I love a well cooked meal, an artistic feast for my taste buds and a hungry stomach, but at the end of the day, I’m pretty happy with a couple of eggs, a little polenta and a chicken sausage in a frying pan, drowned in chicken broth. Give me some protein, some calories and get me back to something important, like mathematics or whiskey.

This approach has treated me pretty well. If I just go for something I want, I can always improve my situation later; tidy up if you will. But I can’t tidy up without going for something.

When I first moved to Santa Rosa, I lived out of a 1989 Honda Accord in the Big Lots parking lot until the cops kicked me out.

When my graduation money and savings from high school dried up, I slept on a rooftop near downtown Santa Rosa and ate out of dumpsters. I did that off and on for two years interspersed with brief stints on friends’ couches or in their garages. I didn’t have my financial aid worked out, didn’t know what I wanted to study or what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I couldn’t stand to work at a dead-end job.

Sure, I was cold often and had to walk all night in the rain some nights to stay warm, but in doing so I kept myself alive. I now understand how little I can have and still be successful in the sense that I can do whatever I set my mind to.

A lot of my drive and ability came from living on the road for two months, rock climbing in Joshua Tree in Southern California and various climbing destinations in Utah. We weren’t the straightest group of climbers by a long shot, still aren’t, and often wore out the welcome offered by national park permits. But I developed skills that would come in handy back in Santa Rosa. We devised all kinds of techniques for avoiding rangers, like moving cars to the tune of a complex form of musical chairs, but for the most part we got really good at not being seen by law enforcement.

Living on the road with a bunch of friends taught me to be self-sufficient. Not because no one would help me, but because each person worked damn hard to live out of his or her car, or backpack like me, and to be a drain on others was unthinkable. They were my friends after all, not my parents. My friends were my idols to be sure, but to reach them was attainable. It just took work.

I actually spent the rest of my high school money on that trip, and it was the best investment I ever made into my future. I came back to Santa Rosa with no job prospects or financial aid and just enough money to pay off my previous semester’s tuition and put a hundred bucks in my pocket.

Now, two years later, I have a room of my own: $250 a month for a space in a warehouse that smells like dog crap, cat urine and rotting automotives. I’ve got a job tutoring mathematics in Shuhaw Hall that I absolutely adore and some financial aid money coming in that just might, if I am lucky, see me through the semester.

And if not? That roof downtown is still there and I might get lucky and find my queen-sized mattress still up there. I’ve gained a great freedom in knowing how little I need, how low I can go and still be content and alive. The future only has possibilities.