Simple Self-Derived Change
September 10, 2010
Filed under:The Number Nine
As I sit here in the pre-dawn hours of a sleepless morning, I find that I embrace the simpler things much more naturally and easily than I do in my normal waking day. Colours, though muted in the faint light, seem sharper, and the steam from a mug of hot tea entrances me for just long enough of a moment that I only stir when I hear the piercing call of a morning bird, announcing to all of his friends that he is awake and starting his day. The thought of his hapless obnoxiousness brings a slow smile to my sleep-flattened face.
My big fluffy bathrobe is a bit clunky for a morning like this and a worn and ill-fitting flannel shirt greets me like an old friend. Despite the chill in the air and my slightly itchy eyes, I’m happy to be here now, in this moment, experiencing the simpler things and almost nothing else. It’s… very centering.
It seems like it should be monumental that today I take one of the first steps along the path of changing my life in yet another major way. So monumental that I’m awake when I shouldn’t be and feeling so simple and real that I just had to write. It actually doesn’t feel monumental though.
Maybe that’s because I’ve been through this before, and in way that is both cynical and warmly comforting, I know now that monumental moments only happen in retrospect and in movies. The clarity of thought to recognise when you might be in a Monumental Moment though, that is the kind of thing that is rare enough to want to sit and stare at tea steam, listen to birds, and write.
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By the time that I rounded the high-sided corner sidewalk in front of the IGA, my black Chuck Taylor’s would already be dry. This fact always amazed me regardless of the number of times that I’d experienced it during my formative years. I never wore socks in them, due in part to the fact that I never really had very many socks but mostly because no one ever told me I should. And because it was more comfortable, though I don’t think I ever consciously thought that.
My pre-teen brain could hardly comprehend much beyond the next task in front of me and I spent a good majority of my mental energies making sure I wasn’t short on something I might need later, or unprepared in some way for something that was likely to happen. Having dry shoes always lifted some worry off of me just in case I needed to go somewhere where wet shoes would be frowned upon. I think the only reason I never compulsively carried an umbrella is because it never rained.
Only as an adult do I realise the kind of compulsive, anxiety-ridden behaviours that I had while growing up. I suppose that never having any real victories in my life taught me that utter failures were always a distinct possibility. The lessons and Good Things to be taken from any given experience were only something that I learned about after finishing High School and was out in College living on my own. In fact it was only in moments like the one this morning, where I have the time and gathered thoughts to write, that I ever truly learned from the more subtle experiences in my life.
Bumbling along hapless and happy, for the most part, I’ve always been just me. Being me isn’t something I remember making a conscious decision to do either, it’s just something I’ve always done. I wandered around the first half of my life not trying to win, but definitely making a concerted effort not to lose. This meant that risk was, for the most part, managed and life’s direction was left largely up to other, more trusted, sources and rarely to myself.
It was only in the Spring of 1997 that I decided to make a change in my life that was purely derived from me, and I left Texas after 4 years of school with everything I owned packed into my shitty ‘88 Ford Ranger and my dog Mazzy hanging out the window. I moved into my mom’s basement and started school again because I knew that I needed a degree to almost guarantee Not Losing at a job during the course of my life. For the most part, I bumbled along with everything else, just being me.
In Spring ‘99 I made the second self-derived change in my life and selected a major, a degree path, a relative career. It worked, and I found something I was suited for, and though I still had many hoops to jump through for that degree, I was satisfied. And for the most part, I still bumbled along with everything else, just being me.
Too much bumbling and Not Losing meant that life offered little in the way of reward and conversely the little failures started to stack up into big ones. True Risk finally started to become something very real in my life, as real as True Reward, and I probably appeared to be making an ass of myself to many that were close to me. The truth is, is that I was actually being more me than I ever had. Self-derived change #3 found me purchasing a plane ticket to a point on the planet that was almost the exact polar and geographical opposite to where I was. The rest of that story, as they say, is history.
And an amazing history it is too. Though much like Monumental Moments and their reality, the reality of any story is that it really doesn’t have an ending, and the next chapter in life found me with more to lose than I ever had before. I worked extra hard in my life at Not Losing then, so much so that I lost sight of Winning.
The impetus of the next self-derived change came from my wife, and newborn baby daughter, and an honest and sincere look at my life as it was. Just as Love was a huge motivator to chuck it all and start a new life in a faraway land, it took the same to call a halt to Racing Rats and Working for The Man. With $60 in my pocket and a family to feed, I started my own company, and promptly lived in poverty for the next 8 months.
Living within the bounds of a series of Self-Derived Changes, all the while still being as me as ever, has actually opened Life up for me. Playing to Win, and not just playing to Not Lose anymore, has meant that the risks are as big as they ever have been, and truthfully always have been, but the rewards are finally clearer than they ever were, simply by virtue of the fact that I’m finally consciously striving for them.
My life is made up of pleasures from the simpler things. I wanted to love with all that I am and be loved for all that I am, and I wanted it more than anything, and I got it. It wasn’t grand and it wasn’t extreme, though these descriptions get bandied about when people refer to My Love Story, it was actually as simple as it gets.
I wanted to raise my children. I wanted them to know who I am and I wanted to know who they are, every day. I didn’t want a big house and a big car, a boat, or overseas holidays anywhere near as much as I wanted to spend as much time as possible with those that I love. Again, nothing grand or extreme, though it’s told that way, my leaving that world behind to attempt to earn a penny in a new one was really quite simple.
Now I’m faced with something else that’s really quite simple to me, though in the telling it is made quite grand and extreme. The simple story is that I want to raise my children in the semi-rural country and earn a living doing something I love on a farm that I love in a place that I love with the people that I love.
What makes it a grand thought, is that I’ve got the place all picked out, and it’s going to take 1.5 million dollars to do it. One-and-a-half million dollars will get me a large and nice house on 8 acres with a fully-functioning horticultural business operating on it. A business that I’ll have to study, and learn, and work in, and experience, and fail at a little bit, just to figure out how to make it all go. A house whose mortgage will undoubtedly stretch our budget to its farthest reaches and surely take all of our combined resources to cover. A life that will include hard work, sometimes back-breaking labour, and responsibilities far greater than any I’ve ever had.
While it’s been in the works for quite some time, I take the first of the Very Important Steps towards this today, and will approach a bank with the intention of asking them to help me make this all work. Within the next few days, I will walk in with paperwork in hand and tell them that, while I have virtually nothing to offer financially, I am not going to quit until I have made this mine.
Simple as that.