On Tuesday afternoon, after a series of phone calls, I made a last-minute trip to Chicago to attend to Matt.  His arm, which had been wounded the prior week by a bull mastiff, had become seriously infected, and the emergency-room doctors at the South Side hospital he visited had suggested that he might even lose the arm.

Matt doesn’t have a good support network for dealing with healthcare issues.  So, I decided to head to the Windy City to assist as best as I could.

As it happens, the infection — although bad — responded well to IV antibiotics, so Matt was discharged on Wednesday morning, albeit with a prescription for two rather powerful oral antibiotics.

Matt had decided, however, that my willingness to travel at the last minute to help him meant something very significant, in a romantic sense.  Long story short, he put a lot of pressure on me, before I returned to Grand Rapids, to start dating him formally and to plan for a relatively quick relocation to Chicago.  He was determined that I would be living with him by Halloween.

For my part, I was intrigued; he’s roughly my age, a lot of fun, very loving and carefree, very trusting, and exceptionally good looking (he’s a dancer and model, with the portfolio to prove it).  Benefits aside, though, there’s too much going on in my life to consider his invitation.  What I did consider, at length, was whether the time had come for a radical disruption.

I am a firm believer that every now and then, people need to shake things up in a major way, to shed the minor comforts that lead to stasis and complacency.  The whole trip back from Illinois was consumed with the question:  Would moving to Chicago (facilitated by Matt) be the sort of transformation that would serve me well?  Would it be a kick in the ass to push me to the next level?

I think not.  The change to which I am committed is encapsulated in Project 810; to derail this for the sake of a person I don’t even know all that well is irresponsible.

It’s not much of a secret that I’m not wholly enthused about the West Michigan culture.  I want to leave — but on my own terms.  This situation has been a helpful reminder of why I need to keep plugging away on the mundane things that will facilitate my grand voyage away from Grand Rapids.