I went
anyway.

When I look at that Chicago post, I don’t see a person who had every next step arranged. The caption is full of attachment and uncertainty. Leaving meant the people and animals I cared about would be somewhere else.

That is the part a highlight reel can lose. You can want a different experience and still feel the weight of leaving the familiar one. The dream and the doubt can exist together.

In a later post, I explained that one night at my desk, around 2 AM, I had started applying to resorts while thinking about the coming snowboarding season. It is a small, specific beginning. An idea became an application.

By January 2025, I was writing that it already felt like almost three months of chasing the dream, and that time was passing quickly. The record has snowboarding, the people around it and the ordinary places between the bigger moments.

The packed trolley and the laptop resting on a snowboard say something the cleanest mountain photograph cannot. A different life still comes with bags, rooms, work and figuring out where things go.

I’m interested in that whole picture. Wanting freedom is one thing. Learning what a day feels like when you follow that want is another.

In April, I wrote about missing the people I was leaving. That gives the chapter a different ending than a checklist with “live somewhere else” crossed off.

The point wasn’t only to reach a place. A place became people. And eventually there was another goodbye.

That is one reason the question “what is the work for?” keeps returning. Snowboarding, friendships, a room in a different place, time to try something: these are not decorations around the useful part of life. They are part of what I want the work to make room for.