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DANE
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said“Happiness is not a destination, it’s a journey.”But I doubt his destination was the best glory hole in Paris.
Although my journey here wasn’t bad either.
Three weeks ago, I flew to Rome and backpacked my way north to Florence, then Milan before stopping in Switzerland for a few days.
I performed a quick game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe when deciding if I was going to head here or Munich but cheated when ‘moe’ landed on Munich because I’ve been anxious to come back to Paris to visitAvec Plaisir. A full service sex club equipped with the best glory holes a man can find.
As they say, Parisisthe city of love.
So I packed my bag, got on a train, and here I am enjoying a late night stroll from my hostel to the club.
It’s the perfect warm summer night in good ole’ Paree. I’ve been here more times than I can count. Hell, I travel more days out of the year than I am home, but this is exactly how I’ve lived my life for the last ten years and I’ve loved every second of it.
After graduating college—Summa Cum Laude—with adouble masters and nine figures in my bank account, I set off to see the world and still have yet to settle down. I guess that was the biggest benefit of licensing the AI code that I created to the biggest tech company in the world.
Some people do drugs because they’re bored in their dorm. I got bored enough to create a program that no one in the world had ever seen.
It was the first smart code of its kind and it’s the base of multiple artificial intelligence platforms that I’m paid more royalties on than I could ever need. I’m not complaining, but if I would have known what AI would develop into I probably never would have created it.
Even though someone else would have.
My idea behind it was to help people so it can be utilized as a tool. However, modern day use of it is replacing real life experience, understanding, common sense, and most importantly human interaction.
Nowadays, it’s used more for fraud than a tool to help guide humans.
I may have not created the code to help people defraud others, but my AI platform surely started a revolution, knowing people could do a lot more with basic code than we ever imagined.
Guilt blankets me daily, even with the Foundations I’ve created to help build awareness and help others. As each year passes, the technology gets better, outsmarting the most logical people.
In any case, I ended up with more money than I know what to do with, a piece of paper affording me any job I wanted, and a desperate desire to live simply while traveling the world with no obligations.
Since money was of no concern, I chose the latter. I’ve been to every continent, including Antarctica on a boat that rivaled the size of some hostels I’ve stayed in. I can say withprofound veraciousness, I thought I was going to die on that tiny boat.
How did I end up on the most remote continent with miles of glaciers and nothing but penguins, you ask? Because someone I once met said,a true world traveler will be able to claim they have been to Antarctica. Well, naturally I took that as a challenge and my always-up-for-anything character trait clearly had a death wish to die of seasickness and hypothermia with a hefty side of boredom.
Needless to say, it was anadventureall right. Not one I’ll ever repeat, thank you very much.
So now, I travel to my most beloved places as often as I can. Europe, Japan, and backhome, which I consider to be wherever my friends are.
Recently, they have all moved to the Pacific Northwest, in or around the Seattle area. Well, Jake, Hudson and Seamus have because they have all settled down with their significant others. Kobi and I are still galavanting around the world. Except mine is for pleasure and Kobi’s is for business.
Although, I think Kobi is getting tired of all of the travel.
I can’t say I blame him. Lately, I’ve felt the need for stability and routine—something I’ve never needed or wanted—and I have no idea why. I suppose my ripe old age of twenty-eight is catching up with me, or maybe it’s watching my closest friends settle down ormaybeI’m going through a midlife crisis, which would be fucking terrible.
There hasn’t been a moment in my life that I’ve been stagnant or forced to stay in one place for an extended period of time. As odd as it may be, I think the excessive freedom has put me in a slump.
Which is why when a good friend of mine, the Dean of Polytech University in Seattle—the same city all my friends currently reside in—asked me to teach an MBA course in the fall, I took it. I’m far from qualified, but he was looking forsomeone who had a name and fresh energy with life experience to motivate the students in more ways than just academically in a classroom.
I figured I’ll teach there for the semester, maybe two, get this strange desire to be grounded out of my system, then throw a dart at a map and get back on the road.
I round the corner where the club is located and scan the parking lot. It’s full, which is great for me tonight and I’m blanketed with anticipation.
As I take a step toward the building my cell phone pings.
