“The average American spends more time planning their summer vacation than their life.”
I have heard this phrase and realize that we are not average. Britton and I spend a lot of time thinking about our lives, our future, our goals and what it means to be alive. Life is weird. We do weird things as human beings in this time and space. When we step outside of our daily lives and contemplate our existence it seems to come down to a game of poker. We get certain cards dealt to us (like where we were born, what we look like, the amount of money our family has) and we have certain ways to play those cards. It’s all about comparison because compared to someone who was dealt a crappy hand, we have it made but compared to someone with a royal flush we have little. Usually most people are somewhere in between. I think we have pretty decent cards and we’ve been playing them fairly well. In poker you usually don’t win with the first hand, it’s about how you play the game over time. Life’s both a game of chance (destiny) and skill (free will). In fact, the modern deck of cards is based on Tarot Cards that are used in fortune telling.
We’ve also compared life to Monopoly. It’s a long game and the first part of the game is about setting yourself up for the end of the game -we’d be the Schnoodle dog piece :-). That’s where we’re at. We’re trying to make good investments, keep good jobs and play the game right so that we can do what we want later in the game. In our particular life game, we want to live in Puerto Rico. We would like to have some Colorado income either from a work-from-home job or from some of the investments we’ve made and some Puerto Rican income maybe in the form of a guesthouse. Money in our modern world is so abstract, but is a way to calculate how you’ve been playing the game.
It is so tempting to jump ahead of yourself in these games, but usually to “win” you have to have self-restraint, like Kenny Rogers says, “Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em”. We like our life here in Colorado and we are looking forward to moving to Puerto Rico. Knowing when and how is the hard part. Ever since the Lares deal fell through I have felt like we were even more in Limbo. At least with Lares we knew we had a marker set on that spot, now? It is all ephemeral. To plan out your life farther than a few days is like trying to predict the weather. You might have some idea based on the seasons and what has happened years past, but then again, you can have the coldest June 2nd in history (like we did yesterday). We would like to get everything settled and decided within a year to two years. But it’s hard to say where life, like a current, will take you. Our vision of a winning end game would be to be happy. My working definition of happiness is to have something to do (a daily goal), someone to love and something to look forward to. I have that now and I will work hard to keep that going in the end game. I would prefer to have something to do that I choose to do rather than the traditional office job of little freedom. Golden handcuffs , routine and comfort are hard to break away from- they are the blue pills (Matrix reference). But we are preparing ourselves and trying to live an “examined life” as Aristotle says not just an “average” life.
Even if we play the game of life carefully and examine it from every side, I’d say we’re still “all in” for the ride.
“LifetransPLAN IT” haha
Steve and I bought our Maunabo land in 2000. It was our “plan” to retire and build our dream house there by 2006. In 2002 we had a pad cleared on the top of the hill ($$$). Due to the economy, our once great investments lost a lot of value and we found ourselves postponing our retirement and staying in Sacramento. We just retired, but not without a lot of trepidation, due to the existing bad economy. We hope to move to PR before the end of the year, but from what we’ve heard about the permit process in PR, we don’t expect to have that dream home for several more years. Needless to say the cleared pad is now invisible, covered by vines and new “bad” trees. Steve likes to say, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. What’s important is not losing sight of your goals. If PR is where you want to go, I’m sure you guys will make it happen. Meantime, enjoy the journey. From your blog, I see you two have a wonderful life with many friends– which makes for a great journey! 🙂 Fran
Very deep post! 🙂
I take it from all the card playing analogies that we can save you guys seats at our regular friendly poker game?
Don’t get discouraged. Jeff and I put money on a house in St Croix and in the end (after inspections) realized it just wasn’t going to happen. We invested our hearts and several months of dreaming and planning and waiting for nothing. And then Puerto Rico happened! It is much better here than St Croix would have been. Just take another trip out here and do some driving around. Where you are meant to be will just happen! (and stop by if you like). katrina
Thoughts and more thoughts…
Living life as simply as possible focuses attention on the absolute essentials. It will serve as an effective practice to clear the many obstructions that fill our lives. The goal is to strip away the distractions of our modern 21st century life that compete for our attention and keep us running the rat race, keep our minds focused on addictions, fill us with fear and unrestrained materialism. Simplicity of life can direct us to look at what is truly important for our journey we call life, such as family.
This doesn’t mean living in caves and huts, or without electricity. It means living a comfortable and balanced life yet not under the influence of attachments or aversions such as gain or loss, praise or blame, fame or shame and happiness and hopelessness.
Simplicity of life encourages us to want or posses fewer things, appreciate more of what we do have and use those possessions in helping others. When we have fewer distractions in our lives we can then concentrate more on our inner self.
Living this way requires looking at your life to see what worldly things or habits clutter your life. Are you running around too much? Trying to do to many things at once? Is your busy lifestyle keeping you away from family? Are you living your life for material things?
My husband and I are so happy to find this site since we plan to move to Greeley. ( he got a job offer in UNC.) In the beginning, we were worried if we would adapt to the lifestyle there. ( the Fast Food Nation…) With more internet research, we are now more opitimistic about living in Greeley. There seem to be some community supported agricultures for organic food and lots of outdoor activites which we both are enthusiastic about.
Thank you for sharing information of living in Greeley or Colorado. Wish you achieve your goal of moving to PR soon!!!
Well it’s good to know we’re not the only ones whose life plans sometimes get sidetracked by life itself.
Fran and Steve,
That’s too bad about your land, hopefully at least some of the work you had done to it will be usable in the time to come. This economy definitely puts the “fear” into people -including us. Hopefully things get better but that we learn from this (like we will never again trust that our 401k is anything more than a govt sponsored gamble!). Things could definitely be better, but they could be worse too…so we wait and save.
Nick,
Yah, I wasn’t sure if it was too “deep” of a topic, but it’s really what Britton and I think about a lot so, what the heck. We definitely want to be included in any future poker matches! 🙂
Katrina,
That’s interesting about the deal in St. Croix. I didn’t realize you had considered living there. I’ve heard it is more agricultural than the other two main USVIs which is appealing to me. It does stink when you have your heart and mind set on something only to see it wash away. How did Puerto Rico happen for you? We would love to see your place some time (next visit to PR maybe!?)
TNK, I definitely agree that we fill our world with so much noise that we have little time left to think. So many distractions and ways to live vicariously that we forget to live ourselves. I hope this new chapter in our lives will give us the ability to focus our thoughts with our actions to be in harmony.
Celina,
Thanks for the comment! We’re glad that this site has helped you learn a little more about Greeley. Let us know if you have any other questions (you can also email us: bckauffman -at- comcast.net). There are definitely things that can be improved about it (and if Fast Food Nation was my only guidebook I don’t think I’d want to come either!), but that’s probably true anywhere and there are a lot of good things going on here too.
Cassie,
I agree. Planning is the only way things we hope to make happen, happen. Without the long term focus, we tend to get lost in procastination and sidetracked into what at the time seems more fun, rather than make the sacrifices necessary to achieve something distant. The second part of planning is patience, because plans mostly take more time to accomplish than we think, and there is usually a few detours along the way (you’re finding that out with Lares).
The journey is the destination, though, and it’s the quality of our daily lives that makes the difference, and makes the “getting there” all the more satisfying.
Sounds like you two are doing it all right.
Cassie – Puerto Rico wasn’t even on our initial list of places. We considered Hawaii (too expensive), New Zealand (can’t work unless you are on the “we really need your skill” list (teaching and engineering aren’t), Australia (can’t work if you are over 45 – that’s me). We considered St Croix since it is US – Jeff wanted US medical, money, government. It is only 12 miles long and around 8 miles wide and it is too small. The only place to work was Havensa Oil Refinery. There is more to the story but a gallery owner there (who carries my cards) gave a thumbs up to Puerto Rico after the St Croix house fell through and I told him we were considering it. Don’t do it though – there is a situation of disadvantaged locals and gated – have everything rich white folk. Not much in between except transiant oil workers. Water problems, house insurance was over $8000 a year.
Email me if you want other info – and definately stop in for a visit! katrina