It is -17F outside as I write this….
Today I sign the purchase agreement on my house. As of then, I have till March 2 to vacate the premises and put all my possessions into storage.
22 days to box up my entire life and put it in a garage. 22 days to tie up all the loose ends I have left over in my life. 22 days to say goodbye. 22 days to get get ready.
Its seldom that there are objective days when your life changes and you know it ahead of time. On March 1st I’ll go to bed in my house. On March 2nd I’ll go to bed somewhere else, because I’ll no longer have a bed of my own. That’s a pretty big change. I’ll have no home.
As I meet new people, the subject of my trip always comes up and the reaction I get is almost always the same. Their jaw drops and they say things like “That is so cool” or “I wish I could do that”. I have to say I’ve been very surprised at everyone’s reaction. I’m in a very unique position. Many people who might want to make such a trip seldom have the means. Those with the means usually can’t break away. Over the course of your life you have responsibilities such as school, debt, a job, a mortgage, a spouse, children, and a host of other things that come along with contemporary life. You can’t just walk away from the things you’ve committed yourself to and once those commitments are gone, you probably have accumulated several more.
So I sit on the precipice of something very very few people get to experience in their lives: total and absolute freedom. No mortgage. No job. No wife. No kids. No parents in a nursing home. No mortgage. No debt. No anything. Complete and absolute freedom to go wherever and whenever you wish.
I’ll be honest and say this is pretty appealing. Its something that even the Bill Gates’s of the world never really get to experience. They have too many responsibilities and obligations. However, this doesn’t come without some cost. You have no support network behind you. Everyone of the things I listed above can be seen as a negative: no home, no job, no family, no friends, no security whatsoever. You are on your own baby, in every sense of the word.
Now that the clock as started, I’ll be posting a lot more and you should see some major changes here in the next few weeks.
Don’t worry. Everything will be documented. Extremely documented.
Well, at least you have the random collection of people posting comments on your blog, right? ;)
Anyway, I hope you follow through on your plans to create a great deal of footage of this experience because you are right that is unique — and potentially an interesting thing to share. Though, I could also see how attempting to “capture” it could eat into the feeling of freedom.
I had an old room-mate who basically dropped out of society for a couple years and toured around Asia, living on a few dollars a day. He refused to take pictures and communicated with his Western life only every few months because he didn’t want to feel encumbered.
On the other hand, you could be about to create one of the best personal documentaries of modern times… (if you are going to do it, be sure to get film of you “leaving” your MN life as you pack up and say goodbye)