For reasons too complicated to go into this soon after we have met, let it just be said that I have suffered a job change.    I work for a state environmental agency in a cold climate state and have for the past twenty years.   But I have been able to do that from my home in a neighboring state, ninety miles away.  A change in management two years ago and I am in the office every day.

I am deep down an environmentalist.   I try to keep my carbon footprint as low as I can.   But, there is life to live as well and so there is the constant battle within me of living life and conserving.    There is the matter of finding balance.

Far from the rush of the city, the paycheck goes further.   A person who works from home can find balance in buying a big old house on a hillside overlooking a river valley because he never leaves his house.   Sure, the windows all leak and there isn't any insulation in the south wall but I never burn any gas leaving it!

So I live in a small town in a big old house in one frozen state and work in another.   I love my big old house.   I live there with a wife (whom I also love) three children and a Japanese mother-in-law.   Down the street from me a few blocks lives an older son, his girlfriend and a daughter.   That son moved to this town to live close to the half of the family he deemed to be stable and less crazy.

What I am saying is, I have roots.   I can't really pull up and leave.   ...even if I want to.   Which I am not really sure I do.  When this job change happened we really started to have to look at alternatives.   But what we knew from the start was, we were not sure enough of the stability of my job to warrant uprooting the family and moving closer.    We didn't want to move somewhere more expensive to a place the job could evaporate anyway.   So, the most obvious way people solve this type of issue in family life was off the table.

That left us with a few options:

I could rent an apartment.   -- I am an introvert.   There is no way I could live with another human being outside of my family.   I am too old to put up with someone else's crazy.   To that end I would be looking for a one bedroom or efficiency.  I spend some time looking at places but again, city life is not cheap.  Any neighborhood I had a low likelihood of being shot or stabbed was going to cost me $900/mo.     I would need some secure parking because I am fond of riding my Harley in the summertime.   I am especially fond of finding it still parked where I left it last night.  All of it's bolt ons still attached.  At an apartment I would need gas, electric and cable internet service.   I would need some renters insurance.  There is no way my fixed costs were going to be under $1100/month.   No way.

Then there is the way I have been living the past two years since this change happened.   I have been living this weird transient ~ homeless life.  During the cold months, which I am sad to say our years are comprised mostly of, I couch surf.   Monday morning my wife brings me into the big city and drops me off.   I have a couple of co-workers and a couple of friends who live in the city.   One guy I met years ago in college, I call him "The Professor".   He lives by himself in an apartment.   I land at his place every Tuesday night.   I cook for him, leave him the leftovers and sleep on his sofa.   In fact, that's where I am typing this from right now.   Last year I made him a chicken-rice-curry dish that got him laid the next night.   I have a free couch here for life!

Often on Wednesdays I land at a different friend.   But, she lives eight blocks off the bus route so walking conditions have to be good and this year I have been having some foot problems.   Often on Thursdays I can stay at a different friend's place but it is close to a two hour bus ride away.  Too far.

The rest of the days I freelance.   I have a smattering of other friends who find me mildly amusing once a month or so.   I fit those people in.   I have found a couple of others on a web site called couchsurfing.com   -- Where you can meet people who open their house to strangers to let them land on a couch or spare room bed.   Amazing friendly (and amazingly trusting) people who just want to have an evening of conversation and trade it for a night on the sofa.

During the summer it switches a little.   I drive myself in on the motorcycle.   Then I camp at an urban campground twelve miles from my office.   --Let me take a little aside here because my wife reads me, and she scoffs at what I call camping.   So as full disclosure, let me explain what I mean.   I work all day.  When work is done I go out for a little dinner, a little Indian food, or the burger place on 7th or maybe even that new Thai place up on the Eastside.   From dinner I ride to the bar right outside the gate of the campground.   I have one margarita, get on the bike, roll into the park and sleep in a tent.   Next morning, I wake up and roll into town for coffee, maybe a little croissant.   This is what I call CAMPING!   :-)

It does suck when it rains though.   And as much as camping in the rain sucks, it sucks even more to be on a bike.   There is no way to dry out.  After a couple of days of rain, even in the summertime I end up landing at friends places.    But the campground has to be paid in advance on Monday evening when I check in.   Camping costs me $400 a month.

I'm not saying it has all been terrible.   It hasn't.   I miss my family a lot.   But, I have renewed a whole bunch of dormant friendships that had languished due to my homebound ways.  Still though I have just hit the two year mark of doing this and shit's getting old.   I am tired of having no permanent place to land.   No place to call home.   No place where I can just chill out in quiet and privacy.

So this sums up the history of what brought us here together today.   Hang on tight and I am going to walk you through how I am choosing to live my life going forward.