Goals

I have this tendency to think I would like to live in older times, when we lived more naturally, or even just less-segmented lives.

I read about the ways humans used to do things, and when I compare them to how we do things now it seems like we have gone sideways in some places.

But then I think about how much I like my Kindle and being able to go see family in East Texas without it being a 4-day ordeal.

I like podcasts and antibiotics and not having to deal with Mongol invaders.

I am fully in touch with the fact that for all my talk, I get out of bed every morning and use an electric grinder to make fancy coffee in a computerized Keurig so I can immediately sit down with my laptop while listening to mixes on the YouTube app on my flat screen television.

I’m not exactly a mountain man.

Maybe I can call myself a backyard guy. Unless there’s a new Netflix series I like.

I spent Monday hanging out with Max because he had a pretty rough fever, and today I am taking him to a trampoline park, and these are the happiest days I have. I love weekends when I get to hang out with Tyler, and I have really great memories of how much time I got to spend with him when he was a little kid. I look forward to seeing B every single day, and dislike how little time we get together.

I think about dropping Max off at daycare every morning and sending Tyler off to learn from people I don’t know and not seeing B from 7am until 8 or 9 at night a lot of the time. I look at the amount of time I spend doing billing and accounting and notes and quarterly taxes and health and car and home insurance and oil changes and property tax and letterhead and intake forms and car registration and all the other stuff that doesn’t actually seem real, and I wonder if there is a better way.

I get that this is all part of living in a modern society, and it is part of the tradeoff for rats not eating my children and not having a hole drilled in my head to let demons out.

But there’s a part of me that thinks I should buy a bunch of land and learn to hunt and use my days hanging out with the people I love. I think I would be pretty happy spending all of my time with my family and being able to make having friendships more of a priority.

In all honesty, this is what I am working toward. I write every day, on this blog and working on a book, with the hope that one day I will be able to work from home, or at least spend a lot less time away from it. I am intensely focused on paying off all the debt I have to make this more possible.

When I think about the theme of this blog, that we are one step closer to dying every day and that we should be intentional with our time, nothing is more prevalent in my thoughts than wanting more time with B, Tyler and Max, and not having this taken from me by outside sources.

That is what I see as freedom or “making it”.

What are your goals? What do want out of life? What are you doing to bring these things about?

It matters.