Dana---that's my friend's name---was eager to hear about some of the adventures I'd been on since I'd last seen him, almost two years before that. Among other things, we'd both agreed that I wouldn't be able to fulfill my personal destiny until I had a bunch more money than I had at the time, which was not much at all. "It will change you, Matt, for the better, to have money."
I had agreed with him and we had set an amount that I expected to have the next time I saw him. He asked about that almost right off the bat, before we even left the office to go to lunch. I had to break it to him that I wasn't to the mark we'd set yet, but in a way it didn't matter. I was stratospherically above where I was then. I had achieved enough to completely change my perception of myself and my day-to-day place in the world. "I've leveled up," I told him, "a few levels."
I told him that I had decided to not yet to make a priority of that first wealth mark, but instead to concentrate on my own idea of freedom, which was to have a modest but good income and be able to travel freely, as I have come to be able to do, and work from anywhere (at least in the United States so far).
Over lunch I told him something I've told others, that "the day I realized I'd achieved enough of income working remotely to be able to stay in decent budget motels indefinitely was the day I felt truly free for the first time."
Ironically, as I told my friend, I got my current job during my last trip to Oregon. Although I work for a New York company, my boss works (mostly remotely) himself from Portland, which is where he hired me, after I responded to a Craigslist ad. They couldn't find anyone in Portland to do what I now do, and had to hire a guy passing through in his Bimmer.
He took delight in my stories about hotels. But he thought it queer that I had bothered to spend so much money to stay at the Heathman simply for the Grand Floral Parade, which I gathered he thought was not worth the spectacle.
"I just had to see it," I said. "I had to cross it off my list."
"But why that?" he asked, .
"It's arbitrary I guess, but I suppose it was so I could maybe find some measure of closure and never have to set foot in this god-forsaken state again."
That made him chuckle.
At the end of lunch, I told him about my plan to make Forest Grove one of my bases during this visit to the Portland area. Of course he thought it was a good idea, in part because it would allow us to get together again.
I told him the reason I chose Forest Grove was that I had spent last Christmas in Thousand Oaks.
"Oh, yeah, Cal Lutheran," he said. He esplained he had to go down there in college to rescue a high school classmate, a young woman, who had flamed out there and sadly later committed suicide.
"Yeah," I said. "We were right next to the campus. Everyone there still remembers that the campus was where the Dallas Cowboys had their summer training camp during their heyday in the 1970s. I went online while I was there and found out that the first place they had held their summer camp was Pacific University in Forest Grove. So I'm following in the historic footsteps of the Dallas Cowboys."
I should mention I don't care about professional football franchises anymore. The game is a nice spectacle, but I don't care which teams win, beyond rooting for the one with more gumption to win, and to root for a good game. But back when I cared about such arbitrary things, I used to really hate the Dallas Cowboys.
It can feel good in a way to turn the world upside down, to love what you used to hate, and maybe hate what you used to love. It's something I've gotten almost used to.
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