Sold all my stuff and headed south. Again.

Car? Gone. Furniture? Gone. Storage unit? Nope.

I’m down to what fits in one suitcase (plus a closet in my mom’s house—shoutout moms).

A Quick Rant on Depreciation

When is purchasing a liability ever a good decision?

I paid someone $6,000 to take my car off my hands—that’s right, I paid them.

They drove off with a new car and six bands, presumably bumping ‘Pac, as I miserably looked on and began rethinking all life choices.

Lesson learned: don’t buy shit that depreciates. Cars, boats, bikes, furniture—they tether you to a lifestyle you might not even want. [Unless you’re actually rich as shit—we’ll return to this later…]

And that’s the point, isn’t it? The more things you own, the more they own you.

*Dave Ramsey awakens from wet dream*

Fleeing the US

Another flight to South America, another one-way ticket.

The outdoor cat knows his way back to the food bowl at home—but there’s always a chance you don’t see him again.

I’ve got no tickets, plans, or ideas of returning.

The Morningly Shit: Why I Left

Picture this: sitting at your desk, watching the clock, waiting for that morningly (yep, it’s a word, back in the 1800s) shit break just to scroll Instagram in peace.

Back at the desk, tolerating your strung out mid-life-crisis boss pinging you on Teams about spreadsheets you don’t care about, as you expend the lions share of your life’s energy to push agendas you don’t align with—I’m good.

Meanwhile, somewhere in history, one of your ancestors was unleashing spears on the Great Plains’ bison population.

[I’m not Native American so that is factually incorrect.]

We’ve traded survival instincts for corporate ones. I felt like a lion in a cage—stuck, defanged, and pacing (fuck it, let’s add in neutered too for good measure), wondering if there’s more to life than this cycle of comfort and consumption.

Enter: Operation Freedom©

Nope, the US military isn’t about to rain down on a Middle Eastern country (it is)—this is a recalibration.

Financial freedom isn’t just about having money.

It’s about living on my terms.

I’d rather go broke trying to build something meaningful, and start from zero next to college grads years younger than me, than sit in the cushy cell (I mean cubicle) as I rot away mentally and spiritually (a bit dramatic, I admit).

The goal is independence—not just from a job, but from the mental chains that keep me locked into cycles of mindless consumption, escapism, and settling for mediocrity.

The Human Zoo

Humans are animals. We like to differentiate ourselves from ‘animals’, but we aren’t so different.

Take a dog bred to herd sheep all day and lock it in a tiny apartment, and watch your deposit disappear.

Put a bird in a cage and watch it pluck its own feathers out.

Put a cat indoors, and it sharpens its claws on the sofa, not to fuck with you (maybe sort of), but because there is no tree bark.

I ain’t a PETA guy, but damn, I know I wouldn’t want to be a zoo animal.

Yet that’s exactly what we are.

No sense of adventure, exploration, awe, curiosity, excellence, purpose, passion, exhilaration, autonomy, connection, community—and as a result, numbed by social media, alcohol, porn, food, and Netflix.

Redefining Wealth: Financial Freedom

We become shackled to the bloated lifestyle we’ve created in our years of salary-earning.

Who else is going to pay me six figures and afford me Italy trips and a Raptor in exchange for adding fuck-all in value?

Lifestyle downgrades are hard to make. Get used to living in a $3000/month apartment, and the $1200 spot looks like poverty. It ain’t happening.

The Benz leather makes the Civic cloth hurt to sit on. Good luck trading it in.

The Mindset Shift

The other day, my mom was perplexed as to how I understood the large Cuban man’s lightning fast Spanish. Half of the words were slang as he entirely omitted a quarter of the alphabet. (My Latinos will understand the difficulty here.)

It’s the same way I learned countless skills like martial arts, motorcycling, and dance:

1. Decide I want it.

2. Learn how to learn.

3. Copy people who’ve already done it.

4. Block out the noise from people who haven’t.

So why couldn’t this approach be applied to generating wealth?

Negative Money Beliefs

Money’s tricky. Unlike learning a language, it comes with a lot of baggage—societal beliefs, family expectations, and our own limiting ideas about what we “deserve.”

Ever notice how you seem to sabotage yourself whenever you start earning more than you think you’re worth? That’s your internal thermostat pulling you back to its set point.

To break out, I’m having to rewrite my stories.

Success doesn’t make you greedy or bad—it gives you the freedom to live authentically and contribute to the world on your terms.

And once truly successful, you can truly afford the AMG and the Camelback sofa without being shackled to them.

The 7 Baby Mamas

I know I’m privileged and have unique circumstances.

I could have seven baby mamas and two mortgages, or still be clawing to regain the high of college and getting black out at the watering holes of my hometown (and do trust, I did my time in said holes (???)—no judgement).

But is it really that unique?

There’s an entire generation of young, single, childless professionals sitting on the same resources and resentments (and steadily rising in numbers).

So, the question isn’t whether I’m crazy for walking away from a “good” job.

The question is whether you’re crazy for staying in one.

But perhaps I am full of shit—in which case, I want to know why.

Final Thoughts

Is it scary? Yes. Just like this turbulence I’m currently experiencing suspended 35,000 ft above the Gulf of Mexico (the sudden, pants-shitting ‘drops’ where the aircraft just freefalls for a second type of turbulence).

But it’s worth it.

I challenge you to ponder and perhaps journal on these questions for a moment:

• Do you feel caged? If so, what’s the cage (constraints, responsibilities, bosses, negative mindsets, friends, vices, monthly payments, etc.)?

• Are you fulfilled and in alignment with your purpose in your career? This requires clearly defining your purpose. If yes, you’re good, see you later. If not…

• What is your Operation Freedom© plan?

• What’s something in your life you’re tolerating that you know is holding you back?

All out decimation of the share button

If you agree with these admittedly extreme sentiments, let me know.

And if you don’t—let me know why. I could have it all fucked up, and have gone too far in the echo chambers of F.I.R.E. forums, who knows.

Be sure to SMASH that like button (I watched too much YouTube). Or don’t, I’m not your boss. It helps me more if you share the article so the page can grow—make this button 👇👇 your bitch.

Thanks for reading,

CT

Over the Gulf of Mexico | December 2024

PS—if you thought this would be about a night I spent in an actual lions cage where I took a shit in the morning and impregnated seven women, and feel I owe you a refund, please let me know. Not to say that didn’t happen… Clickbait ass title.