Still to be continued
Still finding it rather tough to focus on writing anything right now. Work is tough but doable, so long as I shut out everything else on the days that I’m working and focus entirely on getting through the day. On my days off, I have a hard time being sociable. All I want to do is lay around the house, take naps, play games, watch the snow fall, and read.
I still haven’t mailed out thank-you cards for some very kind gifts my family sent to me in December; I worry that they consider me ingrateful.
I say all this as a preface to an apology. I’m sorry for not taking the time to communicate better. I would still love to hear more about what’s been going on in your lives. If you’re reading this there’s a great chance that I miss spending time with you, having conversations, playing games, and maybe even figuring out new things that we can work together towards.
I still don’t have the time and energy tonight to write everything I’d like to, but let me blurt a few things out before I head off to bed:
#1: I don’t particularly like this job I’m doing now, but it’s temporary. I’m doing it purely for the income. I’m saving money towards at least three different projects already: a food preservation business (which is my primary idea for that future “serious business” I announced last month and plan to found in 2017), a cohousing/goat-herding collective (Laurel’s current brainstorm, more of an uncertainty but something I’d truly love to see happen) and, though I’ve been debating for months now, I still want to buy a van.
#2: I’ll be leaving the West Coast this year (but not, by any means, forever). I’m planning to leave Washington by mid-May, spend another month doing temp-work in Oregon, then take a meandering road-trip in July, leaving from L.A. shortly after Independence Day and ending up in Maryland around August 5th for my friend Emily’s wedding.
#3: If I’m able– in other words, if I can find another temporary job– I’d like to return to Michigan from there and spend the next few months in my old ‘hood [the rural/suburban sprawl of Oakland County, north of Detroit].
#4: In December, I’d like to head down to Florida and visit my family. Not sure for how long exactly– December is the extent of my itinerary so far– but I’d like to spend at least a month there.
All told, my ambition is to visit 20 states this year– with the important caveat that I intend not to go broke doing it. I am in fact hoping to continue adding to my savings accounts each month in 2012, even while travelling, by living lightly and continuing to do temp work. As I keep promising, I have more I’d like to write about this. Soon.
Update coming soon.
The latest, briefly: I accepted a temp position at Nature’s Path, an organic cereal factory up in Blaine WA. They work 12-hour shifts at that company (one of the reasons I decided not to apply towards an open permanent position; I’ll write more on that soon). Consequently, this upcoming weekend is going to be kind of a slog.
I was hoping to have some thoughts well-enough put together to write a full update today, but no dice. Need to get to bed so that I can start my day at 5am tomorrow. I’ll try for Monday instead.
(No worries, by the way. I’m a little grouchy about this specific work schedule, but generally relieved to be working again. This year is off to a decent start.)
The next 5
(quick update: I’m now back in Bellingham, by the way. [That] did happen.)
The best part about turning 30 in a couple weeks is that I get to make a new, only-second-ever Five-Year Plan.
It also means I can officially end my first 5-year plan, finally– made on the 15th of December 2006, the day I turned 25. That one, looking back, was all about finding a solid path & becoming a fully independent adult, e.g. choosing an enjoyable lifestyle, forging a confident personal identity, and paying back the money I’d owed to my family.
Funny thing is, in terms of the specific goals I’d laid down for myself, I failed spectacularly.
(My original 5-year goals as stated were: #1 Pay off all debt to zero. #2 Finish my Bachelor’s degree and become a professional scientist. #3 Get married. Start a family. #4 Buy a sailboat and learn how to sail it. #5 Thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail.)
At age 25– alone, living in the snow-buried wilderness of [Coles Corner, WA] and working for the ski area at Stevens Pass, having just moved north from Arizona– I was at a place in my life where I needed to convince myself that awesome times were still ahead. So I dreamed big and aimed high.
Around mid-2008, getting comfortable in Bellingham, I started to let those goals slide away. I conceded that I didn’t have the income potential to own a sailboat, nor any true desire to be a husband & father. I discovered that completing two more years of college would’ve required 30 years of student loans, and even the few quarters I attended before I bailed have put me farther into debt than when I started. (I did pay-off all the money I owed to my family, though. Still pretty proud about it.)
In hindsight, any one of those goals could’ve taken 5 years to accomplish on its own. Naming five was over-ambitious. Hiking the PCT was the one goal I was still working towards right up into 2011. Tried to make it happen this summer, but turns out I wasn’t quite ready.
Bigger picture, though: I think these last five years have been a great success. I’ve gotten involved with the organic foods movement; it’s set me on a new path in life that I enjoy. I’ve met a bunch of new friends that have become completely indispensable to me. I’ve just straight-up had a ton of fun. These last 5 have been the best years of my life. That’s the real beauty of a five-year plan. Even if you fall short, your life still ends up better.
So you’re probably wondering: what’s next? I’ve learned my lesson my first go-round and decided to focus on only one goal instead of five. Here it is:
GOAL: By age 35, I will found a business.
An organic foods business, specifically. Being a miller’s assistant at Fairhaven Mill was the best job I’ve had. I now know a lot about how to make flour. I know a little about tending a greenhouse and little bit about making almond butter. What I don’t know enough about is how to start and run a company. That’s what’s next.
Bellingham is well ahead of the curve when it comes to local organic food, but even this community is going to need many more businesses like Fairhaven Flour if it’s going to survive and thrive through the rocky, post-Peak-Oil decades to come. Not just more flour mills– I wouldn’t want to directly compete with Fairhaven anyway– but independent businesses of all kinds. Who is going to found them if not passionate, naive thirty-somethings like me?
I still want to continue towards getting myself off-grid, too. I still want to pay my debts, and learn to sail, and hike the PCT. But I’m willing to wait on all of those things or move them to the background while I focus on getting a business off the ground.
I’ve now got some huge, unknown numbers of further decisions and plans ahead of me. Five years to figure it out.
Cross your fingers. Let’s go.
Falling back to my favorite spot on Earth
The first real gusts of winter blew into Southern Oregon on Thursday afternoon. On Friday I bundled up in four layers of wool & astronaut fabric, dusted the snow off my bike, and wheeled down the valley into town. Still no van. The interview at Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene that I [talked about last month] went well I thought, but hasn’t turned into a job. Massive disappointment.
I’ve been pushing on with my fall-back plans, searching around Medford for a suitable automobile that’d allow me to carry on here in Ashland, but at this point I’m not sure if I truly want to carry on w/ it.
Things in Ashland just are not working out. My job is numbing and tedious. The spot where I live is just a mile or two beyond a practical, enjoyable bike-commuting distance. I’ve made a few acquaintances here, but no real friendships as yet. And getting *anywhere* from Ashland without a car, even 15mi north to Medford, is proving to be annoyingly challenging.
The temperature’s hovering in the mid-30s today. I spent it pacing the short length of my RV or huddling besides my electric radiator, watching the wind blow the last leaves off the oak trees and considering my options.
I could buy a car, go deeper into debt, and continue on here in Ashland, trying to make things work. I’ve been trying to convince myself for weeks that this is the safest bet. Stay put, nose down, grow where you’re planted. “Yes it sucks but you got yourself into this mess and there are a lot of people worse off out there than you so just keep your head down and deal with it, kid.” That’s my Midwestern work-ethic talking. It’s not a voice I always trust, not in this instance. I’m at a point where nothing & no one is dependent on me. The only debts I owe are to faceless institutions. I’m willing to accept some risk and hardship by jumping into the unknown again rather than stick with a boring, frustrating known-quantity…
Option #2 I could fall forward towards California or somewhere else warm, keep looking for a place in the sun as I’d originally wanted to. I have friends in the Bay Area and LA. I have family in Florida and Phoenix. But Florida and Cali are foreign territory for me, and Phoenix is high on my list of places where I don’t want live again. Unless I was extremely lucky I’d likely go broke before I could set-up a new job & home, and I don’t want to be a burden on anyone…
Option #3 I could fall back to a place that’s familiar ground, regroup, and make another go of it next year…
Pace, pace… pace, pace…
I’m liking the sound of Option #3 more and more. I think it is time that I cut my loses and return to Bellingham for the winter.
Thanksgiving is coming up and Robert T will be driving my old Honda down from B’ham to visit our mutual friends in Eugene for the holiday. Our initial plan was for him to ferry the few boxes I still have in Bellingham down to me. Thinking about it more, it occurred to me that I could instead ask him to ferry me to the boxes. Back north to Washington, to my second home, the City of Subdued Excitement. (reminder: still my favorite city anywhere.)
This isn’t the definitive announcement. Just sharing a thought process here, more or less as it comes to me. I still want to sleep on this decision tonight. Tomorrow, if I’m still feeling it, I’ll need to start in on all the phone calls and logistics. As much as I love Bellingham, turning back after I’ve put so much effort into leaving is a hard, hard decision to make, and it brings along a whole jar of mixed emotions.
And a footnote to friends in Michigan: I really really miss you all too, and when I said “familiar ground” a return to the Midwest was also on my mind. It is soooo much farther away from me though, with far dicier prospects of finding suitable work & a place to live right away, that I had to cross it off the list for now. I’ll be back, hopefully for an extended stay, just as soon as I’m able.
Back-tracking is not the same as giving up.
~MWK/RP
Ashland, a work-in-progress
Wow, hey, so. I try to post an update here every month. I didn’t have much of a proper update in August, nothing in September, and now I seem to be running out of October.
The last couple months have been very work-in-progress. Generally I dislike talking about works-in-progress; rather, I’ve learned to distrust the impulse. It’s far too tempting to flesh out all the details of a plan and then take credit for having a good idea without actually accomplishing anything.
Let’s backtrack though. Before I get to where I’m going, here’s very briefly where I’ve been: Spent about 10 days in Leavenworth WA all told, hiking & camping, getting a feel for the town again. You may recall that one of my ideas for the winter was to work another season at Stevens Pass Ski Area near Leavenworth. I decided against it; I was only in Leavenworth a few days before it’s tourist-focused culture and fake-German shtick began to irritate me all over again.
I spent a fun weekend in Seattle. Saw the Nirvana and BSG exhibits at the EMP. Played Galaxy Truckers at Cafe Mox with Kelly O’Hara. Took in a block party w/ Ariel & Lambert and their pleasant neighbors. Had a pint of stout with Jack C before he took off for Black Rock City.
Caught a train to Portland and spent most of a week there, camping out in the back garden at Saladhouse and catching up with friends. Met baby Chase and Lettie Jane, hung-out with Riley Starr for the first time in years. Got a tour of the new Monster Palace. Rode the MAX to Hillsboro on a lark. Strolled the Last Thursday Alberta street-fair with Laurel hauling a satchel of sweet corn, on our way to Lettie’s [Best Summer Ever] art-opening/barbecue. Many small meetings, many good conversations.
Spent another couple weeks in Eugene, visiting Jen & Steve, exploring the town as a potential place to relocate and house-sitting while they were away in New York. Saw their daughter Caitlin off on her first day of kindergarten; that was pretty rad. This was late August/early September. My savings and the summer weather were both receding faster than I would’ve liked, and I was getting anxious to end the vacation portion of the summer and get back to work somewhere.
I took the Greyhound to Ashland in mid-September, planning to camp out in the Siskiyou National Forest near Mt Ashland while exploring the town. This was the one big, show-stopping goof of the summer: I didn’t discover until I got there that camping wasn’t allowed anywhere in the Ashland watershed– an 8-mile radius swath around and above town. Fortunately, I also discovered that I liked the place generally, so I abruptly changed plans, checked myself into a motel, and started looking for a job. Two weeks later, I got offered a production spot at [MaraNatha Natural Foods] in Ashland, makers of my favorite organic peanut butter.
This is where the work-in-progress problem starts to kick in. Things aren’t going as well as I’d like in Ashland. It’s taken a lot of focus and conviction not to get stuck in a work-in-progress morass. The job is easy enough, but it’s often dull. The studio I was renting is very cool but too expensive and a little too far from town (3-4 miles) for easy bike-commuting. I’ve since convinced the owner of the studio to let me move into her RV on the same five-acre property (a kind of upscale hobby-farm in the beautiful rolling hills outside of town, with 11 sheep, 2 horses, some chickens, dogs, etc). This is working out fine, but the RV has it’s own quirks and mechanical faults and that commute is still not ideal.
October has been a challenging month because of all this, working full-time at a new job, in an unfamiliar place, with little money. Trying to stay organized and keep moving forward while fighting down a daily to-do list of little miscues and glitches. There was also a [Horace Phair] in there too– which was great from start to finish and a nice break from the new grind. Folks at Horace Phair mentioned that it seemed as if my summer of vagabonding ended pretty abruptly, and it did, and all of this is why.
Fortunately– and I don’t ever use the word “fortunately” lightly; I am endlessly sickeningly thankful for the incredible run of good fortune I’ve had in this life– fortunately, I have been staying organized and moving forward, so I have some options. I’ll be going up to Eugene tomorrow. I have a job interview on Monday with an organic herb & tea distributor there called [Mountain Rose Herbs]. Excited about it, because it seems like a great company, and moving to Eugene would give me another chance to shift gears and take another pass at making this work.
The “this” in that sentence, the work-in-progress dream that I’ve been working towards, is to embrace the spirit of minimalism that I’m always preaching and get myself off the grid. Take the travel-light approach of this summer– “my continuing life of untrammeled adventure”, to claim Jenn’s adroit phrase– and carry it through the winter months. For that, I’m going to need a space that’s big enough to lie down in and insulated enough to heat. I could also use a long-distance winter vehicle, something that burns biodiesel maybe. Put the two together, and you’ve got a diesel van. I’ve had my eye on a [Volkswagen MV] for quite awhile now. Now that I’ll be working full-time for at least 6 months of so, in Ashland or Eugene– but hopefully in Eugene– there’s not much stopping me. Like Captain Mal, I’ve even got a name all picked out.
I’m hoping to get all of this wrapped-up and underway by Thanksgiving, and I’ll tell you all about it then. In fact, I was hoping to have all of this settled by the end of October, but it’s been quite an October.
‘Til then, [updates on Twitter] per usual, and occasional photos on [Flickr] (I haven’t been using my camera this fall as much as I’d like either). Also, now that I have my laptop back (thank you again, Rolo) I’ve been getting massive use out of the free music-on-demand service Spotify, and recently started up a Tumblr stream devoted to the once-declining art of listening-to-the-whole-album. Those updates go up late at night Mon-Fri, check it out if you’d like: [iwillnowsellfivecopiesof.tumblr.com]
~MK
