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Erik: What made you shift from suburban living to city living and what have you enjoyed most
about the change?
Matt: You know, I lived a little bit of a ways outside of downtown in a gargantuan two
bedroom, two and half bath apartment. It was huge! It was great. I had really comfortable
couches; I had a TV that had every channel known to man on it... I could shut the window
shades and make it completely dark and have a man cave and if I didn't want to have a
man cave I had a deck and I could go sit out on the deck and look out over a creek. But
I never left. If I went home on Friday it wouldn't be unusual that I could go into my
apartment on Friday afternoon, or Friday evening, and pretty much stay, with a few exceptions,
pretty much stay in my apartment until Sunday night or Monday morning when I left to come
to work... so I realized that I could lay there and I could watch endless amounts of
History Channel civil war reenactments, I could watch the biography of outlaw Sam Bass,
two or three times in a weekend and get more out of it. But it wasn't for me and it didn't
really help in my quest to be a little bit more active and a little bit more engaged,
so I moved downtown. I had to purge a lot, I had to get rid of a lot of stuff in my house.
I had to take a look at all those old records or VHS tapes and say 'Do I really need these?
Am I actually going to watch this episode of Miami Vice on VHS one more time?' I might
not have even had a VHS player anymore, but somehow or another I justified having VHS
tapes. The same way I think with audiotapes, I think I actually still had the Hall and
Oates Big Bam Boom tape that I bought in 1985. So I had to purge a lot of that stuff, I had
to purge the swords that I got at the renaissance fair. I mean that was the sword that I got
at the renaissance fair! I was nine! How could I even justify losing that! But, you know,
you have to. You can't have that much crap. But I got rid of it all and I moved downtown,
I moved into a six hundred square foot apartment. I started walking to everything, I started
to know who my neighbors were, I mean after ten years of living in the gargantuan place
and never knowing who my neighbors were, I now waved at people and they waved at me,
I didn't even really know them but they were the people that always walked by with a labradoodle
or the guy down at the coffee shop who always had the strange glasses on that I always found
fascinating. I would find myself walking around the neighborhood and seeing what's going on
and learning that in the neighborhood there would be a little pick up soccer game on Sunday
evenings and so I would go and watch the pick up soccer game and read a book and sit outside
without any civil war reenactments going on. I started riding my bike and going on the
walking trail and participating in things that happen downtown, not just the evening
fun nights out on the town but also the daytime activities, the little art fairs and corner
music venue things that would just pop up all of a sudden and I would really have a
great time and actually felt like a better person for it, I really did.