Previously on The Hi-Tech Vagabond...
I got laid off in January 2009 (which was fine with me). The job, which I really liked at first, had become unbearable. During that time I took inspiration from one of the great poems of the last century:
Don't you know things can change
Things'll go your way
If you hold one for one more day
Those, of course, are the words from "Hold On" written by the poetry collective Wilson Phillips. (Wilson Phillips was a trio of poets who lived among the mountains isolated from the rest of society until one day they emerged on Venice Beach wearing nothing but black to symbolize the death of modernist poetry.)
Long story made short: I lasted long enough to get thrown on the Laid Off Pile and got the company severance, which felt like winning the lottery to me.
But wait, there's a M. Night Shyamalan-like twist to this deceptively simple story.
The government took almost half my severance via taxes! (Was that twist a let down? Then it truly was a M. Night Shyamalan-like twist.)
At that point I decided I was going to go the rest of 2009 without working and get that money back come tax season next year...I mean that's way better than working and not getting that money back, right?
Following that I decided to not renew my lease with my slumlord. I paid February rent, told them to use to use my deposit for March and I was gone...many boxes later. Instead of storage I scattered my belongings among my friends' places throughout Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan and began my quest of traveling the world, willing to go wherever in the world I could get a cheap ticket.
Crashing the world one couch at a time,
The Hi-Tech Vagabond
