High End Hotels and Living the Dream
When I first moved to New York, I was still in my twenties, and was perfectly happy to live on the floor of someone’s living room. My roommate at the time was also a starving artist like me, and neither of us had a bed. She slept on a mattress in her room, and I slept on a blow-up swimming pool mattress in the main room. I would like to say that it was the best time of my life, very romantic and full of adventure, but honestly, it was more anxiety than adventure. There was particular night, however, when we were visiting her friend in Long Island, and he was a designer who had connections and put us up in a luxury hotel. It was far away from the world I knew, and I remember falling asleep there felt like something out of my childhood, sleeping on the floor of my father’s truck, where the rumbling of the road massaged my little back.
By the time I reached my thirties, I was expecting to live the kind of life where luxury hotels were always at my disposal. I would see such swift rank increases in my position and salary so that I would no longer have time to think about anything budget. The way things turned out, which of course is how they were supposed to turn out, I budget all the time. I’m still anxious, and there are few days that go by where life doesn’t feel abrasive. A little abrasive, anyway. But if I can step back a little, I also see that I’m leading the life I always wanted to lead, and it is that New York romantic ideal, where art is always in my head, and I’m always busy with another project.
At the same time, I get to travel more often than I think I deserve, but then again, I did pick the kind of life that depends on movement from one place to another. More often than I expected, I also get to stay in some fantastic places. It’s not because I have a lot of disposable income, but because in some of the places I’ve been, it’s really not that much more expensive to sample the luxuries there. There are also those moments where I decide I want to turn things up a notch, and just enjoy the moment for all it’s worth. At these moments, I even sort of miss that swimming pool mattress, but then again, I don’t think I’m really missing anything at all.
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