Thursday | I had planned to post more about May prior to this, but it’ll have to wait until I get back to Denver. I did want to carve out some time to write while I’m back up here in the North, though I selfishly thought I’d have a bit more time to relax, and that has not been the case. I’m not very good at relaxing anyway, so I suppose I’ll live. I had originally planned to be up here for two weeks, and cut it down to one, so it’s my own fault in the end. Alas, here I am, sitting on a floor cushion pecking away on my opium table, my favorite spot in my favorite spot.

I got choked up flying into Anchorage at 1:45am, right in time for the very brief dip below the horizon the sun makes in the summer before it comes up again. I think continuously of Robert Service’s “Spell of the Yukon”, one of my favorite poems, and one I will never forget:

I don’t want to romanticize too much: the first morning here, some cracked out girl wearing only a bra and leaning on her friend to walk keeled over in the spaghetti aisle, and I forgot the skin-crawlingly creepy looks you get from many men as a woman in this town; Anchorage is still a shit hole, and a dangerous one at that, but I miss Alaska all the same.

After 6 months in Denver, I’m still doubtful I’ll love anywhere as much as I’ve loved living at these latitudes, nor do I have any intention of staying in Colorado; I don’t like the culture and Coloradans don’t seem very authentic to me. The city is also wildly overpriced and the whole state is too freakin’ brown. I’ve been mulling over what’s next and I’m increasingly leaning toward the eastern seaboard, where there is actual lush greenery and the ocean is not so far. I wonder if I’m done with the West, and I’m not totally sure, but Denver is about as much “my thing” as I expected it to be: not very. Ultimately it’s not about Denver: I am just not interested in living in a city. I’ve done it before and I may have to do it again, but it’s not the way I want to live my life at all. That said, as long as I hold onto my little house up here, I think I’ll feel OK doing whatever, but the 9-to-5 corporate life is not one I wish to hold onto.

Unfortunately this is the second year I’ve returned to this condo to find it in relative squalor. I say relative because it could be, and has been, left in worse condition, but I made a mistake last year by issuing a warning instead of charging a fee for my trouble. While I’m tempted to align my experiences with the well-researched fact that conservatives are higher in conscientiousness, I’ll just say I don’t know what the hell is wrong with people these days or why anyone would have so little respect for someone else’s home, but it’s pretty depressing to come back to my house and see the state it’s left in. When I shared my disappointment with the owner of the company I lease this place to for the winter (and told him I’d be sending him a bill), he was super apologetic and shared that he feels self-centeredness is a hallmark of this generation. I’m inclined to agree. It doesn’t help that my house resides in a town of hippies and trustafarians who believe homeowners should “return their property to the commons” (direct and LOL-worthy quote).

Sadly most of the places I’ve loved throughout my life are being overrun with this hipster mentality: the Catskills and Adirondacks, especially… Asheville, Bozeman, Sedona, Santa Fe… and cities I don’t even much like: Portland, Seattle, Austin, Denver. Pittsburgh and Savannah will probably follow in time.

I bought this place in 2013 and I doubt I’ll let it go anytime soon, despite the fact it’s appreciated in value by over $100,000. This little home is pretty special to me and I’ve renovated it piece by piece over the years from the wood paneling, laminate counters and cream-colored carpets it had when I bought it. It is now one of the nicest, most updated (and energy efficient) units in my complex. There are still things I want/need to do in the coming years: replace the washer/dryer, get rid of the dated textured walls and repaint, fix some of the trim… but every year I upgrade a few things to maintain its value.

I, like anyone in a similar position, have heard many times about how “lucky” I am, which is insulting and dismissive of all the damn work I put into my side hustles and sacrificing in the short term for longer term gains. I finally felt taken advantage of enough this trip to charge a hefty fee for my trouble, and it sounds like a pilot or other typically-anal-retentive person will be placed in here for the next lease term, and I like the sound of that. I have had more than enough of irresponsible, self-centered millennials living in my house splashing wine all over my shit.

In any case, it’s Thursday and I leave late tomorrow night. Last night I ventured up to the high-end restaurant atop the mountain with a close friend; when I worked in this town, our resort at least had a cool culture, but almost all of the high quality people have moved on, and there is a void where there used to be a passionate, fun-loving, hard-working culture. I was the first of us to leave in 2014; there now remains one of the 8-10 person exec-level dream team.

I have one more day of errands and tomorrow to tie up any loose ends and head out. Delta’s schedule changes foiled my plans to meet up with my dog/house sitter and swap keys in the beginning of this trip, so we had to adjust accordingly, but I’ll end up leaving having accomplished everything I needed to, including a dentist appointment (and another one tomorrow), training my housekeeper, one of two massages I pre-copaid for last year and fixing a few things at the Anchorage house. I dragged a Caucasian rug up here and am lugging a larger, more expensive one back to Denver, and I’m feeling very organized.

I’m tempted to come back up here over the summer or early fall, but I found $850 RT tickets to Amman yesterday and plan to nail that trip down when I get back. If that is the case, despite all the change and hardship, I’ll have hit Georgia (and Abkhazia), Czech Republic, Jordan & Lebanon in a year of low travel… not half bad all things considered (this excludes Vegas, Alaska, Dallas, Myrtle Beach and back to the Northeast for my cousin’s wedding in the fall).

Sunday | After a full blown panic attack to wrap up my trip on Friday night and two trips to Anchorage in one day to fix a chipped tooth, feeling like I had nowhere the amount of time I wanted to say goodbye for what is in all likelihood an entire year, I returned to Denver. For a few seconds at the Japanese restaurant, where I ordered and then felt too nauseous with anxiety to eat, I thought about what the repercussions would be if I just bailed out on my flight. The feeling of being trapped was pretty overwhelming. I also left a bag of salad mix and forgot to put out a hand towel in the bathroom before I left, which in my psychotic brain negated all the work I had done to prepare for the first guest’s arrival. I don’t visibly crack very often, and usually juggle a ton of shit with no complaints, but I was beginning to come unglued on Friday night. I carry a few tabs of Clonazepam with me wherever I go, and that was a rare night I dipped into my stash.

My dog sitter friend’s flight back to Anchorage was canceled Saturday evening and she ended up staying an extra night; I slept most of yesterday, and only woke up to build my P&L for rental season, update my Airbnb listing and create invoices for my winter tenant, including a $500 cleaning bill, which probably should have been more. My big-ticket maintenance jobs are fresh in my mind and I’ve already started scheduling for next spring/summer. She had a great time here and may come back and stay if I end up going to Jordan in September, so that rules.

I am a control freak (shocker) and am not in love with the idea of managing this vacation rental from afar, but I am also curious enough to try. This will probably be my last short-term rental season for awhile, as the winter leasee wants it full time year round moving forward. It was pretty hard to rush out of there and say goodbye to the place once it was finally clean, but I accomplished a lot in a very short period of time. All the items I had swapped between houses and made it back here safely, I am fully unpacked and I suppose I have no choice but to go back to work tomorrow.

The rest of this month is going to be pretty hectic, but I have quite a few bonus days off work. I’m a little sad to be back here, but I wouldn’t have been much happier up there slaloming through tour buses on the highway for the next few months. On the other hand, I am eternally grateful to have two beautiful homes (Denver is a rental, but inside it’s very “me”). On that note, the end.