A Mobile Existence via Land
/To briefly summarize my last post - our plan has been adjusted. Hubbie came to the realization that he was just not comfortable with living on a boat. For a while, that was the end of the story. I wanted an alternative lifestyle in one particular form, and nothing else.
After about six months, I started entertaining new ideas of how to achieve a lifestyle alternative to the daily grind. Because daily life was quickly becoming just that - a grind. I love what I do, as does Hubbie, to a point. But, I was not satisfied with spending so many life energies at the office or doing chores around the house, leaving little time and energy to do what I really wanted in life.
Don’t get me wrong - I love my house and I would love to have a beautiful deck in the backyard. But it comes down to how many weeks of work would it take to be able to afford it (I’m salaried, so anything beyond 40 is really just volunteer hours), and once I have the deck - would I be spending more time “volunteering” or actually enjoying it?
The longer I am in my house, I am tempted to make improvements and essentially get sucked into the rat-race lifestyle. Spend exorborent life energies on work, resulting in feel-good purchasing to ease the frustration of the office, thus requiring more money and therefore more work. It’s a vicious circle and incredibly difficult to break.
At the beginning of 2017, Hubbie was deeply dissatisfied with work. He ended up changing employers twice before April - once to join a start up, and again to a more mature company when the start up didn’t quite fit. As with any new employer, he finds his second wind and convinces himself that this time will be different. And as is always the case, the “honeymoon” phase wears off and the grind is back.
I tried pitching renovating a school bus into an RV, touring the country, and possibly heading south on the Pan American Highway. (Inspiration came from Mogli, Felix & Rudi from Expedition Happiness.) Hubbie wasn’t interested in all of the work it would take to renovate a bus (which in truth would be enormous!) and wasn’t romanced by the idea of a funky home on wheels. He has always wanted the cul-de-sac lifestyle... I was pushing the envelope a bit. Back again to the drawing board.
What is the true goal of this alternative lifestyle?
In my work life, we use the Agile project management style, which utilizes the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). In short, non-technical terms, the MVP is the smallest version of something that gives the biggest reward. (Which is not necessarily money; the reward is often learning.) You wouldn’t run out and build a billion widgets without first making sure people want it enough to buy it.
In non-work terms, what is my true goal in life? The core of what I want... the center of the tootsie pop, if you will.
That is a REALLY big question!
And as a very good friend of mine pointed out - at any given point in life, how do you really know if what you want now will sustain over the many years of life? Or to rephrase - if your definition of an overall life goal is too specific, does it allow for the changing desires that happen as life goes on. This can circle back to an Agile best practice - leaving room for negotiation. (I’ll stop there with the Agile references. :) For now...)
I want to live my life in a way that my grandkids talk about what I did in life with awe.
Now, when I defined it this way to my very good friend, he raised that it doesn’t really make sense to live my life based on how someone else would interpret it. And he is so right! But I’m speaking more figuratively. That felt like the most universally understood way to explain that I want to have “woahs!” for every decade in my life. That the traditional accomplishments aren’t enough for me. So, the revised MVP version is:
I want to look back on my life and feel like I used it well.
For now, this means travel and adventure. Later, who knows! Travel and adventure can happen by boat, by renovated school bus, or in a traditional RV. If the version of my goal that meshes with Hubbie’s goal comes in the form of traveling in an RV, then so be it!
And with that, a new plan is born.