and so it begins

Here it is.  My first post.  So, let’s begin with what has led me to this.

I’ve been following some amazing travel writers, bloggers, and adventurous backpackers, and nomad families for quite some time.  I’ve found myself wishing I could do it “just like them”.  I love to travel and explore, but I always felt like those peeps were the REAL travelers, and I just pretended to be one in random spurts.  I love the stories of people saving all their money to go travel the world for two years.  Sometimes they return home; sometimes they continue their backpacking lifestyle through income they make along the way.  I have told people that in another life THAT is what I would do.  My alter-ego is a backpacking nomad who slumbers in hostels and flows with the wind across whatever landscape calls to her spirit.  Because, clearly, THAT is the only way a person can be a serious traveler, right?  THAT is the real lifestyle for those with an incurable case of wanderlust…right?  For those people who don’t want to conform to a corporate lifestyle focused on climbing ladders and materialism, the ideal way to live out life is by grabbing a backpack, a passport, and getting the heck away from home.  Just like those amazing bloggers.  Right?

Then I realized that I was telling myself that the way to fight conforming to our mainstream society was to conform EXACTLY to the backpacker-nomad-ex-pat society and I had to do it JUST LIKE THEM.  Hmmmm….still sounds like conforming to me.

I have envied the freedom that those travel gurus have.  The ability to uproot themselves when that wild hare strikes them.  The opportunity to travel around the world with my children so they can learn and explore and meet people and LIVE, not study textbooks and take tests. Oh, to be FREE!  to be beholden to no one but one’s own conscience.  Sigh.  I envision that life, with mountains, and jungles, and temples, OH MY!

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.  Remember that.” – Albus Dumbledore.

Oh, Professor Dumbledore.  Thank you for those words of wisdom.

One day I realized that I was being amazingly silly.  Why oh why would I want to make my life look just like someone else’s?  Why would I covet something like that?  Blessings abound in my life, yet I was wishing that my blessings would change.  My father used to tell me that I could wish in one hand and, well…eh hmmm…… basically that just wishing for something doesn’t get you very far.

So I started deconstructing my wishful fantasies.  What did I want and, perhaps more importantly, why do I want it?

*Do I really want to spend a year with just my backpack and my camera?  Heck no!  I don’t like being gone from my children for much more than 3 days.  That’s not a downfall – it’s a spectacular thing!

*Do I want to be married to a free-spirit travel writer who will take me to the far edges of the earth in search of life’s great mysteries with our children in tow in order to create a television show?  Um, nope.  I want to be married to the man I love with more than my whole heart.  I could never ask him to change because I love him completely and irrevocably.  (But I am willing to convince him to join me on my wild adventures from time to time.)  He is both a Soldier and a farmer, and those are two honorable, yet highly location-dependent, lifestyles.  He also happens to be the most loyal, honorable, and amazing man that I know and I would follow him along his path no matter where that takes us.

*Do I want to travel more?  Obviously

*Do I want to quit my day job? Well, now, that depends on the day. But, majority rules so I say no.

At times I crave less responsibility.  More freedom.  Less “it’s all up to me.”  More time to devote to my passions.  Less rat-race.  More relaxation and exploration.  Less working and more creating.  More spontaneity and beauty.  Less materialism.  More spiritualism.

I don’t need to spend a month in hostels in Taiwan to get those things, to create the life I want.  I don’t need to travel across continents homeschooling my children (can you still call it HOMEschooling if you are far, FAR from home?) to instill a sense of wonder and the wider world out there.

I can do all of this. Here. Now.  One choice at a time.  God granted us freedom when he created us.  Why would I wish for my life to be like those I view through the skewed lens of social media? Because I can always find reasons excuses why I can’t.  Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.  Can’t do it their way, so I might as well trudge along and only live a shadow of a full life, and explore vicariously, enviously through those people.

No more.

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