How I wound up on this mountain... PART 1.
This all starts with a gang member, an attempted stabbing, and the follow up fentanyl foil in our yard...
Wait, wait, hold on... What is this story about? Well, as it turns out, its about how I wound up on this mountain and why I chose to live here, in the middle of the woods, thirteen miles from town. I figure this one has several parts, so strap in and buckle up and stay locked in, there are going to be a number of these.
This is going to be a longer story, so lets back up and start in the "way back then" so the context will be firm and in place before we arrive in the "here and now". Lets go back to the beginning of this and then I will walk you through the process that led us (me and the wife) to where we are.
Context is everything, so lets define that context, bare with me while I walk you from through a few years of my life. This part, or more specifically these parts, are my origin story.
Everyone has that friend, or friends who make the claim that they want to just quit their job, sell their things, and move to the woods. Very few people actually do it. Those people brag about it all the time, they refer to themselves as "wilderness people" or "off grid people", you know, survivalists. They were also the people that said we were crazy when we actually did it.
A large number of our friends openly mocked us and called us insane. We had almost no support, and what little we did have was overshadowed by the sarcasm of naysayers. Mostly, I think, because our move inconvenienced them. Even our own family members thought we were being stupid. Sometimes, we agreed with them, but we'll get to that.
We (me, my wife, and our dogs) were looking for an escape, we'd worked hard and we'd played the game we were told to play- you know, that one you play so you can have the dream. The white picket fence, the car, the house etc., even the two and a half kids. I won't sugar-coat this, we knew there were better things to want. We chased the status quo because it was the path we'd trained for. We knew how to get there. It was something we didn't have to map out for ourselves, and a perfectly acceptable goal at the time. It was a dream we knew enough about to make happen. However, when we got all of the things we'd been told to want, it turns out they weren't the things we really wanted- especially when there were extras to that dream. Evil little bastard stow-aways that sour it. Things like the H.O.A. who thinks your grass is too long, the shitty boss sitting in the Mercedes you paid for. All the damn backbiting co-workers, and no vacations or travel. Those kinds of things.
Both of us had owned houses, both of us had worked in corporate America, and both of us felt hallow because of it. I had gone the route of web design, I.T. and an internet career. She had gone the route of finance, mortgage, banking, and retail. None of that had ever made us giddy to be alive. In fact, a person really needs to numb themselves out to be happy with those things. Sure, it got us by, but that was it. The reality was we were sick of just getting by. We were sick of the pitfalls to that dream and the ever increasing costs of having it. The costs to our futures, our health, our happiness, and even our spirituality. None of it was fulfilling.
#livingthecliche'
When someone else sets the ideals and the narrative to your life, they are the ones who have the control, not you. When they train you to be a button pusher and you accept those perimeters, you are the one with the power to shirk that control. However, if you remain ignorant to that simple fact, you will never get out from under it and it will continue to make you miserable. When you play by the house rules, the house always wins. Spoiler alert, the house is usually run by some boss named "Craig" who golfs on Wednesdays, bangs his secretary on D.L. and embezzles his retirement from your paycheck.
I don't know why it took so long for us to understand this, but it did. I guess there is a learning curve to life. One a person can't see until after they make the mistakes everyone told them not to make.
It went on this way for longer then either of us wanted to admit. Then one day we decided it wasn't the life we wanted. Something had to change. We had to change. We had outgrown that shitty dream, we wanted something much more magical. At the very least, something bigger and more our style. Fuck that white picket fence, that goddamned Lexus, and those 2.5 kids.
So, lets go there, more specifically then. It was 2018, most likely a Tuesday since these things always seem to happen on Tuesdays...
I'll start with the gang member and the "near stabbing", the thing that lead us to the decision that we needed to move. But like I said, I am breaking this into small digestible pieces, so stay tuned.
Up next, part 2, "Hey hon... some dude tried to stab me out in the yard, is our insurance up to date?"
Cheers!
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