It’s time for me to get serious about this blogging stuff and start contributing useful information on a regular basis. I know! I know! I keep saying this. But, frankly, living free can present some real challenges. The learning curve is significant. The bad news is that there is so much to learn. The good news – actually, the GREAT news is that I love learning and I’m enjoying every minute – frustrations and all.
And speaking of living free, you may notice that I’ve changed the title to “Living Free . . .” The blog URL is still livingandworkingfree.blogspot.com because livingfree or a number of variations thereof are not available. Drat! There must be a lot of other people out there like me. Actually, that’s great. It’s a lifestyle that gets better everyday. Even the “bad” days are really good days. You’ll also notice that the appearance of the blog has been modified. It represents more of the open road that I experienced last year and am so looking forward to seeing more of this year.
As this year moves forward I’ll be making some other significant changes. This blog site may move to another location other then Blogger – or not, I may just link to it. I’m going to be building up a more comprehensive Web site that will encompass more of what I am doing. I’m working on my first – honest to goodness – book manuscript. After publishing for about 13 years, I’m finding out what it’s like to be an author – tough work, but I’m loving it.
The title of this posting is based on a Kindle book (also available in print form) titled Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by Hugh MacLeod. It’s a short, pithy, somewhat irreverent read – just the kind of book I totally like and am planning myself. I got through it in a hurry and highlighted a number of things, but I’m going to go through it again and find a lot more nuggets of gold to highlight. This author is a lot younger them me, more around my son’s age, but he figured this “living free” thing out early enough to make the transition and enjoy it a lot longer than I will. That being said, I’ve always been a non-conformist, it’s just that I didn’t “ignore people” and allowed myself to get caught up in too many “traditional” tracks. By the way, Ignore People: and 39 Other Ways to be Creative is Hugh MacLeod’s first book, a New York Times bestseller. I haven’t read it, yet, but plan to.
Here are the facts of life. I should have and could have done this 20 or 30 or even more years ago. But, as we all know, woulda, shoulda and coulda don’t count for anything. The fact is, that I’ve finally done it. I’ve been free of a fixed home, piles of stuff, loads of bills, etc. for 2 ½ years now and I don’t miss ANY of the old lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve enjoyed most of it including the places I’ve lived. But, cutting my overhead by 80% in one month really made me understand how much of a “wageslave” (one of Hugh MacLeod’s terms) of my own making, I was. Being free is an amazing feeling.
Now, I can only speak for myself. Many people say they envy me, but they can’t do it. They are right! They can’t because they choose not to. It’s simply a choice. But, we all get into “comfort zones” and even though we have far more then we need to live comfortably and much freer, we choose to stay in the middle of our “stuff” whatever it may be. One needs a reason to break free from their stuff and those reasons are different for everyone. My reasons have no bearing on anyone else’s. I created my own form of enslavement. It was not easy to make the decisions I had to make. It was not easy to do what had to be done once I made the decisions. To be perfectly honest, I still have a storage unit and a book storage locker full of stuff that I’m going through and eliminating. But, the weight that lifted from my back two and a half years ago when I drove off the ranch for the last time – it was like pulling a two-ton weight behind me and having someone cut the chain.
What a learning process I’ve experienced. I dare say that everything I learned in four years of college and another year in graduate school including all my extra curricular experiences and learning – can’t even hold a close second to what I’ve experienced in the past 2 ½ years. Writing this blog has been an outlet for me to share some of this with those willing to indulge me. Maybe a few have even picked up an idea or two. I hope so.
Well, 2 ½ years later, I’m tearing through that storage unit and book locker and it has become so much easier to make rapid decisions to let stuff go. All of the stuff I let go over 2 ½ years ago and wrote about back then, I’ve never missed a single item. I’ve never gone looking for any of it. I was just a warehouse of a life of accumulated stuff. Now, after more time has passed and I haven’t needed most of the stuff in my storage units, I’ve realized that all this stuff falls in the same category – it’s time for it to be gone and forgotten. The only thing that counts is RIGHT NOW! Memories stay with us. If you want to remember something – take a picture and archive it. You might even look back at it one day. The storage units will be cleared out as fast as I can. That is the last vestige of bondage I have. Then – I’m free to soar across this country and anywhere in the world doing whatever happens to be the thing of the moment.
Keep your eyes on my blog. Lots of new stuff coming. Maybe, some of it will help you make some difficult decisions with results that will allow you to experience a degree of euphoria that you never thought you’d ever experience.
Ever Enthusiastic,
Ed
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