Am I Willing To Change?

My husband and I are fans of YouTube documentarians Gone With The Wynn's. Last night, we watched their most recent video about catching lobsters for dinner. I'll link the video below for reference.

After watching the video, I told my husband how I wanted to live our lives the same way. Casually, he tells me: "We'll have to give up a lot in order to have that life."

Wow... I haven't gotten it off my mind since. We've always talked about living in an RV, but we've never acknowledged how much we would give up in the process. But when it comes to our current situation, would it really mean giving up a lot of norms?

The American dream for my generation is to go to college, score the big job, buy the best house, get married, and have kids. All of my peers have grown up to do the same thing. And it's what I've dreamed of my entire life.

How come we have yet to settle down and do all of these things?

For one, I haven't found that one job I loved. I've been in and out of every industry imaginable. The only ones I enjoyed were usually the part-time jobs or the ones which paid very little. My absolute favorite was working at an event arena doing housekeeping and conversions. It was back-breaking work, but I looked forward to work every day. I didn't even mind the late night hours. Of course, it was inconsistent work and only paid $10/hour. It's hard to pay off your student loans and keep your rent paid in full with that type pf income.

Second of all, my husband and I have always been restless. We've dreamed of living all over the place: the east coast, Florida, Alaskan Bush, and even over in Europe. There is so much to see and experience, and we don't want to miss out on it. Simply vacationing in these places doesn't offer the same experiences compared to actually living there.

Third of all, and probably the most obvious, we can't possibly have a house or settle down if we want to basically live everywhere.

I've always had a desire in the back of my mind to live in a renovated school bus or RV. Having our home on wheels means we can travel with ease to wherever we want and have those experiences we desire. It's why we've pushed for minimalism and downsized much of our possessions. It's why we're paying off our debt so our money can go towards these dreams.

After putting all of these thoughts and events together, I realized how willing I am to commit to this lifestyle, and how I'm on my way to changing a lot of things so we can have this life.

My Time In Minnesota::Growing Up

My husband and I are planning to move to Florida within the next few months. It will be our sixth move since we started living together.

Yes. Sixth move!

We have done this song and dance five other times already. A majority of the moves were voluntary, with one of the latest being involuntary after getting laid off.

I decided to reflect back at each location, starting with the first of them all.

Growing Up in Minnesota
My time growing up and then living as an independent adult in Minnesota left me with two vastly different experiences. I will get into those details in a future post. In this post, I want to reflect back on my time growing up.

Including my time during and after college, I lived in the same home with my parents for 23 years. We resided in a small town on a small plot of land in the country. We didn't have a farm, but we had several acres to explore.

We were working class and always had enough money to survive. We didn't have cable TV or new cars, and we didn't take vacations like other families did. We grew a lot of our own food, and our family gatherings usually took place behind our shed by the bonfire pit.

We didn't come from power or wealth. In small towns, people look for familiar last names. If you came from the right last name, you were going to go far socially. Ours was one of those generic last names. You heard it, assumed it was from one family, but it was from another. Long story short, people stopped caring about my last name and just let me fall into the woodwork.

School
My graduating class had around 80 students total. We were the largest class in our 7th - 12th grade school, with the latest batch of 7th graders totaling just under 50 students. We were a Title I school and often suffered from lack of funds for most activities.

People stuck to their groups, just like they would in schools much larger. Many of classmates would lie by claiming there were no cliques in our class. The cliques existed, but the students with the last names of power had the biggest and best clique of them all. While the rest of us struggled for our grades and achievements, they were held in highest regard with little to no work put forth on their behalf.

I can't express complete bitterness towards it all. I accepted that I had to work much harder than everyone else, and I tried to do so with a smile on my face. It paid off, since I was voted 'Most Optimistic' during my senior year.

Activities
When I first started high school, the theater department struck my interest after watching upper classmen perform classics like Fiddler on the Roof and The Music Man. The end of my ninth grade year, after my band teacher told me he had great plans for me and my talents, we found out that he and our choir teacher were moving on.

Around that time, the money ran dry for our arts department. Instead of spending my last three years of high school participating in culturally rich activities, we were left with one over-worked band/choir director who only did the bare minimum. We were also left performing budget plays found in the back of the theater catalog.

I still desired to have that creative outlet, and continued to participate in mediocre productions of unknown scripts to be performed for less than fifty audience members.

Social Life
My town had less than 600 people. There were more barns than business establishments. The closest hang-out town was 30 minutes away. Activities to participate in locally were to die from boredom, drink to excess, or have unprotected sex.

I had a core group of friends that went against the standard. If we weren't up for hanging out in someone's basement watching movies, we would drive the 30 minutes to grab a bite to eat or sneak snacks into the movie theater. When the local music festival was in town, we set up our lawn chairs in the Wal-Mart parking lot to socialize with festival attendance who were camping there for the night.

Why Did I Leave?
My existence in that small town was merely satirical. There was something comedic about a creative girl who wears skirts over her jeans in a town filled with old-way farmers. When I moved back home after college, I struggled to find a job because people simply couldn't see anything but a little 15-year-old version of me. They meant well, but no one was taking me seriously.

I knew I wanted to explore the world and see everything I could. I wanted to fly in a plane and go see what was on the other side of the ocean. No one really shared my passion. Those who shared my passion had moved on and lived elsewhere.

Responsible Freedom

I've been trying to put a label on our latest life journey. Yes, labels are bad in some cases. In this case, I want to find a label so I can find an explanation. The best I could come up with is Responsible Freedom.

It sounds like a huge contradiction, but allow me to explain.

Freedom to me is freedom from a boss and an office. I want to be my own boss. I don't want to be on a regimen of 40-hour work weeks, overtime, and commuting until I'm able to retire. Basically, I want to use my talents to earn my money for myself.

Responsible Freedom to me means I am able to make enough money to keep our basic needs met without compromising my own time. I don't care to miss out on life simply because I had to work an extra shift to keep a credit card paid. It seems like an insulting way to spend my time. For now, I am a professional job-hopper to attack my debt. Once I can make it on my own with my creative abilities, I won't depend on these jobs anymore.

I've tried at-home based businesses, but it still felt like I was restricted by guidelines and brand standards I didn't ever agree with. In this case, I am better off seeking my own way. My blog will document each of these steps along the way.