Normal, and Vegas.

-

Society wants you to be normal.

Have a mortgage. Have a wife. Have 2.5 kids and a dog and a cat. Have friends and have BBQ's and have a high-paying stressful job. Have a garage full of useless shit that you'll never use and have crushing debt that you'll never pay off.

HAVE.

Conform to societal and family pressure to be some ridiculous Cosby Show ideal and be a political "moderate" and live out every sick lyric of "Fitter, Happier".

FUCK normal.

I say embrace simplicity. Embrace living with freedom. Be solely responsible for your actions and choices and choose to live your life the way you want to. I choose to travel lightly through life. If necessary I could fit what I really feel like I NEED in life into a backpack. I don't own a home, and I don't own a car, ergo I have no mortgage, no car payment, no insurance payment. Everything I own I own outright and fits easily into the tiny room I rent. I have no wife, no exes, no kids, no past haunting me. In a couple months when I pay off the rest of my minimal debt I will truly have no obligations outside of feeding myself, keeping myself healthy and putting some sort of rudimentary roof over my head.

I work for someone else, but there's a sort of freedom in that too. I don't have to worry about payroll and business tax and overhead and the cost of toilet paper for 60 people. I work my 8 hours, come home, have a beer and blissfully leave all that to the guy driving the Lotus who I work for. The guy who puts in 70 hours a week and sweats every detail of the company to the point of being neurotic.

Can someone be happy with all the obligations of a "normal" American life? Sure, I guess, but to me it sounds like a form of prison worse than San Quentin. Since moving out of my parent's house 20 years ago I've lived my own life. I've made some major mistakes, some bad choices, missed some opportunities. I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time as often as the opposite. But all those choices and situations led me to where I am now, and frankly short of being a lottery winner (sorry, but money DOES equal freedom in this society) I'm about as happy as I can imagine being. Would I be happier as a millionaire living at the Veer in City Center Vegas? Maybe. But the fact that I'm not doesn't bug me. I don't pine for the Porsche and the condo and the redhead 20 year-old ex-model trying to be an actress.

OK, maybe the redhead.

But this is where Vegas comes in. Vegas is the great equalizer. If you have money to spend in Vegas you are a King. I most likely will never have the life of a jet-setting playboy, but when on occasion I feel like playing the part of one, I can jump on a plane and be in Vegas in an hour and a half. I can have my 4 days of spending $1K a day on myself instead of $20. I can experience the life of being a big wig every few months with none of the attendant hassles and stress. I can chase tail w/o worrying that somehow my chubby pregnant wife at home will find out about it. I can drink myself into a stupor knowing that if I yak all over the bathroom in my (comped) room someone else will clean it up (sorry, cleaning staff, I'll tip you well).

Then I can come home and book the next trip and day dream about it until the day comes and I'm a low-roller King again for 4 days.

This is my new normal. And I love it. Thank you, Las Vegas.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Posh, Ya Bish.

-
Image
This is going to be a baller-ass vacation. Private planes, 1100 sq ft suites in a 5-star resort, steaks and high-end sashimi. We be living  good  on the 55th birthday trip. It all starts with flying semi-private on JSX in and out. Flown with them a couple times before, SO much less hassle than dealing with the fucking major airports. Private terminal, no TSA, no bag worries, big cushy seats, free drinks. Hopping on in OAK and will just UBER it to and from. So much more evolved than being basically violated by TSA in the normal airports.  Then on arrival in LAS it's in the taxi and over to Resorts World. I have added early check-in to standby, so hopefully I can just roll straight up to the room at 1:30p. It's the One Bedroom Suite at the Conrad, 1100 sq ft of lovely at the north end of the strip. No resort hopping this time, one room, one unpack, one relax.  Trying to think back, pretty sure this will be the biggest room I've ever had in Vegas, I think Encore or Dela...
Read more

JuneLyBies. June/July Freebies and Discounts.

-
Image
A decent haul, y'all. -6 nights at Mandalay Bay Las Vegas. $412 all in. Would be $1409 all in with the best website rate. Saved $997 over rack rate. -$30 Freeplay and $50 Resort Credit included in the deal. $80 value. -Roughly $160 in Freeplay from MGM by the time I get to town, $160 value. Total overhead saved = $1237. Not nearly an all timer but not bad for a holiday week trip. Would have been $700 more had I stayed at Fontainebleau as originally planned so a bit of frugality after the baller April trip.  1 month.
Read more

Pointses.

-
Image
Got a nice little Resort Credit bump today, from an old job.  While I was with Kit/Ro in late '22 to early '23 I racked up some Marriot points while I was flirting with the move to Phoenix. Now that Marriot and MGM are bumping uglies, I was able to convert those (otherwise useless) points into MGM Rewards points. It turned into about $190 in credit, which, thanks old job! That means with what I already had earned, I will have over $230 available for the Xmas trip. Hello, Xmas dinner on Marriot, and one other dinner too. That's on top of the $50 I will have from the Aria booking package, and the potential $100 RC bump from getting to Gold on the trip, if I do. 3 nice meals (at least) inbound. We eatin'  good  for Xmas, y'all. The Xmas-freebies post coming up this year will be tidy.
Read more