When I told my family that I had decided to quit my job, sell my condo, buy a motorhome, and travel around the country for as long as my savings account would allow, they were surprised to say the least. There was excitement and disbelief. It was all very positive. This is so exciting! I can’t believe you’re doing this! How long will you be gone? Where are you going? Can we visit you along the way? They knew my wife and I might come back or we might have found someplace we wanted to live. My father lacked a little of the excitement. He was perhaps more…skeptical? He’s old school and traditional. Extremely old school and traditional. You might ask how old school and traditional can he be with a gay daughter? And you would be right to question that but that’s for a whole other post. His mentality was kind of like, Okay, go for it, have fun, be careful, and when you decide to come back to the real world we will be here and hopefully your jobs will too. He didn’t really get it.
What the hell is the real world anyway? And why isn’t what I was planning on doing a part of it? Why has life been summed up to work, owning a home, starting a family, student loans, retirement accounts, and having “fun” on the weekends? I don’t get it. And I don’t like it. Actually, I loathe it. That is not a life to me and I refuse to make it MY real world. After traveling and living on the road I knew that despite where we needed up, we were not going to fall victim to ordinary life again. In my soul and gut I knew I could not possibly accept it, not after being exposed to the beauty of freedom and the joy of living a life I never imagined was possible. But how?
There is just no getting around it, you need money. At least I believe you do anyway. Because I don’t want to live on the streets or eat food out of dumpsters. That’s not exactly the alternative lifestyle I’m imagining. But I believe you can live a life where you get to do the things that give you the most joy. I believe you should make money specifically to do those things. I spent all of my twenties making and saving money for things that gave me no joy. I bought a condo that stressed me out, I bought a brand new car that got me to and from work every damn day. And I was saving money because I thought that I should. I was saving it for the future but for what in the future? A nicer, bigger condo? A newer, more expensive car? A retirement account to be thankful for in 40 years? Those things might give some people joy, and if they do then great! By all means, save away. I am not saying there is anything wrong with it, but I was doing those things and I was miserable. I never did anything I wanted to. I never went back to trapeze class because it was too expensive even though I thought about it all the time. I never took days off of work to go for hikes, or go to museums or to the beach. I never enjoyed nature even though I felt it pulling at my heart strings.
You know, it’s funny. People always say, Wow, what a dream! I wish I could do that! And my response is, YOU CAN! People said to me, How could you have left your family? I could never leave my family! And my response is, YES YOU COULD! I truly believe the thing that made me leave and pursue my ideal world was passion. If anyone isn’t doing it, they don’t want it bad enough. I had such passion and fire inside of me, if I didn’t leave I felt I literally would have died. Of course I knew I would miss my family if I left, but the alternative was a much darker outcome for me. And what I discovered was so profound. It was something I was never going to get by staying put just so that I could make it to Sunday dinner at my parents.
I discovered MY real world. And it did not involve living in a house with a massive mortgage, owning a nice car, having twenty pairs of jeans, new bathing suits every summer, working like a slave, stressing over bills, or waiting until the friggin weekend to do what I wanted to do. I discovered simplicity and minimalism. I listen to my friends talk about selling their starter homes for something bigger, and I cannot wrap my head around 1500 sq. feet of space not being enough. Nothing is ever enough. Everyone strives for the same things and they are never happy enough. They say they wish they could do this or that, but they are never driven enough to do it. So they settle and go through life being complacent . Complacency does not lead to happiness or fulfillment.
So how do you do it? How do avoid falling into the rat race? How do you prevent yourself from living just to work and working just to pay for your mortgage, loans, car payment, childcare, etc.? There isn’t one answer. Everyones quest for their real world will be different because everyones ideal real world is different. Something that helps is knowing what you don’t want, what you do want and what you are willing to do for it. I can’t say never, but for now I know that my wife and I refuse to be slaves to a mortgage or to jobs that leave us no time to do what makes us feel alive. We don’t need much. We don’t find value in “things”. And when you can let go of all the materialistic shit and focus on the experiences that truly fulfill you, you can stop living for a paycheck. After all, nature is always there, right outside your window, free of charge.