What Is An Expat?

Some Background

Or,

Why the Hell Would You Want To Go And Do A Thing Like That?

Leave this town, got to get away
Leave this town, you know I just can’t stay…

Mid October 2001 – End of November 2002:

Let’s start out with some quick background. In a nutshell, my wife decided she needed to do something different with her life (like become an ex-wife) and I ended up staying with the folks on a temporary basis that went on longer than I was originally intending. We had bought a new home and just finished doing everything to make it “home”, and of course went decently into debt doing so. At the time, it was an investment, but it just ended up being so much debt. The thought of being in debt and scraping by the rest of my life was rather bothersome to me, so staying with the folks, while not the ideal situation, helped out.

Maybe I’m not patient like I should be, but getting things paid down wasn’t going fast enough. So I began to rob 7-11s. It helped out a little but wasn’t any sort of immediate solution. I heard about this job opportunity overseas and it didn’t take much to realize that would help matters out. I’d already been idly looking for jobs somewhere else in the states, but I wanted to make sure that whatever salary I got was enough to keep paying off debt at roughly the same rate while still covering rent and the other stuff that I’d end up spending. At some point I think I just had to get away, since I was still having some problems with how things had turned out. Visions of getting out of debt dancing in my head and the idea of really getting out of town – it turns out to be as far across the world as you can get without actually heading back! – made the choice a no-brainer. Sure, I’d be leaving everyone, but I felt so lost that I had to do something drastic, and my future became my only concern. Sacrificing today for tomorrow can be tough, but necessary and even lucrative. In the end, everybody leaves anyways but I was running to a bright future instead of just running away from the past. I’d like to come back to Denver someday so it made a difference to me that I was going off on a job, as opposed to actually moving to some new town that I might not come back from.

(some of the preceding paragraph was not actually true )

Anyways, one fine day I got the call that would set this whole thing in motion. So I gave my week’s notice( hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait), bought all my necessary stuff, and I was outa there…