Before everyone goes crazy about me moving back to California, I’m staying in New Hampshire. I realize the last few posts about the west coast would leave some of you to think I’m going back to California or maybe even home to Florida. My sister is graduating from high school next month and my dad just opened a new gym. It would be nice to be close to them again but let’s all take a deep breath when I say that I love it up here near the Canadian border away from civilization and among the trees.
Unfortunately though, the move is a necessary one as there comes a point n your life when things have to get real. I’m at that point and it’s pretty unclear how I’m going to handle it or if I’m going to squander it away just like my previous years. Maybe squander is the wrong word? I write a lot about sustainability on this blog. What’s sustainable about the way things are? What’s sustainable about my diet, the money and time I spend on beer and hobbies of “fancy food” and the people I hang out with and the travel I’m making and my sleep schedule. Is it sustainable to watch as much TV as I do or video games I play or alcohol I drink? Nope.
Very little about my activities today are sustainable from the angle of financial freedom, health, sanity and balance.
I’m not going to make too many drastic changes though because drastic alterations of a lifestyle don’t become habits. We all know this. I’m not just talking about diet here, I’m talking about a fundamental shift in how I approach things asking myself, “am I going to regret this in 12 months?” That is coming down to relationships, what I consume and how I spend my time.
The first step in changing my attitude is a change in scenery. It’s worked for me before. I hope over time this feeling recedes but it just seems like the past year was this weird blur of sitting still. I developed some bad habits, explored some new sides of myself that were not for the better and I focused a lot on work and a lot on beer and it wasn’t sustainable. The 2013 year wasn’t a waste but I wasted some of it on really stupid activities and when I say 2013 I really mean the last 12 months leading up to today.
I’m moving in a week…well tomorrow I go to San Francisco for work then I come back and move then I go to Europe for 2 weeks and come back in May to unpack everything and start a new life.
I’m renting a house on a lake with a boat dock that costs half what I’m paying now in rent (from $1600 to $800). I’ll have less privacy, less space, no yard at all and no spot for a BBQ or meat smoker. I won’t have room to home-brew or have my full size kegerator. The house and kitchen are too small to host parties and the setup is being tailored for a small handful of activities.
- Sleeping & working
- Running (smooth pave road right outside of the house that goes for miles)
- Bicycling
- Swimming
- Kayaking (ordered a kayak today)
- Fishing
- Reading on my porch overlooking the lake
- Making simple meals
- Making coffee
- Having 1-2 friends over at max at any given time on my sleeper sofa
That’s it. No farm animals, pets, parties and beer tastings. I barely have enough room for the beer I have in my cellar. I’ll have a small bit of room for a kegerator to hold two kegs on tap. The fridge I have can barely hold food much less beer. It’s small, not full-size.
The new place is just a few miles from my gym and the Co-Op. I’m going to go back to making vegetable juice every morning. I’m going to spend more time at the office and the gym. It’s a total consolidation of the space I have in order to force me to drop hobbies that cost way too much money and pick up good hobbies that make me go outside and do things with other people.
The goal is that in 2-years, I buy a log cabin with land to have a farm and live off of that land. I’ll give you an example of the effort and time required in that dream though. Yes money will be important to have but when you think about surviving off your land that means your farm animals will be living a few feet above the well where your water comes from. Things like this are a concern. This means a lot of my time will be spent reading more about homesteading and how to make a life where my spending budget beyond a car and trips to Tractor Supply store are just the taxes that I owe on the land. It’s a dream I’ve held on to for a while and one I’d like to realize one day.
Living a healthy life with a solid savings account and working an Internet job are what’s needed to achieve that dream. The rest is book knowledge that I’ll apply when the time comes.
Step one is moving to this new place. It might be lonely sometimes and it will be hard work to not have the amenities and budget for spending I did in 2013 but I think the result will be very positive. I’m looking forward to paying off my Golf R this year and saving for a new one next year while still saving for my future. Things like this are important and riding my bike and hiking are free activities that I plan on doing more of.
Thanks for reading.
