1 lady + 1 boy = will travel

I live simply now. It’s quiet here.

At night, I like to sit on my balcony and listen to the orchestral hum of insects.

Sometimes the horn of a passing train is the backdrop to the distant purring of the ocean, in the form of passing cars.

Sometimes I just sit and think of what was, what is, what could have been, what will be, what could be.

Sometimes I just listen to the sound of my breath.

Sometimes I look up at the sky searching for just one star that man-made light has made it quite impossible for me to find.

I’ve reached the crossroads and it’s finally time to stop being a voyeur in life and time to dive into it. I won’t coast in life to reach the end of the tunnel and meet the grey hairs of regret.

I’m one of those people who need time-outs, reality checks and reminders on what is important to me in life. I imagine, most people are the same way. Our lives are busier than ever before. Important things get lost in the shuffle. Lifelong aspirations get shelved because “life gets in the way” or, as is my case, because of fear. Since we can’t hit rewind, it’s important that we remember so that we live lives without regret.

Desiderata is a poem that reminds me of just that. I’m posting it on here for the two people who haven’t come across it yet and for myself. Hopefully I’ll come across it often during site maintenance. Considering I have a total of five posts on here, I imagine that this will happen quite often.

Shout out to Max Ehrmann. Though I never knew you, I hope you were as wonderful as this poem makes you seem.

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Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Operation Quit My Job in March of 2011 still in effect.

Have not yet secured other sources of income. Have a couple of leads but nothing more than that. May have to transition the idea and consideration of living frugally into an actual method and reality of living frugally. Am hoping that living abroad and outside of my norm will make it easier to do these things. It’s easier to live on the cheap in a place you’ve never lived before because you have no standard. Stateside I’m used to my nice cars, living in more space than I need, eating out, shopping spreely. I’m used to the comforts of materialism here. I’m hoping elsewhere I’ll get used to something different. I just can’t befriend rich people with nice cars, nicer clothes and more space then they need to keep it all in.

Operation -Deal with any outstanding issues and eradicate that in myself which I am not fond of- now in effect. Not initially part of the plan but necessary before I reach my 30^th. This part of the plan, which was never actually part of the plan, is going extremely well. Able to meditate and focus in ways I have not been able to in years. Many, many years.

Savings for big trip are one-third met. Am anticipating major monies on the way. On target.

Haven’t been able to sell my stuff yet. Gave a bunch away successfully though. Did a trial run on a couple of items on Craigslist but only response received were from people in Poland.

I want my boy to spend the long, hot days of summer sleeping in and getting up to nothing good with the neighborhood kids. I want him to climb trees and build makeshift tree-houses; create exclusive clubs even if it has no members; follow train tracks; stare at the clouds. I want him to scrape his knees on grass, not on concrete. I want him to experience the natural world, not just man-made structures from the inside. I want him to experience the wonder of childhood summer each day of summer – not just on the weekends because of his mother’s crap schedule.

Our time on earth is short as it is. Why do we insist on chipping away at the one treasure we have so little of? Time.  I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to give my boy the gift of childhood summers, one I haven’t yet been able to give him, while there is still time for a few good ones left. I was lucky. Every summer of my childhood was spent with friends or cousins, or on vacation abroad or swatting flies out of boredom. Mostly not even doing much at all except having the privilege of letting my child mind roam free.

There is an art to idleness that should be appreciated. We are all over-scheduled. Kids and adults alike. Summer is about the unstructured. It’s about heat-induced laziness. It’s a freedom from the rigidity and rules  that govern us the rest of the year.

I don’t want to shuttle my boy from school to after-care during the year, to “camp” (which is a glorified sort of day care when it’s not sleep-away) just so his mama can afford to put him in all the “cares” and buy all the things he may not even require. There has to be another way of living. Working in order to maintain material consumption comes at a high cost. You become so fixated on getting the dangling carrot in front of you that you don’t realize you’re in a rotating wheel that’s at a standstill and that that carrot is outside of it, made to never be in your reach.

That’s why I’m going abroad for at least a year. To find another way of living. And if nothing else, for us to get up to nothing good on the world outside and for me to dote on my boy whilst doing it.

I much rather my kid and future kids take me for granted because I’m always there then savor every moment with me because I’m never around.

For me, the hardest thing about planning a move abroad is those that I leave behind. Voluntarily.

It’s one of the things I think about a lot. I’ve not even moved, not even really in full throttle planning mode and I’m already filled with a strange sense of nostalgia. Places that I’ve been quite averse to in the past get second glances. I begin to see the good in the tiny state I’ve been loathe to live in these past few years. For those that know me this probably sounds odd considering that a major theme of my life these past few years has been “tiny state by the sea sucks rocks”. Believe it or not, there are a few gems here. I mean, you have to be really committed on digging to find them – but still. Some gems. Semi-precious, but definitely there. Why does it take the leaving of a place to see the good in it?

The bigger thing though is the major issue of leaving my family – namely, my parents. When I was a kid, I thought my parents were pretty old. They weren’t. In fact, considering how late in life people are starting to have kids, my parents were almost adolescent. Okay they weren’t. But that sentence sounds better than “my parents were definitely not middle-aged when they had me”.

I thought such things because my parents had the rest of my siblings in their early to mid twenties. That family of five had lived quite a bit without me. And that, combined with the massive age gap with my siblings, made me feel as though my parents were well on their way to the land of senior citizens, when in reality they were hardly pushing 40.

This isn’t a post about how I thought my parents were old when they were young. It’s about the fear this false sense of reality instilled in me. Since Kindergarten, I’ve always felt as though I have to be careful, tread lightly because my parents were going to leave me soon. We all feel this at certain stages in life. It’s a fear that we will realize and eventually face. Something about having this self-inflicted burden on my shoulders since at least the age of five has drastically changed the way I have led my life. I don’t regret that but I do wish that I lived more in the present than fearing for a future that was and hopefully is many years away.

Before this post leads you to believe that I am some paragon of a daughter, I’ll stop you. I’m tough and independent. I don’t dote on my parents and have never told them I loved them. I was raised to have this kind of exterior. It’s a hard dynamic to explain, but I know that even though there are things we will never say, we love each other intensely. My parents taught me that words don’t have much value unless there are actions to support them. Some actions are so honest and obvious that words pale in comparison.

I don’t know much.I do know that when my parents leave I will regret many things. I know that you will too. We will wish that we were kinder to them and that we spent more time with them. We will ache to spend just one more moment with them. To feel them. To smell them.

That’s why leaving them voluntarily and moving to the other side of the world is the hardest thing. For me, and for my boy who adores his grandparents. But there comes a time when you have to stop walking backwards on conveyor belts and let them take you forward.

The purpose of this site is to plan my escape.

Recently, certain things have happened in my career and in my life in general to point towards changing the path I’ve been walking in this life. Every thing is pointing towards me finally taking the plunge on something I’ve been wanting to do and have been imagining I’d be doing, since I was a kiddo. And really, there’s no better time to do it than by my 30th and with my own kiddo. I have less than one year to make it happen.

The purpose of this site is to plan my escape. Escape from the 9-5 , jumping headfirst into living life – not waiting on someone to hand it to me. I do not want to live a life of regret.

***

Here is the first part of the plan. These are things I am going to do or need to figure out how to do.

1. Quit my day job. Deadline – Spring 2011.

2. Find other sources of income. I’m looking at getting a teaching cert. Also thinking about this one other idea that will remain nameless for now.

3. Figure out my boy’s schooling situation.

4. Figure out where we are headed exactly. I am definitely going to London first. I’m comfortable there and I think I will have a minimal amount of panic attacks once I realize… I’M A SINGLE MOM WITH A FIVE YEAR OLD LIVING IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY WITH NO 9-5ER JOB TO FOOT THE BILL.

The plan is to experience life in as much as the world as I can afford. We will live in each place for 6 months because we need at least that much stability and I want my boy to really experience life in new places.

If anyone has any advice on which teaching cert I should go for (celta or tefl?), please post in the comments. Nobody even knows this site exists so really, I’m just talking to myself. Now if I start posting comments to myself, giving myself advice, than Houston/Apollo/and Jehovah we have a problem.