One Year Anniversary

One year ago today I quit my job, and quietly exited the 'real world'. My departure came just 18 months after my begrudging and reluctant entrance.

The first 12 months of this new chapter have been more real and influential than many of my last 27 years, which probably just means I was and am having a hell of a lot more fun. So lets reminisce a bit.

Things got off to a slow start. It took a long time for all the noise of city life to fade away, to shrug off the assumptions and judgements that society places upon the voluntarily unemployed. The first 3 months I was utterly confused-no direction and no motivation. Most days were spent running to empty my mind, and then at the library to fill it back up.

Sometime in the late fall the background noise had faded and I really started listening. By November I was putting myself 'on track' to become a park ranger. I was taking classes and getting the necessary certifications to make me more competitive when the hiring would begin in the spring. But, the summer season was a long ways away, and the bleak Oregon winter was getting to me. By month 8 I had to break away from it all and officially begin the new chapter in my life that I tried to start back in August.

I started driving east towards Montana; a few days in Glacier, a few more in Yellowstone. I ended up spending 3 weeks at some type of working ranch that sold used cars and made trailers. By month 9 I was heading even farther east to Iowa. I'd never left the mountains this far behind, and it made me feel uneasy to say the least. But Iowa and the farm I worked on proved to be a welcomed and much needed sanctuary.

Then, I drove to Alaska. In May I started working as a park ranger and months 10, 11, and 12 have been a blast. I met a guy who spent an entire summer walking along the 800 mile Alaskan pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. He said that summer he really nailed how he wanted to live. It was just him, his dog, and the pipeline, every day of the summer. For the first time in a while (if ever), I have that same feeling (about the way I'm living, not the pipeline)...I'm finally on my path.