Looking Back Series: Introduction

I bet you didn’t know I have another personal blog. I do and for those that know it, you’re the lucky few. I don’t publicize it because it’s simply horrible. In fact, I’ve completely shut it off from Google’s radar. The grammar is bad (I know hard to believe but it was worse than this), broken links everywhere, and not exactly user friendly. It’s just a very simple journal type blog that was there to keep friends and family updated on the road. The website was created in 2005 so you can imagine that it’s been through a lot.

I’ve been ‘on the road’ for two years from today and I’m feeling a little… nostalgic today. I was going through my personal blog and found some pretty damn good articles that never made it into a story on Art of Backpacking. To celebrate, I’m going to repost some of my articles right here on Art of Backpacking. Because I wasn’t aiming for any readership at all, I use to just write and not edit nor care who was reading it. I use to write a lot and many times included peoples names so I could always remember them. In other words, these entries really were personal. I might do just a tiny bit of editing but only to correct grammar.

Without further ado, here’s my first article in the Looking Back Series.

• Introduction
• Introduction – Part 2
• Preparation 1
• Preparation 2

Note: I might be adding notes throughout the series as I may feel like you need more background information.

*********Posted: OCTOBER 14, 2008*********

I’ve written a few entries in my travel blog and none of the entries really made much sense. I need to start over, explain where I am now, where I been, where I want to be, and how I’m going to get there. Since my other entries seemed so short and brief, I figured I would start over and summarize it all here.

Note: This was before AOB started. AOB launched in December 2008.

Earlier this year, my parents were officially divorced according to the government (separated for a few years now). Both found new love. At first it was difficult to understand but I can see now they are both much happier and that’s all I want from them. I was living in my mothers house still with my brother, sister, and grandma. My sister started going to college which meant she wasn’t around all that much anymore. Then the house became unaffordable. This lead to the conclusion that my mother would be moving in with her new significant other. Problem with that was we lived in New Jersey and he lived in Pennsylvania (about an hour away). I had recently got a promotion at my job which jumped started my career and as the highest paying position I had ever received. I didn’t want to drive nearly 2 hours to get to work and I didn’t feel all that comfortable moving in with them. At this point I knew I had to get my own apartment. I started paying off most of my debt so I can start my new apartment with a clean record. I almost decided to buy a house but with all the paperwork and money down, it was a bit too much to handle at the time in such short notice. My girlfriend and I decided to move in together. At the time we were together for 2 1/2 years and we felt we were ready to take the big step. We had found a great apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey and moved in on July 1st. Everything was moving along smoothly.

Move in day

The apartment is huge. I’d say it’s about 800/900sq ft. Living room and dining room is so big that we didn’t know what to do with so much room. Since most of our furniture came from my mom, I didn’t really have to buy much. With all the stuff we had, it seemed an entire family with kids were living here. TV is a 50+inch projection. Video gaming on my Xbox 360 with that TV felt like heaven. Let me summarize everything we had. 50″+ Project TV in living room, 37″ LCD in the bed room, 6 person dining room table, a DJ booth setup, 3 couches (includes futon), 2 PSP’s, Xbox360, Wii, and other crazy electronic entertainment stuff (I’m a bit of a geek). We were spoiled yet we wanted more. We felt like as if we needed everything.

We got carried away. During our first month in the apartment, we had bought way more than what we could afford. You never realize how many things you need in your own apartment until you actually move in. We over looked so many small things that usually we never had to worry about in our parents place. In mid-August we started to realize something – we under budgeted. Bills started to come in and we were amazed how much everything was costing us. Real life hit us at this point and I quickly realized how important it is that I stay at my job since I was making the majority of the income.

The apartment

My career is IT. My hobby is music. At times I get lost wishing music was my career. I’m still not sure where this will lead me in the future. My current job is in a very large corporation. I always describe it as being in Office Space (the movie). You got the typical computer, cubicles that go across for miles it seems, overweight employee’s, robotic workforce, and day-to-day tasks that don’t require much thought since you do it everyday. Looking around my office you quickly realize the character most of these employee’s hold. Most have been here for 20+ years, I believe this has something to do with the economy booming several years ago and these employee’s were making decent money back in the day so they stuck around and it’s the only thing they knew how to do. It was a safe job. Most of the employee’s here are 40+ years old and even if you do find the younger crowd, it’s interns, coops, or consultants which typically don’t last very long. The corporation has a very old fashion mentality to it which is the majority of the reason why most young workers do not work here. They expect you to stay here as a career for as long as everyone else (20+ years), 2 week vacations with only 1 extra week after 5 years, business casual, 9 to 5, and closed-mindedness because speaking your mind in this large of a corporation gets you in trouble.

Follow along in the Looking Back Series category.