Chapter 18
When I wasn’t busy making poor romantic decisions and leaving voicemails that my ex probably still plays for a good laugh, I was gearing up to switch trucking companies. I had just finished my last week at Schneider and was all set to start a local gig with JB Hunt—no more living on the road like a sad country song.
I had the job in the bag—interviewed, drug tested, signed the papers, even had a start date. Then, two days before orientation, JB Hunt called to tell me my CDL wasn’t valid. Which was news to me. I called the commercial DMV, and that’s when I found out I had been “randomly selected” for an audit. And by “randomly,” I mean me and exactly 37 other drivers in the entire state of Nevada. What were the odds?
The DMV wanted me to retake all my driving tests. Ok. Annoying, but ok. I went to the DMV, where they kindly informed me I had to supply my own truck. Problem: I had just turned in my Schneider truck in Phoenix. No truck, no test. I called my old trucking school in Vegas, thinking, hey, maybe alumni get perks. Nope. Not at my school. Apparently, every other trucking school in Nevada lets alumni borrow trucks—except mine.
Then I found out the DMV had sent a letter to my Reno address about this whole mess. A letter I never got because I was, you know, out driving for a living while my evil little girlfriend either ignored the mail or wasn’t home. So, I had been unknowingly rolling around the country with an invalid CDL like some kind of outlaw trucker. And because my license was officially revoked, even if I could find a truck to borrow, I legally wasn’t allowed to drive it. My only option? Register at a trucking school again, pay $3,500, and go through the whole damn process from scratch.
That’s when the DMV lady stepped in. She had been working there for 15 years and had never seen a case like mine—which wasn’t exactly comforting to hear. But she tried to help, got her supervisor involved, even contacted the guy in charge of the audit program in Southern Nevada. No cigar. Then she looked at me and said, “Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you to get out of truckin’, hun. Maybe it’s just not in the cards for you to keep drivin’ a truck.”
And maybe she was right. That JB Hunt job? It was a night shift route through Donner’s Pass—one of the iciest, deadliest roads in the country. Maybe putting a depressed, rookie trucker with barely six months of experience in charge of 80,000 pounds of flammable cargo through Donner’s Pass at night wasn’t the best idea.
I called my old mental health coordinator from the facility, told her the DMV Nightmare of the Year story. She laughed and said to me. “Get your ass to Vegas. I’ll get you an interview as a behavioral tech at the facility.”
So, I broke my lease, rented a U-Haul, and drove back to Vegas.
HOME, AGAIN
I spent the whole drive back to Vegas surrounded by tractor-trailers, like the universe was mocking me.
Sometimes I think Las Vegas has its own gravitational pull. No matter how far you go, no matter how hard you try to escape, it just drags you back—like some cursed black hole that feeds on broken dreams and bad decisions.
But damn, I do love the sun.
The second I set foot in Vegas, I stood still, closed my eyes, and let the sun soak into my skin. Nothing beats the sun. Not sex, not sleep, not anything else that starts with an “S.”
Robert Herrick once called the sun “the glorious lamp of heaven.” Thoreau said he was rich—not in money, but in “sunny hours and summer days.” And Galileo, in the middle of all his scientific genius, once marveled that the sun could “still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”
I spent that summer at my sister’s place in Henderson, a quiet suburb on the outskirts of Vegas. My return was a quiet one. Just me, a few books, and long walks under the great Nevada sun.
I got the job at the facility. And for the first time in my life, I had a job I actually enjoyed. Scratch that—the first job I didn’t actively hate. And the funny thing is, I never would have ended up working in mental health if it hadn’t been for that DMV lady.
drink your milk 