Freedom Is Not Just Another Word

Personal economics played a large role in our decision to do what we are doing.

It wasn’t that we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing. We could have. Doing what we were doing to maintain a traditional sticks and bricks, in a mostly nice and comfortable neighborhood, was doable if we wanted to keep ourselves chained to the monotonous and mundane grindage inherent in what is viewed by most of the populace as the normal way to go about living life.

That grindage was more than we could accept. Especially at this stage of our lives. Continuing to grind away was simply a compromise that we were not willing to make. Why stay tied to a whipping post that demanded stripes on our backs and consumed our earnings as the reward of suffering the stinging whip. Why keep doing something that left us with pitiful little time to enjoy the better things in life that are important to us?

The economics of the deal involved a lot more than the dollars and cents of the matter. The dollars and cents part did have a place in the equation. There was a lot of important more, other than the dollars and cents involved, that prompted us to begin the reduction process those several years before we let the cat out of the bag and anyone had a real clue about what we were doing. We mentioned our interests to a few people. Most of the few stood there looking at us as if we had suddenly grown huge warts on our noses. So we kept our interests to ourselves and kept stepping the steps until it was time to jump.

The important more?

It involved the issue concerning the outflow of life-energy in comparison to the inflow of the essential life-elements that generate and create the margin within us that allows us to live as humans being rather than humans doing.  Realizing that we were coming up WAY short in this department, coupled with being fed up with the stinging whip, were the essential motivational factors that presented themselves to us.

Positive change rarely happens on its own.

Negative changes have a way of throwing themselves on us regularly. We adjust to the negative changes and often consider them part of the normal flow of life. Positive changes are calculated, the angles of adjustment carefully thought through, adjusted from time to time to keep headed in the desired direction, and stepped out one step at a time.

We will, on March 21^st, have been full-time here at this little cabin in the woods for 5 months.

It’s far from anything that remotely resembles a glamorous cabin. 

It’s definitely not something you’ll see advertised in the glitzy cabin fad advertisements. There are a few finishing projects that await our attention. But, in moving to the cabin with its overwhelming 288 square feet inside the walls (336 square feet if you figure the small front porch into the total), we are discovering a contentedness that we’ve not know before. The words, “I love our little cabin,” are spoken often here by one or the other of us.

We readily admit that culling through and getting rid of stuff … downsizing … either through yard sales or outright giving away … was a challenge that we had to step up to and meet head on. It was really tough at first … watching stuff leave. It didn’t take long for it to get easier. The more the stuff left the less encumbered we felt. And, truth be known, we still have more than we honestly need to live comfortably. This reality presents us with another challenge … another round of sorting and culling to further simplify our lives here at the cabin.

It’s paid for. It’s ours. And it affords us the opportunity to pursue important personal common interests.

One of those interests concerns this nomadic nature that the two of us share as personal character traits. This aspect of our characters was very difficult … practically impossible … to entertain as long as we were shackled to the post that I mentioned earlier.

Sure.

There were occasional little short trips and weekend excursions that we went on. But there was always that strong iron chain padlocked to our collective ankle with its other end strongly attached to something that owned us. We always enjoyed our short trips and excursions. Everybody needs a break from the humdrum and grind. What we noticed is that every short trip and excursion fed fuel to our nomadic natures … fuel that made the fire burn hotter. Short was never long enough. Short was never good enough. Short was always a compromise.

We looked at an assortment of options that would help satisfy our nomadism.

We spent years considering and studying how we might go about helping our nomadism find fruition. There are several viable options to choose from. There are a lot of people with this jones so none of us have to think we are pioneering in this area. We thought of ourselves, at first, as an odd couple when we started talking about doing this. Discovering that a lot of others are out there on the road, some of them full time and have been for a LONG time, took the oddness out of it for us. We were, in fact, studying on this only months after signing the papers on the other house in the mostly nice neighborhood. That’s when we came to the stark realization that we no longer had the freedom to simply jump and go at the drop of the hat.

This is where Fred, our paid for 1993 Chevy G20 high top vehicular friend and road home, comes into the picture. Fred is mostly ready to hit the road. The major interior conversion work has been done and we are down to simply doing some tweaking to a few things before heading out on a long and unhurried mosey.