The house is officially under contract.
Let me say that again.
The house is officially under contract. The golden 2.75% interest rate I will probably never see again is going away. The new roof, the new floors, the rural lot, the private backyard, and the little river running through it are all about to belong to someone else. I am going to miss this house. I already know that. But I would miss it a whole lot more if it were located somewhere else.
Closing is Friday, July 24.
So there it is. The thing I have been talking about, thinking about, spreadsheeting to death, second guessing, and generally poking at with a stick for what feels like forever is actually happening. Thirty days from now, the life I have built over the last fifteen years gets packed into boxes, shoved into whatever vehicle makes the most sense at the time, and pointed north. No more maybe. No more once I decide. No more pretending I have all the time in the world to figure it out. It feels a little like sitting down at a table with a new board game already laid out in front of you. You do not know the rules yet. You do not know half the people at the table. Somebody is already explaining something too fast, somebody else is pretending they understand it, and you are trying to figure out whether you should be excited or quietly looking for the nearest exit. But there is adventure in it. There is intrigue in it. There is a real chance that boredom finally gets told to go screw itself. And maybe there is something new to put down in the Book of Q, which will someday grace the shelves of exactly zero famous institutions.
The plan has not changed, although my anxiety level has continued to climb like I gets a bonus for each level it achieves. I am still light on material possessions. I still have one salty little girl cat. I still own a two-door convertible, which is about as practical for relocating a life as a cat is for helping move a couch. I am still working for Vallen, one hundred percent remote, and able to live anywhere. That last part sounds sexy when you say it out loud. “I can live anywhere.” In reality, it means you have to make a decision. And decisions, apparently, are where I turn into a man standing in the cereal aisle for forty-five minutes because there are too many kinds of Cheerios now.
This is sort of a redemption tour. It is me doing some of the things I should have done when the world went underwater during COVID. Instead, I stayed home like I was told. I got fat. I got lazy. I got anxious. I got very good at making comfort look like a reasonable long-term strategy. Turns out comfort is a hell of a drug. Now I have the chance to fix some of that. I can still walk without assistance. I am nowhere near the physical specimen I once was, but I am more than capable of getting myself around the world. I have enough life left in these knees, enough curiosity left in my brain, and enough stubbornness left in my soul to go see some things and do some things before I turn into the guy whose whole personality is knowing which streaming service has the least disappointing shows.
Next up, after this very abbreviated closing process, is getting me, Mazie, and the small amount of shit I own to Grand Rapids. A good friend there has agreed to rent me her basement and part of a storage barn. That means Mazie and I will have our own place to land. I will not be forced into finding the next house, apartment, RV, piece of land, or whatever other nonsense I decide might be my future before I have even unpacked the first box. I get breathing room. And I am going to let you in on a little secret. That is the hardest part of all of this. I did not know where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do fifteen years ago when I landed in Nashville. That has not changed much. I hear people talk about being trapped in routine, stuck with too few choices, bored by the same old thing over and over. I understand that. I really do. But that has never been my problem.
My problem is that I am decisive as hell in business. Give me a broken process, a struggling team, a deadline, a big ugly mess that needs untangling, and I can make a call. I can pick a direction. I can move. Give me my own life, though, and suddenly I am standing there holding every possible option in both hands, terrified I am going to choose the one that ruins everything. Analysis paralysis, probably. Fear of missing out, definitely. A real talent for finding a comfortable rut and convincing myself it is a perfectly respectable address, absolutely. I am not fooling myself. Time keeps marching. I need to figure some of this shit out because I do not know how many more full rebuilds I have in me. By my calculations, this is the sixth time I have torn it all down and built it back up. And if we are keeping score, I am five for five on improving my station in life each time.
That does not mean I am recommending this as a life plan. “Burn it down and see what happens” is not exactly what most financial planners, therapists, or responsible adults would put on a vision board. But I have noticed something about myself over the years. When my heels get close to the cliff edge, I tend to get real clear, real fast, about what needs to happen next. Apparently pressure is where I do some of my best work. Which is a pain in the ass, because I would much rather be the kind of person who figures things out while sitting on a porch with coffee and a notebook. But that does not appear to be the machinery I was built with. So here I go again. Seeking discomfort, like I was taught to do many years ago by someone I still miss very dearly.
There is nothing wrong with comfort. I like comfort. Comfort is a recliner, a cold drink, a lazy Saturday, and not having to put on real pants unless absolutely necessary. But growth does not happen there. It never has for me. We learn from the stuff that does not go right. We learn from the misses. We learn from the moments where we have to look around, realize we screwed something up, and decide whether to sit there feeling sorry for ourselves or get the hell up and try again. So I guess this is me giving myself another chance to fail.
The next decision has about a thousand possible answers. Do I buy a house in Michigan? Do I buy one back in Tennessee? Do I rent an apartment somewhere and buy a big-ass RV? Do I skip the apartment and just live out of a big-ass RV? Do I find some land and build the dream house? Do I buy a mobile home on a few acres and relive my youth as trailer trash with slightly better credit and a much stronger opinion about insulation? The options are endless. And that is the part that scares me.
I challenge all of you, my dearest friends, to stand in my shoes for a minute. Imagine you have no kids at home, no significant other, no job tying you to one place, just you and a cat and a whole damn country full of possibilities. Where would you go? What would you do? It is fun to think about when it is hypothetical. It is fun to talk about when it is somebody else’s life. But when it becomes real, when the dates are on the calendar, when the house is under contract and the boxes are about to show up, it stops being a fun little thought exercise. Then it gets real. Then it has consequences. Then it gets scary.
So off I go. I am trying to put excitement, family, friends, and new places back into my life. I am trying to live every day a little harder because, for the last ten years, I have made a real art form out of relaxing every day as hard as I can. And I am bored with that shit.
See you July 25, Michigan. BRB, Tennessee.
Q is a semi domesticated carpetbagger, homeless meat popsicle, and professional overthinker with hopes of retiring before all his friends. Skilled in the witchcraft of not giving a damn about the Joneses and fueled by a did it or damn it mentality, he wanders around with Mazie Mae, his ever salty cat with strong opinions and a powerful addiction to chicken treats. Together, they have embarked on a quest they never knew started, to find something they did not know they were looking for, in a place they have not reached yet.
His thoughts are his own.
He is no role model.
Read at your own risk.
