer night last year. I lost the first Product Red shirt I bought, the shirt that made me realize that I needed to be doing more. I lost the jeans I wore to two greatest birthday parties I had ever been to, the one where we rented out an entire bar in San Francisco, and the weekend in Vegas, the last time the G Crew have all been in the same place. I also lost gifts given to me by special people in my life. I lost my favorite dress down shirt my friend bought me that I just wore to do a presentation the week before. I lost a long sleeve t-shirt, given to me on my birthday that, until I lost, didn’t realize I brought with me on every trip I took since it was given to me. It was a sad few weeks.

At the same time, this experience has been a little liberating. It was a forced fresh start. As much as I try to remember just the great memories I’ve had in the past four years, there are many memories of failures or missed opportunities. It’s surprising how much of those memories are tied to the clothes hanging in our closet. I guess you don’t realize all the subconscious thoughts going through your head while you’re getting dressed. I’m so much more aware of it now. As you scan your closet, you pass the t-shirt that reminds you of sitting in that chair in Sonoma County drinking wine with your new friend, or the jeans you wore the first time you got dressed to take her out to dinner. The shirt you were wearing the night of the storm, when she drove through a hurricane all the way to Mesa, just to watch a movie with you. The shirt you wore when you had the most important job interview of your life. Your mind is just constantly processing, or at least mine is and I have a blessed/cursed memory. I think I remember every moment of my life to some degree or another.

All my favorite clothing was in that bag. With the mysterious disappearance of them, went all the memories associated with them. I guess I get to start over and now I’m back at work, rebuilding my wardrobe, while starting new, and hopefully, better memories. It’s exciting and maybe, just maybe we’re supposed to light our wardrobe on fire every few years.

So if you see me in my new jeans with the thick white stitching, they are my new favs. They’re already associated with some cool memories, including the Bus, the night I picked up my friend at the airport (when coincidentally, she lost her bag), the night I made it all the way from Phoenix to the Volunteer Tent at Oktoberfest in Chicago, where she was so happy to see me, and the night I sat in the sand in Santa Monica and had the best four-hour conversation I’ve had in a long time. They might just be a few weeks old, but they already have some cool memories stitched into them…