Choosing Happiness and Taking Chances Without Knowing How It Ends

At 22, I dropped out of college and bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. The plan was simple. If I could make it there, and stay, I would.

I grew up in a small farm town in Michigan, so LA was a huge jump. I went from a place that small to one of the biggest cities in the country, and the size was only part of it. The bigger thing was that it was the first time I got out of my bubble. That was huge.

A bubble is hard to see from the inside. Wherever you grow up, the way things work there can start to feel like the way things work everywhere. You can read about other places and watch them on a screen, and they still stay a little unreal. Living somewhere else is different. The other version of normal stops being something you watch and becomes the place you wake up. LA did that for me, a guy from a farm town in Michigan with no ticket home.

I made it, and I stayed. I lived in LA through my 20s.

At 32, I moved to Germany, giving zero fucks. The reason was simple. Germany was my wife. That, plus a healthy dose of fuck it. I wanted to move to Europe and do that, because why not?

I like how little there is to that explanation. A move across an ocean seems like it should come with a longer one, some list of pros and cons that adds up to a verdict. I wanted to live in Europe, and I wanted to do it with my wife. Those two things were the whole case for Germany, and they were enough.

“Why not” gets treated as a careless answer to a big question. For me it was the honest one. The wanting was already the reason, and “why not” was me declining to dress it up as something more official.

I lived in Germany for basically five years.

The two moves don’t look much alike. LA got me out of my bubble for the first time. Germany came from wanting a life in Europe with my wife. What they have in common is that both times I picked the thing I wanted and went.

Choosing happiness is also how I ended up being a streamer. No plane ticket that time. Streaming is something I want to do, so I’m doing it.

Now I’m moving back to the US. I’m booking a flight to Kansas City, and I’m staying.

I don’t know how Kansas City goes yet, because it hasn’t happened. I didn’t know how LA would go when I bought a one-way ticket at 22, either.