It's been a long time a coming...

I am at that cross roads in my life right now.  I need to buy a daily driver and my mechanic keeps telling me to buy a Honda.  I am considering it.  But when I mean I am at a cross roads, I am talking about a huge life change and style. 

I am an artistic soul and a bit of a fringe dweller at that.  I’m not married, have no kids and have everything I own in a 10 x 10 storage container.  I don't own a home any longer, so I have no big mortgage tying me down.  I rent rooms in beautiful homes with fantastic people these days.  I work contract jobs, so I basically can work anywhere and online "Virtually" anywhere in the world via the internet.  It’s still really expensive living here in the beautiful San Francisco bay area. 

I can’t really afford to buy the land I want just yet to build my shipping container home on.  I have been sitting at a desk for 50 hours a week, full of stress and anxiety at a corporate job for too long.  My back is killing me from sitting so much.  I work with over achievers who work and travel so much, they never see their own family's.  I work weekends and am on call 24 hrs. a day.  My one eye keeps twitching. I'm around people who own expensive homes and cars and hate what they do for a living to keep the lifestyle going.  This is no way to live.

I want more time, less stress, still have a comfortable lifestyle, but with more freedom to live my life.  All I dream about is designing and creating in my workshop.  What made me really begin to think about my life seriously was so many close friends of mine dying all around me, life is so short.  Someone posed the question to me a couple weeks ago,

What if you had only 5 years to live?  What would you do differently?

I really thought about it.  This has made me think much differently than before.  Think about it for a minute, what would you say?  I was surprised at my answers.  
 

1.    I sure would not want to work full time anymore. 

2.    I would like to see the country and do, see and taste all of things I have not before. 

3.    I would like to hear more music and see outstanding musical performers.

4.    I want to swim in a waterfall and savor every second of my life to the fullest. 

5.    I would like to spend more time with the people I love, quality time. 

6.    I would record the album I have procrastinating about. 

7.    I sure as hell would stop dieting and living for tomorrow. 

8.    I would have to start living more NOW.

Well how would I do that, now?  I have a small budget and saved up enough to buy a moderately priced daily driver.  Did I mention how much I hate to commute in traffic every day?  What the hell am I doing all this this for? 

How can I semi-retire early and start living a better quality life?

This is why I fell so in love with Charles Stephen Russell, God rest his soul.  Charlie did just that.  He was the FREE RANGE CHICKEN someone told him once.  He just changed his life and lived in his VW Art Car Bus for a few years, saved up some money and then bought a shipping container and flopped it down in Slab City, CA.  He lived free.  He worked online and took high end computer projects during the hot Niland, CA summer months and came back to the bay area. He would stay with me and visit friends. 

Around his shipping container, he built his own amazing compound of art, and beauty ~ EAST JESUS.  He bought me a little vintage teardrop trailer and fixed it up for me there.  I would come and visit him.  He was the truest maverick and renegade and one of the most amazing men I have ever known.  He lived free up to the day he died.  I haven’t dated anyone since Charlie.  I really do need to start living my life, heart included.

I feel like it’s time to start living and savoring the time that I have here, now!    I need the time, and the money.  I am looking at the possibilities of Living on Less through Voluntary Simplicity. I have a couple things in mind for my next steps. 

...but I know a change is gonna come.

and it's now.