Shifting sands

There are things that still need to be ironed out, set in stone, verified by third parties, &ct, but at least we have a sort of a plan. I’m going to move to Pine and live with my grandparents. Most of my stuff will be stored there or at my dad’s house here in Phoenix, but I’ll be able to bring some stuff with me. I’ll still have internet access, but it will be dial-up for the first time since just about exactly five years ago. No cable TV. No TV, really. No job slaving away for corporate America more than half my waking hours, and no stress over not being able to find some corporation that wants me as a slave. No formal higher education, but plenty of time to read and study and work on my painting and writing &ct. I’ll have a great opportunity to spend time with my grandparents before they die, and to help them with the day-to-day things they have increasing difficulty with on their own. There’s a lot to be learned from one’s grandparents, but you have to take the time to listen to them. I’ll also be minding the store up there and doing general work around the property – upkeep as well as whatever needs to be done to help make the property sale-able. It will be different, but it is definitely a big step in the sort of direction I want to be going in. I want to be able to spend 40 or more hours a week where my primary concern is my art and my writing. Where I’m not stressed out about finding work, where I’m not stressed out by the work I find, where I’m not worried about balancing my checkbook every day and wondering whether the ends are going to meet. When everything works out the way the hopeful among us hope it will, my family and I will be living on wholly owned property in excess of 40 acres, each sibling (and their family, in the case of April) with their own plot of land to live on and house to live in, I’ll be working with my dad to build high-end furniture and spending most of the rest of my time working on my arts. There is a lot of work to be done between now and then, and because the end result is something I so strongly desire I am willing to do whatever is necessary. Deal with whatever changes come my way, but stay focused on the goal we’re working toward.

I remember back in October when I was trying to make a list of what I wanted out of life, a thing or two appeared on the list that seemed far out of my reach. I did not cross them off the list because they seemed far-fetched or because they would be difficult. Instead I tried to figure out what it would take, based on the information I had at the time about the resources potentially available to me, to achieve the goals. My best guesses involved over ten years of working hard at a job I didn’t want to be doing, scrimping and saving and cutting costs and paying off my debts and investing at high interest rates before I could even consider that biggest goal. I want to take at least 10 years off traditional work to focus on purely creative endeavors. Creating hand-crafted high-end furniture is a fairly creative and rewarding thing I can do with my father to earn income, and it should easily allow more than enough time to get real work done on my other creative aspirations. It’s also something I can begin to train for in the next year or two (or more) as we put the property in Phoenix, the property in Pine, and then the property wherever our family ends up, in order. (That is, remodeling, removing junk, building new structures, and on the final property building at least a couple houses.) And in the meantime, I can focus a lot more of myself on what I want to be focused on and spend a lot less stress on other things, and maybe that first ten years will get started this month.

So, to re-cap: Within the next couple of weeks I’ll be moving from Tempe to Pine, AZ (just a ways past Payson, AZ). I will have internet access, and expect to continue to post. I will continue to work on new paintings, novels, and screenplays. I will get to know my grandparents better before they die. Oh, and did I mention that I may end up learning to drive stick shift and actually driving back and forth between Phoenix and Pine once in a while?