Time Out. . .

Despite what anyone may try to tell you, there are no guarantees.  None.  Life is like that.

You may grow up to be the most wildly successful human on the planet, having had no formal training in anything, possibly being a high school dropout, after merely having had one good idea or an astronomical stroke of luck.  You may have degrees in several sciences and have the ability to make any piece of technology sit up and beg, but struggle through life, paycheck to paycheck, never quite making it to that 'financial comfort zone' that everyone tells us we should reach before retirement.  You could live to see all your children grow up and start families of their own, enjoying your grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, or in a one in one octodecillion chance, you take a shot to the head by a piece of meteorite while taking the garbage out before you go to work in the morning.  When it comes down to it, life can't even guarantee you'll be born.

No guarantees.

Well, there is one.

Eventually, life stops.  At the risk of sounding like a bad internet meme, When the end comes, what determines if we actually lived our lives or merely existed?  With that thought in mind, I took the day off yesterday.

"Okay," most people will think.  "You do that a lot."

The fact of the matter is, I don't do it often enough.  I work a full-time job, along with working to start my own business, and of course there are also the day-to-day projects that come with raising a family and keeping a hundred year-old house from succumbing to time and the elements.  I've run my own businesses before, but this time I'm shooting for full independence.  The gloves are off.

Among all the other things I love to do in this life, my writing has always been at the heart of the matter.  Even the long stretches where I wasn't able to really put pen to paper (yes, I still write in notebooks), I was constantly jotting down notes for new stories and plot twists for those in progress.  The desire to live off of my own work has become such a dominating presence that even in my dreams I am working feverishly towards an end.  The thing that makes me chuckle the most is the reaction I get from a lot of people who follow me on Facebook and my fledgling You Tube channel.  Since I am outdoors a lot, working with various crafts, or demonstrating and explaining scientific principles, many seem to think that I am constantly in a state of leisure.  "That looks like such fun!"  I get that one a lot, but yes, it is fun.

The thing is, none of it ever ends.  One thing leads to another.  As you are finishing one story, part of your mind is already devoted to the nuances of the next.  For a writer, the simple act of sitting on a sofa is difficult work, as you are constantly devoting brain run time to your stories.  Even though I've just started with the video channel, it has already sucked me in to a similar degree.  As I'm working on one video presentation, I am thinking ahead to the next.  I have enough ideas to carry me through the winter, all the while hoping that I start bringing in enough residual income to make it worth my while to continue.

Yesterday, though, I made a choice.  No Sci Fi stories, no cookbooks, no video blogs, no home improvement projects.  The only reason I posted an Instructable was that Kim and I were up till all hours the night before, experimenting with a project she would be working on with her Girl Scouts (and with a group of about 60, you want to make sure you have every step correct).  No, yesterday we fished and cooked and shared stories.  That was enough.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from the day-to-day minutia and learn to breathe again.  I caught an article this morning about just that; how a man walked away from his New York City office job, sold everything but his van and some bare essentials, and now lives as a nomad, touring the country and, apparently, surfing for a living.  That may seem a little drastic, but by comparison, my taking the day off to go fishing doesn't seem like much of a stretch.  When you stop to think about it, the average person with a full-time job will spend between 2000-2600 hours at work over the course of the year.  That's 30% of the year spent trying to afford the other 70%.  It's easy to see how the time can get away from us.  Before too long, the kids are grown and you're wondering why you didn't go fishing more often; especially since you can't now, because you have to work through your retirement to pay for their astronomical college tuition.

Yes, money is a factor.  Until life is like 'Star Trek' and people no longer use money, getting enough to be comfortable, or even just get by, will be a driving force in our lives.  My point through all of this is to find a way to live that you like.  Thirty percent of your year is an awful long time to spend doing something you dislike while daydreaming about the things you want to do.  We may not all be able to do what the New York fellow did and walk away from it all, but I have found that life is easier to understand when we just take a step back and ask ourselves, "what could I have done better today, and how can I do it tomorrow?"

I wonder how he affords his gas?