Hitting Reset On the Game of Life

The Maytag Repairman was one of the first casualties of my paring down of possessions

Here I find myself once again turning the page and beginning a new chapter in my life.  My existence on this planet has, over the course of my 42 years, been much like a video game.  It’s been an enjoyable challenge.  In choosing the ’settings’ for my game of life,  I shy away from difficulty settings that are TOO hard, but get bored with the same old monotonous easy, predictable stuff.  When I find myself stuck in a ‘level’ of the game that I find fatally displeasing, I can always reach down, hit the ‘reset’ button and start over.

After I got to the next ‘level’ of my life a year and half or so ago, with my return to the appliance sales biz at Lowe’s, I was more than grateful for the achievement, and the generous pay.  Earlier this year, my income was cut by 35% due to a change in the company’s compensation program, and it’s taken me 9 months to decide to do something any person would have done on the day the change was implemented in a more robust economy and left the place.  You cannot cut someone’s pay by 35% and expect them to just take it.  No lube or nothing…

I could have worked the rest of my life for the Lowe’s of 2011.  The Lowe’s of 2012, in their pursuit of the “experience of the future” (actual corporate speak we use), has rejected the need for sales professionals, so I will reject them.

Nothing is really me holding to Seattle.  I have no family here.  No girlfriend or wife.  Few friends.  I pay low rent on a really crappy apartment and live a tolerable yet uneventful existence.  At work, I labor in anticipation of my days off.  In my early 40’s, I am not waiting around to die.  I’m pretty proficient at having a positive mental attitude about any situation I am, even if it doesn’t necessarily deserve it, so whereas I could stick around here and just get by, I know in my heart it is time, once again, to lean over and click the reset button on my video game of life. 

The cool thing is that not only can I hit ‘reset’, but I can also put an entirely new game into the machine.  My new game is going to be teaching English overseas.

I recently fell into the means by which to finance an education in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.  A few months from now, I will have the  professional certificate to teach English that is a requirement to get a job in most (but not all) foreign countries.  After that, I am not 100% sure where the next level of my life will take me, but as I write this new blog, I’ll probably be sharing every aspect of how that decision will be made with you all here. 

This blog will be about the challenges, stories and milestones as an American man pares down his life in preparation for moving overseas...


I invite you to follow along and be part of the process…