Keep The Faith

This post is going to be a little different than my typical articles. A few days ago a friend of mine sent me an email with a video attached to it. It was titled Keep The Faith. I personally don't recognize the man telling the story. If someone does, I'd appreciate you filling me in and letting me know.

The story moved me. I took me back to a time when I was in my mid 20s and had completed four years of college and a bachelors degree and an additional year of graduate school and had earned a masters degree. I was a young business man and I was going through another life change as I entered the service to our country to serve in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War Era. So, while the presenter of this story is, obviously, younger than me, which you'll pick up on as he relates the story, I relate to what he is saying because I had experienced the attitudes that he relates.

There's not much else to say because I don't want to steal the presenter's thunder. But, those of you of a certain age (mostly from the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomer Generation and the very early Generation X) will be able to relate to this. You will likely remember when this was pretty much the overall attitude in the U.S. regardless of what part of the country you were from. For those of you who are younger than the group I just described, this is the way our country once was. It certainly wasn't perfect. But, it was a lot better, in my mind, than much of what we're witnessing and experiencing in all sectors of our society.

If It Is To Be It Is Up To Me!

If you've never heard of this short sentence made up entirely of two letter words, it's time you did.

Over the past few weeks I've been talking about “New Beginnings” and how I'm going through this challenging phase of my life. Everyone either has, is or will go through some very difficult times. Unfortunately, some of these events and experiences are going to be traumatic.

Someone once asked Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking, if there were any people who didn't face problems. He said, and I paraphrase, he knew of a place where there were a lot of people who didn't have problems. Let me take you there. So, the person went with Dr. Peale who led him to a cemetery. The person at first was stunned and then thought he was making fun of him. Dr. Peale assured him he was serious, none of the people in that cemetery or any other cemetery had any problems. The only people who have no problems reside in graves. So, if you don't want to join these people, you better get down on your knees and pray for God to give you problems.

We start having problems when we are small children. Our parents help us learn to cope with and solve our small problems. As we get older the problems get more difficult. And, of course, when we become adults, we have to deal with problems and situations that often seem insurmountable. Everybody has problems of one kind or another. I won't bore you with a list of the many kinds of problems we all face during our lifetimes. It's also said that God, or the Universe or life won't give you any problems that you can't handle. That doesn't mean they will be easy. It just means it's up to us to resolve the problems.

New Beginnings – 2022 – Part 3

Three weeks and three new articles. I'm patting myself on the back! I hope I'm back on line again.

This is going to be a short article today. Winter has set in here in the area of West Virginia known as the Potomac Highlands. It's where I've been staying with a friend while I've been recovering from my bout with cancer. I'm very lucky to have terrific and very supportive friends in various places and, certainly, my friend Carolyn has gone way above the call to help me.

It's snowing quite hard here today and into about midday tomorrow. It's quite cold with the current temperature registering at 16 degrees and an estimated accumulation of snow between 9” to 12” and possibly as much as 18.” I grew up in northern New Jersey and we had some cold temperatures and significant snow accumulations there when I was a kid. And, then I lived in Syracuse, NY and I have to be honest, snow, lots and lots of snow was a way of life along with sub-0 temperatures. We had some serious winters when I lived in the Washington, DC area and for the ten years I lived in Annapolis, MD. About every five years or so, we would have a very serious winter in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia when I lived outside Winchester. But, while some of my friends look forward to winter and snow, I have experienced probably about 30 blizzards during my life and frankly, I'd much rather see the snow from a distance along with the cold temperatures. I'm perfectly content to watch snow in TV shows or in movies. I don't need to experience it in person any longer.

Part of my New Beginnings is to start researching and searching for a new region to base my operations from and I'd like it to be a location with a moderate or temperate climate. So, I've been looking at places around the U.S. during the last several years I was traveling, prior to being inconveniently stopped from my travels by my cancer challenge. But, I'll be looking again for the right place once I can get back on the road.

New Beginnings – 2022 – Part 2

This is my second article of 2022 and you'll notice it has the same title as the first article, except I extended it as Part 2. I've been thinking, researching and contemplating this entire past week about what I said last week. Something sparked in my mind and heart about my thoughts and feelings. But, to start things off, let me give you a long quote I discovered during my research.

When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of "second chances". Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Your future doesn’t have to travel the same path with the same people. You can start over. You don’t have to apologize to people that won’t listen. You don’t have to justify your feelings or actions, during a difficult time in your life. You don’t have to put up with people that are insecure and want you to fail. All you have to do is walk forward with a positive outlook, and trust that God has a plan that is greater than the sorrow you left behind. The people of quality that were meant to be in your life won’t need you to explain the beauty of your heart. They already understand what being human is----a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.

― Shannon L. Alder

Substitute the first and second sentence with, When you die and are reborn, you are given the gift of new beginnings. Your eulogy is a reminder that the living (you in your rebirth), can turn your life around at any point. With those two changed sentences, this quote is exactly what I'm feeling as I leave the past behind after being stricken down by my cancer experience and the ensuing battle. I don't know if I can describe what happened the morning of August 18, 2019 as having experienced death and coming back. I know there is a short period of time that I have no recollection of. I don't know if it was seconds or minutes. I don't recall seeing my life pass before me. I don't recall seeing a long tunnel with a white light at the end. I just don't remember anything for that brief period of time. And, of course, I was completely disoriented when I regained consciousness or grasped life again, whichever the case may have been.

What I do know is that a lot of things changed. To be perfectly honest, if friends, family, business associates or new people see me today, the only thing they will likely notice is that I'm slimmer because I lost about 20% of my weight (and, unfortunately, muscle mass). Otherwise, externally, there is little about the changes I described in the previous article that one can see. The voice I've used to speak and to provide voice-overs for numerous clients is still the same. I still have the knowledge, creativity, any talent I may have been blessed with and the skills I've learned and honed through over 60 years of adolescent and adult experiences. For all practical intents and purposes, externally and experientially, I'm still me. But, as I described, there is a new persona residing inside this older and, now, somewhat modified body.

New Beginnings – 2022

I'm writing this on January 1, 2022. As you can see, if you look at my last blog article, this is my first new article in a year. The year 2021 was very similar to 2020. They were both years that weren't. I mean, for me, they weren't noteworthy. Many things happened during 2021, but from my perspective, they were mainly negative things. But, I really don't want to focus and dwell on the negative. A few years ago, after writing this blog for about ten years, I began facing writers block. My articles became fewer and far between. I picked up again for a short time in 2019 when I was stricken down with my battle with cancer and I wrote almost daily for a few months about my experiences.

Let me be clear, I'm 76 years old. I'll be 77 years old in a few months. I try to not dwell on my age, however, due to many things that have occurred over the past couple of years, most notably, my battle and, so far, my victory over a near fatal bout with a pretty rare form of cancer, I have begun to accept my aging reality. You may have heard older people express the aging process as experiencing all kinds of aches, pains, physical changes, lower levels of energy and stamina. But, at the same time, they say their minds are acting like they are still in their 30s or 40s. I can relate to that.

However, some of us are dealt a variety of challenges. Some of those challenges result with life ending. During the past couple of years I've lost at least 12 friends from various facets of my life. Some of these friends were considerably older than me. Some were around my age. Still others were younger than me. Meanwhile, some of us survive after being dealt strokes, heart attacks, hip, knee and other joint replacements. Others have to deal with issues like diabetes, MS, Lupis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other chronic and autoimmune diseases. And, some, like me, must face the “Big C,” cancers of all kinds. I'm actually a two time cancer survivor, but I'm still going. In many cases, probably most cases, these medical issues are surprises. They blind-side us and, like it or not, we must deal with them.

Live Free & Be Happy!

I'm back! I've selected a title I've used before for this first blog post in nearly a year. The photo is of the hat I currently sport and travel in. More about it later.

It's been nearly a year since I posted anything new on this blog. I started to ease back on my writing about two years ago. No! I hadn't run out of topics. I actually have a long list of topics I continue to accumulate. I'd like to attribute my taking time off to writer's block, but it wasn't that either. I guess I simply needed to take a break, evaluate life, regroup and, to probably be really honest, I got lazy. I love to write. I love to share my thoughts, philosophies and even an occasional rant. I was tired.

In May of 2017 I rushed back to the east side of the continent to attend the 50^th Class Reunion of my college class at Montclair State University.

The USA Is No Longer Livable

It's been a while since I've posted a new article. Life has been happening all over and around me. A lot of people see an idea that catches their eye and inspires them to read this blog. But, like most of us, we're looking for the magic pill, the secret elixir that will transform our lives from a place we're not happy or comfortable to that perfect life we're all seeking.

Well, that's not how it works. There are no magic pills or secret elixirs. Achieving the idealistic objective of living free and being happy takes time, research, energy, effort and - yes, just plain old WORK. There is no one size fits all. There are approximately 7.5 billion people inhabiting this piece of space dust we call home . . . planet Earth. And, every one of us is different and individual, even twins, triplets, etc.

There are so many things to discuss in an article like this. But, it seems like only a very few, basically countable on less than two hands, are willing to stick our necks out and introduce topics, ideas, concepts, philosophies, possibilities, realities, etc. I could suggest we few are the ones who may be closer to the answers for our own lives. I can only think that all those who are sitting in the background expect me and a few others to reveal a path to living free and ultimately being happy. Sadly, that isn't how it works in life.

Yesterday I read a blog post by a fellow nomad (he refers to himself as a vagabond). His name is Wade Shepard and his blog is titled "Vagabond Journey." He titled his September 21st blog article, "The USA Is 'Unlivable.' Ouch! This guy is un-American. If he doesn't like it here he should leave.

Let me give you a teaser to entice you a bit - he starts out by saying:

Regret #2

If you recall, in the last post on Regret #1, I told you about the article Richard Rosen sent me from Dr. Joseph Mercola's Health Newsletter. The title was "What You Can Learn From Other People's Regrets."

He gathered his information from a book titled, "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying," by Bronnie Ware, a former palliative care nurse who interviewed many dying patients during her career. And, remember I'm not approaching this topic from a negative perspective. I simply want to address the regrets as discussion points.

So, here is the #2 Regret people have:

"Working too much, thereby missing children’s youth and their partner’s companionship."

"Virtually every man in Ware’s care listed missing out on family time because of excessive work."

Life On A Treadmill

Life On The Road. . .Living in 50 Square Feet - Part I

Life on the road is a unique lifestyle embraced by only a very small fraction of the population in the United States. As in most things, there are variations on the theme. Here are some examples: over the road truck drivers; traveling nurses; traveling specialists (engineers, technicians, consultants, evangelists and others); travel writers and photographers; artists; musicians; homeless/jobless; disabled; retirees and others, perhaps . . . like me. Another entire genre of “mobile” people include those who live on the water. But, that's another story for someone else.

Of course, the reasons, motivations and inspirations for all the people I've mentioned (and others I couldn't think of off the top of my head) are as varied as the various kinds of on the road people I mentioned. I should also mention, at this time, there are probably as many women, perhaps more, as there are men enjoying this lifestyle.

Those who are “housebound” or live in a fixed residential situation may not understand why people, especially like me and an untold number of my traveling friends, live this lifestyle. Many say they envy my freedom. Many are probably thinking, though unspoken . . . poor guy, he's broke, homeless and hungry. None of those are true in my case. I freely chose this lifestyle. Maybe I'm just reverting back to the “hippie” days I traded for college, graduate school, the Air Force during the Vietnam era, a business career and family.

Welcome to my world! Revisited - Year 9

Every year or so I revert back to my first post on this blog to review where it started and where it evolved to. This was post #1 on February 6, 2008. It was just a few days shy of nine months later when I left my ranch for the last time to pursue a very different lifestyle. And, it's now a little more than nine years ago since I wrote the original post. My notes indicating the changes and evolution in me, my lifestyle, my thinking and the blog are all in italics embedded in the copy of the original post.

This blog is about exactly what the title states - “living and working free.” Actually, the focus is now on how to live free including all facets of human experience and lifestyle and the name changed to "2 Live Freely” a couple years ago. Now, to make sure this concept is perfectly clear, I DO NOT mean living FOR free nor working FOR free. I mean living and working freely under our own rules, terms and conditions for our lifestyles and workstyles.

It is important to note that there are no rules, terms or conditions carved in stone that tell us how we should live or how we should work. The only rules are those that we each establish for ourselves in our own hearts and minds . . . unless we adopt the rules, conditions and terms that others may want to impose on us. This holds true to the current blog posts and my philosophical thinking - no significant changes.

My postings here are going to be based on MY feelings, opinions, concepts, wants and needs. What I say may or may not apply to you – or perhaps only parts of what I say may apply to you. So, do not, under any circumstances, consider anything I say here to be gospel. What I say only pertains to me and my life. The operative word in all of this is “FREE!”

The Reason WHY . . . Part II

Sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico on Padre Island National Seashore, Texas

The photo opening this post is from my current “yard.” I'm writing this from the beach of the Gulf of Mexico on the Padre Island (Texas) National Seashore. I awoke to a beautiful sunrise and slept last night to the sound of the surf. Today, my background inspiration, as I compose this article, is the surf (it's low tide), the breeze and the occasional sounds of a variety of birds on a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and a few puffy white clouds. I'm sitting comfortably at my desk in My McVansion. You won't read this until sometime after I've left this beautiful location since I don't have any wireless phone or Internet connection here. Another respite to enjoy.

You also see a photo of the My McVansion galley. I enjoyed a couple cups of Chai tea, a banana, some cantaloupe and I made myself a bagel sandwich flavored with maple syrup and an egg seasoned the way I like it, with melted cheese and smoked sausage to top it off. It was a magnificent breakfast and will probably carry me to dinner time, with, perhaps, a light snack to carry me over. Does it sound like I'm enjoying my life? Indeed! The big question in my mind is why (there's that word again) I didn't do this a lot sooner . . . or maybe for my entire life.

Here's a thought for you. If you are asking yourself 'why' about a lot of things in your past and current life, you likely have some serious, unresolved issues. It's my personal intention to reach the “final destination” (the same one we all arrive at, ultimately) with the greatest memories of all I did during my brief lifespan and not regretting all the things I never did, but always wanted to. Too many people end up bitter, if they live long enough, because they feel they were robbed or deprived of so many things they always wanted to do. But, in fact, they were neither robbed nor deprived. They made conscious choices to do and accept what their life turned out to be.

Why Do You Live Where You Live?

Life On The Mild Side

I was thinking a bit the other day and I came to an interesting conclusion. There are three ways to experience life.

1. You can live life on the wild side
2. You can live life on the mild side
3. You can live life on the safe side

To my way of thinking, the first two are where I believe life should probably be lived. The third side is for those people who are too timid or overly obsessed with security or in general, just go along with what life throws their way and attempt to not rock the boat.

I see nothing wrong with any of these three choices. And, in some cases, there are people who may straddle all three styles. Allow me to take a few moments to explore each of these three lifestyles. Let's begin with, where I believe the vast majority of people settle in, “the Safe Side.”

Compartmentalizing – Part II - Shelter

A couple months ago I was sitting in my campsite in the Umpqua National Forest about 15 miles from the north rim of Crater Lake in south central Oregon, As I sat there, I was reminded of the people who are intrigued by my simple, living free lifestyle. Most want to look inside “My McVansion,” my tiny house on wheels, to see how one can actually live in 50 square feet. That's about the size of a small walk-in closet, to give you a bit of perspective.

In my first article on compartmentalizing I listed ten areas we humans, especially those of us living in “Western” developed societies, compartmentalize to varying degrees. In this article I'm going to focus on “shelter” compartmentalizing. Our early ancestors probably didn't have words like house, home, abode, residence, cabin, cottage, apartment, condominium, villa, townhouse, mansion and, one of the newer terms, McMansion or any other descriptors we currently attach to our variety of shelters. The list doesn't include portable, mobile and other alternative forms of shelter. But, as you can see from the list I just made, we compartmentalize the array of forms shelters may take.

And, to add to this, there are subdivisions (and I don't mean communities, that's another form of compartmentalizing) broken down into the varieties of the listed shelters. There are cape cods, split levels, bi-levels, colonial style, ranch homes, bungalows, garden apartments, high-rise apartments, brownstone walk-ups, tenements. I could go on and on, but I'm sure I've made my point. But, there is more.

If It's Thursday, It's LA

The view from my son's loft in the downtown Los Angeles Art District.

That's where I am. I'm in downtown Los Angeles, the City of Angels here in sunny southern California. I'm visiting with my son, Pete. He lives in the newly (continually being) gentrified Art District, formerly an area of old factories, mills and warehouses. He has a very nice loft in one of the re purposed old buildings.

It's an interesting area. Apparently it is already or is rapidly becoming the most expensive real estate section in LA. Besides the residential renovations of these buildings there is a thriving and growing art, media production, entertainment and retail utilization of these old buildings. This goes along with a trend in many urban parts of the U.S. for people to be moving into these old, re purposed sections of major cities to be closer to work, entertainment and other facets of life.

Summer 2016 Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR)

Audio Version available - see player below

Just left my lofty perch at about 7,500' in the Coconino National Forest outside Flagstaff, Arizona where I was attending the Summer 2016 Rubber Tramp Rendezvous or the RTR as it's known by the vandwelling world. The event is typically held in January outside Quartzsite, Arizona, but there have been two (that I know of) including this current one, held in the warmer months at a high elevation where the temperatures in Arizona are MUCH more moderate. It was probably in the mid to high 70's yesterday at the RTR and it was about 120 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona, perhaps 125 miles south of Flagstaff.

The event was created by a full-time, nomadic, vandwelling fellow by the name of Bob Wells. Bob, has a very interesting background and caught my attention early on. His Web site, www.cheaprvliving.com, provided a wealth of knowledge and information that I (and likely thousands of others) found very useful. When I began my newly chosen lifestyle of living free without a permanent residence and my “tin tent” on wheels aka, “My McVansion,” much of what I learned from Bob's site helped me implement my adventure.

52 Weeks to a Simpler Life – Tip # 31 – Simply Solitude . . . You Time

Audio Version available - see player below

Do you ever feel so exhausted and drained at the end of a day you simply want to curl up in a little ball and hide in a hole or closet or anyplace away from the world?

If you do, you're certainly not alone. We live in a complicated world, a nonstop world of work, demands, pressures, stress, chores, text messages, emails, phone calls, appointments, family requirements, traffic, job responsibilities and it's endless.

Remember when we were kids and our parents had all that pressure and took care of most things for us? A big deal back then might have been homework, a class project, athletic team practice, asking someone to the prom, hoping to be asked to the prom, what to wear to the prom and chomping at the bit until you could get that drivers license.

52 Weeks to a Simpler Life – Tip #24 – Make Food Shopping Simpler

Audio Version available - see player below

This week's tip addresses one of life's more mundane tasks. In another time, long, long ago, this chore involved spears, bows & arrows, snares, nets and other hunting and fishing paraphanalia. It also involved hand made sacks, bags and jugs to gather fruits, nuts, berries, other edible vegetation and water or milk, typically from cows and goats. This “food shopping” process was very time consuming, required a lot of effort and there were potential risks involved (like you becoming the food).

Our world is different, today. We climb in a sleek “horseless carriage” in a variety of sizes and colors. We park our steed in a huge coral full of similar conveyances, we go into the “jungle” we now call supermarkets (probably better to call them super food mall jungles) and we do our hunting with a wheeled cart through rows and rows of some 40,000 to 50,000 items. We fill the cart, take it to a counter (not necessarily manned or womaned by a human any longer) exchange some colored paper or slide a piece of plastic through a slot (or, rapidly becoming more common, insert the card into a smaller slot). Push our cart to our horseless carriage in the huge coral, load our food and drive back to our house of any of numerous sizes and descriptions. The risk is a potential encounter with another horseless carriage that runs a stop sign, a traffic light or possibly a huge, whale sized horseless carriage with 18 wheels that loses control (or we do, while trying to answer a call on our modern day wireless smoke signal communication device).

52 Weeks to a Simpler Life – Tip #19 – Don't Make Your Bed!

This week's tip is simple. Not a lot to say and actually, taking action requires . . . not taking action. Sounds like a bit of a paradox, doesn't it?

So, here's the deal. Many of us grew up as the offspring of parents from the Greatest Generation or the Baby Boomer Generation. My mother was, what I termed a “neat freak.” Our home was always “just so.” Nothing was ever left laying around. Everything was always dusted. Everything had a place – PERIOD – and if it wasn't in its place there was an inquisition. I was a typical kid, an active boy, but you'd never know it if you saw my room. It looked like something from “Better Homes & Gardens.”

Yes! I was taught to make my bed everyday, without fail, no excuses, period. I carried that habit throughout my life. Then one day, I read a chapter in a small book I bought about simplifying my life. This was about 16 or 17 years ago. It told me to stop making my bed. It suggested that the days of “Leave It To Beaver,” “Father Knows Best” and “The Donna Reed Show” were past tense. Yes! I've been thinking about and working at simplifying my life that long.

Live Life

The first week of the new year just passed. Is that supposed to be significant, you may be asking? In the general scheme of things, it's another week like virtually any other week. Seven days, 168 hours 10,080 minutes and 604,800 seconds. The other day during one of those minutes I perused an email I received from my friend, Tommy, in Florida. It was titled “Mind Food” and contained a series of photos each with a caption with some interesting tidbit of knowledge. The one at the top of this article jumped out at me.

Yes, another week like any other week and the minute that I was looking at this picture with the caption reminded me of precisely why a little over seven years ago I made a sharp course correction in my life. Even though, most of my life I've, more or less, charted my own course, as I look back, I realize I was still living the life expected of me and not the one that was really true to myself. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, it epitomizes the three words, “woulda,” shoulda” and “coulda.”

52 Weeks to a Simpler Life – Tip #18 – Simplify Your Eating Habits

Eating! It's another of the necessities of life. We require food for the energy to operate our bodies and water to keep us hydrated and lubricated. At our most basic level, we are animals and have the same basic survival requirements as any other animal. The difference is, through some miracle, and I'm not going into that here, the human animal has evolved and developed our brains far beyond the basic instinctual level of all other forms of animals on the planet. We are blessed and gifted. However, in some ways, this ability to think, create and reason may actually be detrimental.

Most people love food and love to eat. The room in most homes where the most socializing goes on is, you guessed it, the kitchen. A hundred thousand years ago, or so, there were no fast food restaurants, no five star gourmet restaurants, no “wing shacks” no supermarkets, no convenience stores or even corner markets or general stores. Humans went shopping with clubs, spears, eventually bows and arrows, hooks, nets and similar instruments. Humans also were called gatherers (as in hunter-gatherers). Some members of the tiny nomadic bands would gather berries, fruits and whatever other kinds of edible vegetation was at hand. Food was simple, basic, usually raw (eventually simply cooked). The menu was simple. Life was simple.