Lifestyle

What I Know

09/13/2018 by John Leave a Comment

This is what I know.

I know that opening up the New York Times today will make me angry and sad but I will probably do it anyway. Like when I was a kid on the farm and every now and then I just had to touch the electric fence. Sometimes I guess I need to feel the pain.

I know that I am happier when I run more than is probably healthy for me on more days of the week than I should. I know this, but I still have a hard time getting out the door most days.

Why does it seem easier to do what I know is bad for me than to do what I know is good for me?

The things that I know are not good for me are often the quick and easy fix and they involve an external input. They are a shot of strong espresso when I’m feeling drowsy. They will jolt me into a temporary state of bliss, but the inevitable crash will leave me feeling more lethargic than before.

Conversely, the things I know are good for me require internal output from me. They ask me to give something of myself. Maybe it’s sitting down and writing uninterrupted for a period of time, making the effort to prepare my own meals, or getting out for that run even when the wind is howling and the rain is pelting down.

Here is something else that I know.

You get back what you put in.

It is a fundamental law of nature. Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. They are transformed. If I give something of myself, I will get something in return.

What do you know?

What will you do with it?

Whoops, I Lost My identity

08/16/2018 by John 4 Comments

Mary got to bring a big part of her identity with her to New Zealand. I had to leave a large portion of mine behind. This is having more of an effect on me than I thought it would. Or maybe, I never thought that much about it until we got here.

Without the connections I have back in the States, I knew that coming here meant that I would not be able to do the work that I was doing back home. What I did not realize was how deeply entrenched my sense of self was tied into working for Outward Bound and being a bicycle tour guide. Even though for years now I’ve felt that I wanted to move away from those things, I had no idea how much importance I had placed in them to help me define who I am. These roles I played provided me with a sense of self-worth. It’s easy to feel good about yourself when you can tell people you work for the North Carolina Outward Bound School and that you “help people discover more about themselves, others, and the world around them through challenging experiences in unfamiliar settings”.

I am stripped down and now wonder who I am supposed to be now that my costume is gone. I scan through the want ads, questioning what I see. Can I be a personal assistant? A baker? A deckhand for the ferry? How about a customer service representative, a university admissions counselor, or a real estate agent assistant? Could any of these things be me? I think I would like working with computers making beautiful web pages, but I look at the qualifications for those jobs and know that I would never be called for an interview. And after all the cups I have drunk, I don’t even have enough experience to make coffee in this caffeine-crazed town.

I know that a job is not all that defines a person. I call myself a runner, a writer, a husband, and a friend. These things are all well and good so why can’t I just be satisfied with that? Today, I’ll go to work taking orders and making tacos. There will be moments when I will enjoy it and there will be times when I will be wondering why I’m there. But underlying it all will be the question “is this it?” With nearly fifty years of life experience here I am working a barely more than minimum wage job.

I know I will reach the other side of this. I don’t know what I’ll find there or who I will be when I get there. That’s part of the adventure I guess. I know this is one of those times in life when growth will occur, perhaps even a metamorphosis. I am curious to see how it all turns out and what I will be doing a year from now. But in the meantime, the growing pains are difficult as I walk around this new world and wonder who I’m going to be.

It’s A Job

07/27/2018 by John 2 Comments

This week, I started working at an all plant-based Mexican restaurant. Not exactly a dream come true, but it’s a job, and I get paid. I get to move around, interact with people, make delicious food, and get out of the house. It will be fine for now. Who knows, I might actually come to love it.

It’s part of the lifestyle. I’m living in New Zealand. I have to remind myself of that sometimes since it still seems somewhat unreal. Having this job right now is just a small piece of the bigger picture. It helps enable me to be here, living in this wonderful, vibrant city where I can run in the hills and by the sea. It’s a job with flexible hours, even flexible seasons that match the times when I might want to go away so as a lifestyle piece, this might work out just fine.

I need to get back to knowing that a job doesn’t define who I am. It is a means to an end. I don’t need to love my job, as long as it serves me and I don’t serve it. When it starts to feel the other way around, that’s when there is a problem.

Mostly, I am happy to have something to do. Someplace to go. A purpose to my day. It has been so long it seems. I have not worked a day since April. Crazy.

It’s hard going through life without a sense of purpose. But maybe it’s a less complex idea than that. It’s hard to go through life without a place to be, or any responsibilities to anybody other than yourself. You just wake up in the morning and don’t know what to do.

Hard. That’s probably the wrong term for this, isn’t it? Hard would be not being able to work and wanting to. Hard is not being able to feed your family. My life has never been hard.

We’ve been in Wellington for three weeks and we’ve stayed in three different places now. There is a view out over the hills here and we have a little more room to spread out. Still, we will pack our bags one more time before we get into a more permanent lodging situation. We are like a stone skipping across the water. Slowly we are getting closer and closer to coming to a stop and sinking down to rest. Hopefully, we will like where we land.