We often hear things like, “you guys are so lucky” or “I wish I had your life” or “must be so nice to be on vacation full time” (fellow boat people are rolling on the floor laughing at this one), and so firstly I would acknowledge the privilege we have had to be born where we were born (in the US). That in itself has provided a lot of opportunity, but we have also put in a lot of hard work and there are some sacrifices. We don’t always get to see our families on the holidays, we don’t have the conveniences and variety of the US food system or the instant gratification of Amazon. But maybe those are the strengths. This post is about mindset and for the people who always say they would love to do what we are doing but cannot because of X,Y or Z.
I have found that the number one thing that helps us do the things that we do is that instead of saying we want to do…is saying we are going to do. It is too easy to get stuck on the obstacles that can keep you from doing something. When you approach something in a way where you state that it is your intention overcoming those hurdles becomes part of the plan versus one of the things that holds you back. I am going to promise that there will be some sacrifice to get there. Maybe it will be monetary, maybe time, or maybe your expectations of what it will look like, probably it will be all three. And even then you might fail. But maybe changing your perspective on failing at something needs a change too. Failing can be a teaching tool so don’t ignore the life lessons when things don’t go perfect.
I have made several big leaps in my life. In my late twenties I decided to go back to school to finish a Bachelor’s Degree. I had an associate’s degree in veterinary technology and was well respected in the field as a Registered Veterinary Technician, but I was not fulfilled. I was pretty sure that a Bachelor’s degree was the answer to break out of the veterinary field (hint, it wasn’t, but that is another post). So I enrolled at Sac State, declared English as my major since I loved reading and thought this must be my path. And I did not want to do the night school/part time thing, I had been doing that for years. I wanted the full time college student experience. First off I had to give up my cute apartment, with my own garden and deck, so I moved in with my sister and her husband for a month while I searched out something cheaper closer to the campus. I also had to sell my beautiful, black jeep and get something paid off, which just happened to be a 20 year old Honda Civic. Did I mention I had Labrador retriever and two cats? One of the cats was blind and the other circled and only turned left due to a traumatic brain injury (vet techs keep the reject animals).
So I found a couple of roommates on craigslist that had some baggage too and we rented a house in Sacramento. It was a house that had an insane amount of purple interior paint. And brown carpet. But it had an amazing pool and a tiki hut in the back yard. We rented it from an older lesbian couple that were taking off to New York to pursue some Broadway dreams, in hindsight probably fitting we lived there. My first week of classes I realized English Literature was not my calling. I dropped all my classes and switched to a B.S. in Recreation Administration. A degree in recreation is definitely not a way out of the veterinary field into something more lucrative. I don’t regret one thing. I was the oldest person in my degree program but I met amazing friends, I learned about myself and the world, I did things I was afraid to do. I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail, I became a white water raft guide and I learned to compromise and be OK with situations and environments that I could not control.
As you read this I hope that you don’t come away with the idea that I am some bad-ass, pull myself up by my bootstraps kind of storyteller. I am not, I am privileged just by the fact of where I was born, the time I was born, the support of my friends and my family. I completely acknowledge that. Some people will have more circumstances to overcome to achieve their goals. I would just challenge people who want to go out and do something completely different than what they are doing to look at it in a different way. State your intention and then do what you need to do to bring it to fruition. Maybe it is going to take asking for help. Do what you need to do. Hopefully you will be in a place to pay that help forward to someone else someday.
As we are looking to transition back to land life as a family, we don’t look at moving onto the boat and taking off as a mistake or a failure. We are happy for the experiences, for the people we met along the way and for the lessons we learned (even the expensive ones, sigh). You only have one life, when you reflect back on it in your old age don’t let the life you didn’t live be a regret.