I moved to Busan, South Korea almost one month ago now. I moved out here mainly because my life needed a reboot. I had been living in Tulsa, OK and that had served as a nice baby step, but I really needed a larger change than what I was ever going to get there. I love my family. I love my friends. But I needed to make this leap; maybe just to say that "I still can". I didn't have a cliched midlife crisis or anything... I'm not quite that old. I think it was more of an awareness that I would hit that age in no time at all. The "I wish I woulda's" had started almost immediately after moving back to Illinois. I had moved to Las Vegas about a year after graduating from SIU-C in 2001. I was there for five years and change. Las Vegas was one of the best time's of my life, but the time had come for that chapter to end. The bad part was that I had brought it all on myself. A sense of entitlement had started to creep into my life. I started to think that I was more valuable and irreplaceable than I ever had actually been. I traded my passion for glory (queue "Eye of the Tiger" montage, maestro).
The manager that hired me at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe (my first job in Las Vegas) used to call me "Poolside Chris" because I spent all day by the pool in paradise... not a care in the world. After nights that I made it home before sunup, I'd stumble out of bed just long enough to move to the pool and go back to sleep. I'd wake back up and go to work, spend every dime I made that night on women and booze and do the same thing the next night. I was barely in my mid-twenties and was having the time of my life. Pretty soon, I wanted more. I learned a few parlor tricks, got a new job, and called myself a fine dining server. I liked to drink and I liked to learn about those drinks so I passed a small test and then I called myself a wine sommelier. I could smile and never had an issue getting a laugh. It got me into jobs, got me into parties, got me into trouble (mostly just the good kind of all three). Then, I think I just got a little bored. Or I was starting to head down the road.
The point is... something changed. That's when I pulled a Rocky 3 and forgot to "go with what got us here". I thought I was entitled to something more. 'These were my friends, this is my party. I can do whatever I want to do.' I tried to push my weight around and it was the beginning of the end. When you spend your life as a jester, it's hard to drop on a dime and switch to a more forceful personality. Looking back on it now, I think that all of my problems boiled down to that change. Vegas still calls my name, at times. I might go back there if the economy ever fixes itself, but I don't think it'll ever be quite the way it was when I was 25. Then again, nothing ever is.
That's the short and skinny of "How I Ended Up Here". When I got back to Illinois, I was just looking for another way to escape again. Tulsa worked for a while, but I think I needed something bigger. That's been five years and 2 homes ago, but everything goes back to that point. The other years were just a filler of sorts. I made a lot of really close friends when I moved back to Illinois, but my heart was still "Away". It wasn't in a particular place, per se, just on that proverbial road. Now I'm on the other side of the world, just one cup short of..... everything.
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