Four Years of Moose Lodge
I shot this photo out the front door last Saturday morning.
Next Monday marks four years since I first stepped foot in Moose Lodge. As I’ve said so many times, I knew I wanted this place the second I stepped through the front door. It was a feeling like I was home. I can’t explain it any better than that. It was just a feeling this was the exact right place.
I think about the A-B method of narrowing down over 10,000 houses online and the constant duds of the 50–60 houses I saw in person, and the one or two near misses, all leading me to Moose Lodge. The two months it took to close the sale, almost to the day, felt like an eternity.
As I’ve been traveling in my new role as CEO of Hudson Cloud, I can more easily see and feel this odd psychological shift that’s occurring as I become less of a Seattleite with each passing day and more of a Missourian. Seattle seems more foreign by the minute, while I feel more at home here, especially as I am writing this. I was having trouble relating to Seattle as I didn’t change my core values while I lived there. The city objective changed.
My original love of Seattle was based around the idea of a city that was in a constant state of improvement. It felt like the original goal was to implement good ideas and to come up with ways of making Seattle more livable. Something switched around 2008 or so. I can’t pinpoint the exact year, but once Mayor McSchwinn, as he was called, got into office, suddenly the whole place felt different. It wasn’t about improving the city. It was about making a political statement, regardless of the inconvenience.
Useless bike lanes and parking restrictions were added everywhere, making it harder for automotive traffic. The once-charming Capitol Hill and all the shops and restaurants went away because bike and bus lanes crowded out parking. I couldn’t find as many eclectic weekend hideaways with good food. It wasn’t my city anymore. I could go on and on about how the downtown core died. I couldn’t just go for a walk downtown and explore new shops.
Yet, here I am at Moose Lodge. It’s quiet. The leaves are falling, and it’s peaceful. Life here feels like it hasn’t changed in a hundred years. I’m nine miles from town, and I’m often driving roads that were there as trails 200 years ago. The whole place still feels magical to me. The drive into town is always pleasant, even if it is a deer dodge at times. I mostly like to drive in silence and just take in the rolling hills and twisty roads. It always feels good to be here.
I miss my friends in Seattle. Some are still mad that I moved, and to my delight, many have come to visit. Sometimes they get it, many don’t. They don’t know how I live with this much isolation, and I think that’s the point. This place has made me better at everything I do, and that was why I wanted this place. It’s lived up to everything I expected.