A new life...

Friday, January 17, 2020

Much of the reading I’ve been doing lately are biography/autobiography stories.  Not only do I find them fascinating, I couldn’t put down ‘Boys in the Boat’ for example, but I’m reading them as self-help.  I’m interested in styles; what people include in their writing that makes it fascinating for the reader.  I want to be that writer.  Nothing for me feels better than to have someone tell me they like what I’ve written.

I just finished a short story by Katie Arnold, a writer for ‘Outside’ magazine called ‘Running Home’.  The ‘running’ part of it listed my attention and as I discovered she is an ultra-distance runner, had enough to get started.  It was a compelling story about growing up moving between divorced parents and her struggle with losing her beloved father to cancer.  Early in her professional career, she leaves a job in New York City that offered financial stability and security to go to an internship position in Santa Fe, New Mexico earning all of $5 per hour and for only six months.  Something in her gut told her it was the thing to do, and through determination and hard work, makes it work out.  She comments at some point about how proud she was for making her own life.

It got me to thinking about my situation and how, for the first time in my life, I’d done the same thing.  Though rebellious as a child and always looking to go my own way, I was married by age 20 and nothing I did from that day forward was done without at least some consideration for, and input from, Holly.  When Holly and I parted ways several years ago, I continued to live in the house we’d raised our family in and tried as much as humanly possible to keep the old parts of my life intact.  That offered security and comfort.  I was adverse to, and afraid of, risk.  What if everything came crashing down and I wouldn’t be able to afford my home?  And yet I knew living in a house with six bedrooms and 3,500 square feet of space was about 3,000 more than I needed.  That – and it brought along a list of healthy expenses that could curtail any chance at retirement.

So I moved.  I figured out a way to buy a place in Cuyahoga Valley National Park; a modular home with neighbors a little over an arm’s length away and nothing like anywhere I’d ever lived before.  I managed to keep my house in the family by having my son take it over and, for now, make payments to me that I make to the bank until such time that he can get financing for it.  I bought a van I didn’t really need and began to convert it into a camping vehicle.  I picked a date to retire, filed for social security, ended my medical coverage and signed up for a short-term program, and, on January 1, began living a new and very different life.  I’m still forging and smelting the metal of my new life, but I’m doing it alone and it feels…invigorating!  It’s a little thing to lots of folks, but it’s something bigger to me and I’m proud, anxious, and excited.  At the very least, it’s a start.