Steve Albini

I used to listen to Big Black quite a bit when I was younger, so perhaps that’s why one day I just said fuck it and left Indiana. I’d gotten to the point where I was ready to drink myself to death, or burn the world to the ground, and tell everyone that I did it just to stay warm. It was January, I had scraped the ice off the door locks only to find they were frozen through.

It was turning out to be a very bad night. I started working on thawing the door locks. Once I could get inside, but I’d forgotten that the clutch was acting up, and the engine didn’t want to turn over. After several tries, I finally got the truck started and remembered the heat didn’t work. So while I was letting the engine warm up I did my best to scrape the windshield. It was fucking cold that night.

All of this so that I could go work the midnight shift as a merchandising manager. I had gotten into a fight the night before, when my coworkers found out I was getting promoted to be their boss. I hadn’t even been there three months, and these guys had been there for years. I didn’t want to go in to another night of idle threats behind my back, but I had to, I needed the money.

So I went to work, jumped on one of the computers that a friend who ran a Gateway Country intentionally left on for me, and I emailed a friend of mine and told her that if she heard of any jobs in Los Angeles to let me know because I was done with Indiana. Then I forwarded her my resume. Later that next day I got a call from two companies, both offered me jobs. One was part time as a temp, the other was as a full time job, both would be doing the same basic thing. I took the full time job figuring full time work is better than part time, especially when moving somewhere new.

I came into work that night and was offered to go into corporate training to become a regional manager for the company I was working for at the time. I turned it down, citing that I needed to see if LA was for me. After some long discussions with the then managers, they agreed that if I were going to do something like this, it’d be better to do it now, versus possibly being tied down with obligations years later, wondering what if.

There is no guarantee that I’d still be working for that company had I stayed—especially in the current climate—but I’d potentially be making great money right now, going out of my mind, and drinking myself to death, or dead. But I looked at the grass on the other side of the fence and it looked greener so I left.

Here I am almost 10 years later, and I occasionally question that decision. It usually comes up when my current job is stressing me out, or when I get an email from someone back home showing how big all my neices and nephews are getting, knowing that many of them have no clue who I am.

For some reason I realized today that Steve Albini influenced my decisions. Sure, I’m not blaming him, but I think his music tends to line up with many of my thoughts and moods. Perhaps it’s what draws me to his various projects. And it’s also probably why I tend to migrate towards his music whenever life is getting me down. I’m not sure if the music reminds me of how I need to change, or if it’s just a reflection of my angst at that moment.