For the past few weeks I’ve been wearing around the self preservation seven hat, and I continue to learn more and more things about myself. You could say that things have been making more sense lately.
I thought of the phrase “gaming the system” while we were in Boulder a couple of weeks ago. I looked the phrase up, and it unfortunately has negative connotations.
However, the phrase “working the system” has positive connotations, so I went with that. Here’s how it’s fleshed itself out in my life. If I find myself within a system that has loopholes (that are both legal and ethical), there is something within me that wants to take advantage of those loopholes. It’s why I’m so big into travel hacking with credit cards. It’s also one of the reasons I was so excited for Mandy’s new job. It gave us the opportunity to both have a flexible schedule, which is so great for our lifestyle.
I recognized this during a couple of moments from our trip out west as well. A few months ago I opened up a Brex credit card. It was a promotion targeted at small business owners. I ended up with 80,000 points. I would normally use points for travel only, but this time I decided to cash the points out. I redeemed 30,000 points, which gave me $300 on the Brex card. I then used that cash at restaurants on our trip. Towards the end of the trip Mandy figured out what I was doing. She said she had noticed that I was way more laid back than normal when spending money. It was true. Normally I get a little uptight spending money, especially when I don’t think it’s necessarily a good deal. Jackson, WY, was especially pricey. But this way I was offsetting the expensive prices. I was getting free food – I was working the system!
The second moment came a few days into our time in Yellowstone. For those of you who don’t know, Yellowstone in the summer is very crowded. In the weeks leading up to our trip I heard that record crowds were going to be visiting the National Parks this summer. I confess that there was a bit of dread. And those first two days we truly experienced the crowds, and it wasn’t great.
So the third morning I woke up early and was out the door by 6am. I had the park to myself. I drove around Yellowstone Lake, occasionally stopping to watch the sunrise. Then I made my way into Hayden Valley. This was my first time there, and it was breathtaking. There was the sunrise. There was the steam from the many geothermal features. And then there were so many animals. And there were hardly any vehicles.
You know how you can pay extra at a theme park for early bird hours. I think that can be a good deal when you’re traveling at peak times. Well this is what I was doing, except that I didn’t have to pay a cent. I just had to get up early. The next morning Mandy got up with me, and we repeated the journey. It was a highlight of the trip.
These are examples of what it means for me to work the system. I recognize that you might be chuckling while reading this, coming to the conclusion that this is a bit odd. But it’s me. There’s something inside of me that comes alive when I do this. Now I just have a name for it!