Several years ago, I watched as an old acquaintance and his family moved their life from a house on the east coast to to a boat in the Pacific. At first I laughed a little, since we knew each other from Air Cadets and here he was learning to sail. Watching his journey, I was reminded of a book (Dove) that I had read back in Jr. High, and how the idea of sailing across the world had filled me with excitement. Could I do that too? At that time, my sights were rigidly fixed on the sky as I was certain that I wanted to become a pilot. Sailing could wait, there would still be time.
Since then I have done many different things, some I've been good at, others not so much. Most of them I have done because of the needs of life, not because I really wanted to do them. It is not a bad thing to have a work ethic that allows you to stick to doing what you can, but traditionally the expectation is to cut off the hopes and dreams of childhood and become a pragmatic and practical contributor to society. The down side to this is that there is little passion, and what passion is left is carefully limited to "reasonable" expectations. I found I've been busy with just living, not trying to live the dream. The world didn't become less interesting or exciting, I did.
Why? Why should I accept that as the culmination and objective of life in one of the richest societies the world has known? I am challenging the silent scripts of what a successful life looks like. A steady job, a house, a retirement plan etc. all look really safe, but is it really? Things change, and we have been exempt from much of the ill effects here in north america for decades. I watched my grandfather reach retirement, and his health fell apart both physically and mentally. Why would I keep working hard for that? I'm still young enough to go out and do those things I dreamed of doing; but I will have to give up many of the comforts we have been told are "baseline".
I don't have an office job, but it doesn't mean that it feels any different than the opening scenes of Joe vs The Volcano. the feeling that something is sucking the life out of you, that there must be something "more". That this can't be all there is to this gift of life. Is it so surprising that mental health issues are on the rise despite the huge benefits we have in modern life? I don't want to be another statistic on a spreadsheet, just another name on some genealogy website. As the title character in Mr. Magorium stated, now is the time for me to build what happens before the "He died".
So a shift of focus and direction is needed. I want to record my thoughts and this journey as much for myself as for others. Some things will work, some things will not. I will try to make a list of my staring points, so that no one thinks I'm some kind of super-human or that I have some secret cash reserve that will step in and make it all work. I have watched others do this from other walks of life, I'm wanting to show it is an option for the traditional blue collar man as well.
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