It's so hard to admit when we've gone 6000 miles down a road that isn't heading in any direction we ever want to end up. It's tempting to go 6000 miles further just to be sure. Especially because there is so much "Rah Rah! don't be a Quitter! Reach for the Stars! Motivational jazz out there.
But one day you may look around and you may say (to nobody in particular, because you are all alone in the forest) "Golly gee. I just have this sneaking suspicion that Duck Farming is not the correct career path for me at this time" (or whatever stark realization you may have about your life)
And maybe you had a difficult time reaching that conclusion, because you worked so hard for a year building a *really* great coop. A Fibonacci spiral shaped coop. With sloping drainage. And plans in place for all sorts of Biodynamic Gardening... River Engineering in all of it's glory...
But while you were humming River Songs and daydreaming about Sonic Screwdrivers and Xenolinguistics, you began to remember that you only got into duck farming in the first place because you had a dog that needed a yard, and as long as you had a dog and a yard, you might as well be raising heritage poultry... You figured your dog would live about 3 more years, so you decided to go for it and give it your all. But then your dog died 3 months later and you were like "Fucking Fuck. Now I'm stuck in fucking Bracebridge again, the goddamn place I dislike more than any other place. Fuck! I only came to this place because I was trying to accommodate pets and livestock and debt repayment and doing the right thing..."
(Seriously. If I had known Datsun was going to die I would have just put my stuff in storage and made completely different choices...)
Ah well... Hindsight is 20/20 they say... Regardless, I always find poetic beauty in the ridiculous disasters life throws at me... After I'm done crying about it...
And I meet tons of cool people along the way! Which is hard to complain about.
...
I have a really positive attitude and I can have fun doing pretty much anything.
I can make gross-floor-scrubbing-day-where-we-pull-everything-away-from-the-walls-at-the-restaurant-and-clean-the-nastiness-that-only-gets-dealt-with-twice-a-year into a kickass party as exciting as the Royal Ball.
No offense to Bracebridge, or Floor Scrubbing, but there comes a time in a person's life when they realize that they are not doing the thing that they were put on this Earth to do, and that their soul is withering and dying as a result.
This is why I see the CRV extravaganza as a gift. At first I was like:
"oh excellent. Now I'm fucking stuck in a place I hate with no vehicle. Yaaaaayyyyyyyyy."
but so quickly I realized how nice it is to not have that P.O.S. car bleeding all the money out of my wallet, and how much I love not having to have to fuck around with oil changes and snow tires, and how much I don't miss vacuuming moldy crackers and mushed apples out of the crevices in my seats on a weekly basis. (have I mentioned the the never-ending joys of being a parent? It is never ending joy, I'm telling you.)
Now I get to mop the floor while daydreaming about life in Collingwood, a place where I can bicycle anywhere, and they have an awesome public transit system (I know this because the POS Honda CRV was broken pretty much the entire year we lived there, and I took the bus to the grocery store)
Sometimes while I'm mopping the floor I start pondering... Can music imitate the chemical structures that comprise neuropeptides? like, music is multidimensional after all... and then I drift over to some thing I read about color not existing, so I start making Venn Diagrams with Lois Lowery's 'The Giver' and then I remember that I'm engaging in the dangerous mathematics again so maybe I'll just chill out and do coloring books with my kids.
I am learning to be a master of managing my state, so It doesn't matter to me how long it takes me to find the path that goes where I want. It's not a race.
But it is important to be heading in the direction that you want to go.
Maybe your Great Aunt Hildegard says Janitorial work is virtuous. That does not mean you should be a Janitor. Maybe your Great Aunt Hildegard says Bracebridge is the bomb-dizzle because all your family lives here. That does not mean Bracebridge is the right place for you.
People are filled with opinions, most of which (in my experience) are based on fear and fallacy. The world today isn't anything like it was in the 80's, or the 50's or the 30's, and much of the conventional wisdom that served people in those decades will bury you alive if you try and apply it to life today.
That doesn't mean that kindness and patience and diligence are no longer virtuous.
It simply means you can't steer with your rear view mirror.
Tell your Great Aunt Hildegard to stick it where th
Tell your Great Aunt Hildegrad to check out some Jim Carey, Addressing a graduating class of Maharishi University of Management. Cuz he is one Rad Cat:
(spoiler: if you liked Rabo Karabekian you'll love:)
5 years ago people told me not to sell my house & travel.
They justified this with words like investment and phrases like "wherever you go there you are."
Let me tell you something:
That is all a bunch of hokey pokey. Never listen to the haters.
Every place is different. Some places you will love with all your heart.
Some places you will feel like an outcast.
Some towns are looking for that special ingredient that you and only you can add to thier beautiful salad.
Some towns are full of racist yokels.
Think of all of You Awesome People that I wouldn't even know If I had never moved on from Guelph!...
Go find the place(s) where you're heart belongs!
They justified this with words like investment and phrases like "wherever you go there you are."
Let me tell you something:
That is all a bunch of hokey pokey. Never listen to the haters.
Every place is different. Some places you will love with all your heart.
Some places you will feel like an outcast.
Some towns are looking for that special ingredient that you and only you can add to thier beautiful salad.
Some towns are full of racist yokels.
Think of all of You Awesome People that I wouldn't even know If I had never moved on from Guelph!...
Go find the place(s) where you're heart belongs!
...When you realize you've journeyed a million miles in the wrong direction:
Turn the fuck around!!! ITS NOT TOO LATE!!!
(I know this is the blog of cheesy inspiration, but seriously!)
