#HotelPrius begins with, "What started as a one-month experiment to cut back on “unnecessary spending” and to get ahead, turned into a full year of so much more than I could have ever expected or anticipated. I call my home #HotelPrius." A simple beginning to an adventurous story. Chris Sawey was " burnt out from [his] degree and was in no huge hurry to start a career," so he went on the road to Texas to see what the road brought him. What it brought him was a break-in. "Things like my day-pack in the back seat that was full of my most important possessions. The crooks had walked off with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, my GoPro and all our footage and pictures from the road trip. They stole my Macbook (laptop), and few other smaller knick-knacks they now seem relatively unimportant. The worst hit was my back up hard drive with every journal, picture and file I had spent the better part of my life working on. All of my hard work from the last 10 years– gone!", Sawey wrote.
A little later, he totaled the Prius in a crash. "Now with no job, no car, no place to call my own, limited money, and no convenient way to apply for jobs, I struggled." Sawey began his rebuild. He got a new car, better car insurance and a new laptop. "Still unsure of exactly what I wanted to do as a career, I decided my best option in the meantime was to try my hand at substitute teaching during the day and wait tables at night. With the subbing job, I took it because I felt it was the perfect next step to see if teaching for the public school system would be something I could invest in as a career. With waiting tables, I had done it in college and was good at it, but I hated the idea of going back. To me, it felt like I was taking steps backwards rather than forwards, and that was a feeling that left me very unsettled." Finally, Chris got the idea to make his Prius his home. "It was a sacrifice to save my sanity, my money and to avoid slipping further into depression. Most of all, it was for my health and my well being and I was convinced it was the best thing I could possibly do in this particular season of life."
Chris Sawey's story really is one of perseverance, hope, and success. For someone so beaten down with college and a lost path, just trying to figure out what to do takes hope, but hope without opportunity is delusion. Luckily, Sawey did have opportunity and was able to pull himself up from the depths of failure to succeed. He was trapped but found a way to escape.