{"id":715,"date":"2011-06-30T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T05:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mbear.ca\/?p=715"},"modified":"2014-05-24T18:22:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T18:22:44","slug":"second-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Wrapping Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
The morning sun is coming in through the bedroom window, flooding the mountains and valleys of the bed covers with light and shadow. \u00a0I sit in bed with a cup of coffee, savoring this last, beautiful morning, putting off the final good-bye.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/address>\n
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We finished yesterday with the packing, and packing and packing\u2026\u00a0 Endings give you such a different perspective than beginnings.\u00a0 Sorting through memories, deciding which ones to keep and which ones to put in the industrial strength garbage sack in the middle of the floor.\u00a0 Some memories just get too old to pack up and unpack one more time.\u00a0 They outlive their juice.\u00a0 There comes a point when some memories stop being filled with sweetness and become\u2026 something else.\u00a0 Anchors, maybe.\u00a0 Into the bag with it.\u00a0 Make room for something new.<\/i><\/address>\n
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<\/em><\/address>\n
Now, at last, all our earthly belongings have been either given away or are tidily packed away in boxes, securely taped shut.\u00a0 Stacked and waiting for the moving truck we go to pick up today.\u00a0 Coming from a lifelong history of living in or close to a city, it seems odd we’ve just taken it in stride that we\u2019ll have to drive an hour and a half to pick up the U-Haul truck today and an hour and a half back before we can start loading it with our menagerie of boxes.\u00a0<\/i><\/address>\n
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Remote appeals to me, though.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the things I\u2019ve loved about being here. \u00a0It feels freer, wilder, somehow safer.\u00a0 Easier to breathe.\u00a0 It\u2019s helped me see life differently – how I fit in it, how I want to fit into this amazing world.\u00a0 It\u2019s been about a different way of being.\u00a0 Slower, more aware, more awake.<\/i><\/address>\n
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But there\u2019s something else I hadn\u2019t anticipated about living in a small, remote place.\u00a0 The issue of money.\u00a0 Income. Cash-flow.\u00a0 Some means by which to pay the rent, buy food.\u00a0 It\u2019s sublime if you have a job, but not if you don\u2019t.\u00a0 Since I haven\u2019t been able to find gainful employment (and believe me, I\u2019ve scoured every possibility) here in this small village on the wild, west coast of an island I\u2019ve come to love, then where?<\/i><\/address>\n
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Money.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tritely deemed it a necessary evil most of my life while in pursuit of things more meaningful, more fulfilling.\u00a0 Maybe because the less quantifiable things like meaning and fulfillment seem more attainable, and I get to redefine them at will as I grow and change.\u00a0 I like to think of them as flexible.\u00a0 They don\u2019t fit on a spreadsheet, and believe me, I know my way around a spreadsheet. \u00a0They\u2019re more about being than about performing.\u00a0 I like that. \u00a0<\/i>But what if the whole money thing is about something else?\u00a0 What if it\u2019s actually just another thing that pushes me to learn and grow?\u00a0 Forces me to keep trying and experimenting and looking for new possibilities and ways and chances, because the rent still has to be paid, and we still have to eat.\u00a0 What if the real<\/span><\/b> issue is about something else?\u00a0 What if inside it\u2019s greedy, shallow face, it\u2019s really about pushing us to find meaning and fulfillment?\u00a0<\/i>Choosing to retire early and live on a small, fixed income is a game changer from how we\u2019ve lived our lives up until now.\u00a0 Being firmly ensconced in corporate North America for over 30 years affords a different lifestyle than the one we\u2019re about to embrace.\u00a0 <\/i><\/address>\n
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Oh, didn\u2019t I mention taking an early retirement was the only way we could find to survive from day to day until we figure out something else?\u00a0 Social Security and a very small pension ravaged by the unscrupulous economics of the last decade aren\u2019t much to live on, but it pays really cheap rent & buys some groceries. \u00a0<\/i>If we can find a way to live within these reduced means so we don\u2019t have to jump back into the rat-race again, suddenly it becomes completely about the pursuit of living life differently instead of about career management, a nicer house, a newer car. \u00a0<\/i>Maybe that\u2019s putting a proverbial, rose-coloured spin on the \u2018necessary evil\u2019, but maybe there\u2019s a kernel of truth in it. There\u2019s power in truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. \u00a0<\/i>I want that power in my life.\u00a0 I want to be on speaking terms with it.\u00a0 Intimate.\u00a0 Engaged.\u00a0 That willingness to look at life for what it really is and discover new realities. There\u2019s probably going to be a lot more to this next adventure than I expected.\u00a0<\/i><\/address>\n
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The morning sun is coming in through the bedroom window, flooding the mountains and valleys of the bed covers with light and shadow. \u00a0I sit in bed with a cup of coffee, savoring this last, beautiful morning, putting off the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":722,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}