This time of year is filled with the holidays. Starting with Thanksgiving in the end of November and wrapping up with a two week period of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, much time is spent with friends and family. Most of my friends, my life, and passions are in the City of Detroit, however, nearly all of my family is elsewhere.

Reflecting on the last month, I’ve realized how much contrast exists between the life my relatives live and how I live now. The life that my parents, brothers, cousins, and distant family live is filled with modern conveniences, cleanliness, warmth, and general happiness. My life in Detroit is filled with innovation and compromise, bundling up, occasional filth, but still deep happiness. I think it hit me while walking from a 104 degree hot tub to the cedar-lined sauna on Christmas Eve. I began thinking of my $450 heat bill, the recent space-heater induced fire at a neighbor’s house, another neighbor’s busted and frozen pipes, and the 5 cans of spray foam insulation used around one of my front doors. I thought of my friend’s $1500 boiler repair quote, another friend’s homemade steel-drum woodstove, the lack of attic insulation in ANY of my four houses, and one of my winterized houses that just received triple pane windows. Then I came back to reality and noticed that I’m sitting in a sauna sweating to death!

I spent that entire evening in my parents’ suburban basement: relaxing in the sauna, playing pool, watching a big- screen, and preparing drinks on granite counter-tops. One of my dogs had an accident, and I spent a  half hour blotting, scrubbing, and deodorizing the plush carpet to remove any evidence of impact. Following this evening, I went back to my home, Detroit. The following day I had a “cash-for-keys” appointment scheduled with a squatter in a townhouse I recently purchased. He never showed, but the back door was unlocked and wide open. The utilities were turned off and I could see my breath in the living room. Water was dripping from the kitchen faucet, but luckily no pipes appeared to be damaged. The attic, of course, had zero insulation and you could feel the wind coming in through the eaves. There were scattered space heaters, blankets, and evidence of recent cold nights. The neighbor told me that the squatter’s emaciated pit bull recently escaped through a broken basement window and the Humane Society picked it up. The basement was nothing short of a HAZMAT site – couches torn to shreds, splintered wooden chairs scattered, and 3 foot mounds of dog feces piled throughout. I could barely enter without gagging.

I spent my holidays with family in relative warmth and cleanliness. I received more warm clothing than I could wear in a year. We had enough food to feed a small army, and keeping the fireplace lit was a matter of aesthetics, not survival. I’m not sure if I have emotional whip-lash, but the back-and-forth lifestyle of the last week has left me a bit perturbed. On one hand I can have drinks on a rooftop patio at my Dad’s lakefront home, on the other I’m literally shoveling crusty dog crap out of a basement. I’ll spend an evening in a resort-quality hot tub with friends, but spend the next replacing a scrapped hot water heater in a dirt floor basement. One day I’ll be helping my parents pick out their tile back-splash or custom tailored drapes, but the next I’ll be cutting and painting boards for the windows on an abandoned building.

I’m really not complaining – I have the best of both worlds. I’m able to live an “on the edge” and risque lifestyle that is incredibly fulfilling and rewarding at times. I’m different than most of my neighbors in that I’m able to rapidly retreat, remove myself from the doldrums of life in a seemingly decaying city and be injected with a shot of the hoity-toity lifestyle I’ve been accustom to.

Relating all of this to our Leadership Day #2 and the discussion on privilege, I really don’t know where to start. It could take a lifetime to sort it all out, but my largest, most overwhelming New Year’s resolution is to always be mindful of the fact that I am privileged. Not squandering this privilege, but using it wisely to do the most good in this City is what’s important. I hope you all have a wonderful 2014!

This blog post was contributed by:  Darin McLeskey (@darinmcleskey).