A brilliant wreckage

Is this all there is? No, I shreak, I want more, ... and less. For years I've trudged through the morass of daily living, clocking in, going through the motions of whatever exquisite drudgery it is that I 'm required to do on any given day, and clocking out. Then there is the teeth-gnashing commute that can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and a half each way. This way of living generally gives me 3 to 4 hours of time in the day to live, which is not nearly enough, and as a result my succulentness has slowly started to dry up.

So, what do I want more of? More opportunity for being amazed and astounded, more sunshine and rain, more exhileration, more creativity and time to act on it, more opportunity to experience.

And less? Well, less kowtowing to people who neither give or deserve respect. Less reciruculated air in my lungs. Less mortgage, utilities, and connection to the grid. Fewer time constraints.

For several years I've wanted to jump into the deep end of the pool, abandon reason, and reasonableness (is that a word?), leave the 9 to 5 world and head into the great unknown. It seemed at the time that I was getting messages from all over the universe to make the leap. One of them came one day as I listened to NPR. I heard an interview by the writer Sue Monk Kidd where she read an excerpt from her novel "The Mermaid Chair":

"At forty-two, I had never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem--my chronic inability to astonish myself. I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they're being kind. I didn't fall. I dove."

Well, this doesn't exactly describe how I feel about my life overall. I used to take my own breath away all of the time, and was frequently astonishing myself. The problem has come over the course of the last few years. I used to be footloose, now I am fettered by job and house. I used to travel when and where I chose (within the bounds of my meager coin purse), now my travel is dictated by a corporation who binds me to a windowless cinderblock building most of the time.

Well, the time has come. I've found a soul mate who yearns for the same things I do, wants to live free and (for the most part) unencumbered. Of course there will be much preparation and planning, but we're up to the task. And so we begin.