The JackB

I was a 35-year-old homeowner with two small kids who played around with moving out of LA but wasn’t particularly serious about it.

Sure, I talked about moving to Jerusalem but I promised my wife that we could put that off until after the kids were out of the house so that was more of a dream than reality.

Then came the idea about selling the house and moving to Texas but I wasn’t so sure about it.

I liked the idea of being able to sell my house in LA and using the cash to buy something much larger and nicer in Texas.

Hell, I loved the thought of being able to do that and still have a nice chunk of cash in the bank.

That seemed practical and smart, but it also was a little frightening and not something I was real sure of.

Didn’t matter that I was somewhat familiar with Texas, I was a creature of habit and liked my comfort zone.

Fast forward almost 14 years and the house I was hesitant about selling is long gone.

I fought with Wells Fargo about trying to refinance and they laughed at my desperation, all courtesy of the Great Recession.

Jack the high flyer went from the top of the pile to the bottom.

Lifestyle Changes

We went from ample cash and kids in private school to just scraping by.

Vacations disappeared and the savings that I worked hard to accumulate went along with everything else.

Most of it was taken in an effort to save that aforementioned house and for a long while Old Jack was a very angry man.

It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair and it was hard not to be bitter. Hard not to kick myself for not having pushed to sell the damn place earlier when we could have walked away with plenty instead of nothing.

But that is how life goes and instead of living in LA mulling over whether it might be easier to live elsewhere we are in Texas.

Hell, this is my second time around living in Texas, so technically I have lived here for about 2.5 years.

So maybe this is how it was always going to be and the only question was when would I end up here.

Maybe.

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Enough time has passed for me not to be pissed off at what could have or should have been and most of the time I am pretty happy with how life is now.

But it took some doing to get here.

Blogging Is A Game

I go back and forth between being the grumpy old man who is outraged about how many hacks blog for the swag and free trips and the guy who accepts blogging is a game.

Some days I want to do nothing but scream about it but considering I have done the product reviews, taken some of the trips and played the game it would be hypocritical.

Maybe it is jealousy. Maybe I am sorry I haven’t had the same success as others or maybe it is just my grumpy nature.

Maybe I am happier having something to complain about.

I don’t think I was always like this, hell I know I wasn’t.

Things happened, life happened and I changed.

If it wasn’t for blogging I might not be able to see it so clearly.

If it wasn’t for writing these thoughts down where I can revisit them I might not be able to track it.

Maybe some of these changes wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone through what I went through, or maybe they would have.

Hell, I ended up in Texas anyway, so maybe the 35-year-old was always going to turn into a grumpy almost 50 year-old.

Maybe.

Blogging is a game, play it well.