I've got nothing but time for the next 20 days so I'm cleaning out the external hard drive that recently, perhaps magically, started working again.
Nothing reminds me the present is fleeting like a little stroll down memory lane.
I'm sure you're familiar with the wisest off all expressions, appropriate regardless:
"THIS TOO SHALL PASS."
Bear with me here.
I used to be a bit wordier and a lot more terrified of voluntary poverty and travel.
It seems I was just about as hung up on beautiful, inspiring, perhaps-a-little-crazy women as ever...
...and just as hungry for something REAL.
***
Tales from My Time In Jackson
--Max Mogren--
It is 11:39 pm on March 30, 2005… a Wednesday night. Everyone else is out getting shitfaced to celebrate Modena’s last night in town but I’m home with good reason.
I have $722.63 in my only bank account and exactly $0.73 in cash.
--Max Mogren--
It is 11:39 pm on March 30, 2005… a Wednesday night. Everyone else is out getting shitfaced to celebrate Modena’s last night in town but I’m home with good reason.
I have $722.63 in my only bank account and exactly $0.73 in cash.
Tomorrow I will collect $449.57 from the Jackson Hole Ski Club… my last paycheck from my 6-hour-a-week winter job (hanging out with the middle school XC ski team three afternoons a week).
I will also collect $162.50 from Nadia (half my month’s rent for letting her store her stuff here during our month long trip to Costa Rica). I will also collect approximately $120.00 from selling everything I could live without (excluding, of course, essential outdoor equipment) on EBAY.
I’ll spare the few of you still reading more accounting: when all the bills are paid there’ll be $882.50 to live on for the next 47days… until April 15th when I hope to receive a meager paycheck for a week’s work I hope to do at a job I hope to find immediately after returning from Costa Rica by way of Colorado on April 8th.
In short, I am guaranteed to go broke and stay there for quite some time (assuming I can even survive with no money for weeks in a country where I don’t understand the language let alone the lifestyle).
Always the optimist, however, I am proud to say that due of my lack of credit cards and some extremely disappointed parents (who funded my liberal arts education) I am actually wealthier than most of you working stiffs:
I’ll spare the few of you still reading more accounting: when all the bills are paid there’ll be $882.50 to live on for the next 47days… until April 15th when I hope to receive a meager paycheck for a week’s work I hope to do at a job I hope to find immediately after returning from Costa Rica by way of Colorado on April 8th.
In short, I am guaranteed to go broke and stay there for quite some time (assuming I can even survive with no money for weeks in a country where I don’t understand the language let alone the lifestyle).
Always the optimist, however, I am proud to say that due of my lack of credit cards and some extremely disappointed parents (who funded my liberal arts education) I am actually wealthier than most of you working stiffs:
Financially, I owe nothing to noone!
Then again, being debt free sure isn’t gonna get me out of a Costa Rican jail like having an extra $100.00 in my wallet would.
I get too caught up on girls to the point where I neglect my other relationships… always have and always will. She (Nadia) is out of town for a week and I’m not even considering going out… I’m pretty far gone and it doesn’t really bother me… yet… it inevitably does drive me out of love… always has.
There should be another foot of fresh on top of last night’s 7 inches of fluff; the skiing will be great and I intend to be skiing. Between my open relationship with girlfriend and thinly-concealed affair with the mountains I am incapable of holding a J.O.B., let alone seeding hangovers over the course of late nights out on the town burning through money I don’t have.
As soon as the next paragraph is writ I’ll put aside fears of debt and immediately commence sleeping like a fucking baby…preparing for yet another day filled with skiing.
I got where I am right now somehow.
I get too caught up on girls to the point where I neglect my other relationships… always have and always will. She (Nadia) is out of town for a week and I’m not even considering going out… I’m pretty far gone and it doesn’t really bother me… yet… it inevitably does drive me out of love… always has.
There should be another foot of fresh on top of last night’s 7 inches of fluff; the skiing will be great and I intend to be skiing. Between my open relationship with girlfriend and thinly-concealed affair with the mountains I am incapable of holding a J.O.B., let alone seeding hangovers over the course of late nights out on the town burning through money I don’t have.
As soon as the next paragraph is writ I’ll put aside fears of debt and immediately commence sleeping like a fucking baby…preparing for yet another day filled with skiing.
I got where I am right now somehow.
I wasn’t always like this.
11 months ago I was financially secure, attending a private college, working full-time, dating a doctor’s daughter, and bragging about scoring in the 92nd-96th percentile on the MCAT (I guess I still do).
11 months ago I was financially secure, attending a private college, working full-time, dating a doctor’s daughter, and bragging about scoring in the 92nd-96th percentile on the MCAT (I guess I still do).
Then I moved to Jackson Hole, WY for the stereotypically “ill-fated” year off before entering medical school… and I changed.
Am I better off now than I was then? Am I more true to myself now than I was then? Am I a more ideal human (whatever that means can mean a lot of different things)? How did I change so much so quickly?
I suppose recalling what these 11 months have brought will help me make some sense of what’s happened.
Reading them should be interesting for you.
Enjoy. I know I did and I know I will.
-Max Mogren
Am I better off now than I was then? Am I more true to myself now than I was then? Am I a more ideal human (whatever that means can mean a lot of different things)? How did I change so much so quickly?
I suppose recalling what these 11 months have brought will help me make some sense of what’s happened.
Reading them should be interesting for you.
Enjoy. I know I did and I know I will.
-Max Mogren
