Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘working less’

Okay, so I am giv­ing away my age with this post, but that’s okay.  I already told every­one I was about 12 pounds over­weight in the prior post!

I really wanted to share with every­one how excep­tion­ally excited I am to have Retired!  I guess I like to use the term Retire because it really epit­o­mizes the mind­set that I have taken regard­ing my new life transition.

Some define retire as:

To with­draw from one’s occu­pa­tion, busi­ness, or office

To fall back or retreat, as from battle

To move back or away; recede.

I have def­i­nitely withdrawn.…

I moved back or almost like the tide, I’ve receded.    Yet, I really enjoy the sec­ond def­i­n­i­tion, as I’ve fallen back or retreated as from bat­tle! Wow!  I def­i­nitely felt like I was in a los­ing TIME bat­tle, and with the deci­sion to fall back, I have regained my Life! Decid­ing not to con­tinue to fight the bat­tle doesn’t always mean you lose.  Some­times you find out that you’re only bat­tling your­self, you are your worst enemy in some situations.

Retir­ing young DOES NOT mean:

Well what the heck do I mean then?

This type of retire­ment stinks

How DID I retire at 33?

This sum­mer has been quite an adven­ture! I have to admit, for the first time in almost five years, I actu­ally was able to spend almost two weeks straight with my fam­ily!! This was very unusual because we have been grow­ing our busi­ness for the last four years and we have had lit­tle fam­ily time. The work-life bal­ance is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge for me, and I rou­tinely feel like I fail at one or the other.

But as we embarked on our 11 day adven­ture to Yel­low­stone, I was excited and anx­ious at the same time. I did not know what would hap­pen over the next eleven days.…I love and live for adven­ture, but I knew that this trip would be dif­fer­ent. I must have had a pre­mo­ni­tion about what was to occur.

The adven­ture was filled with an Emer­gency Room visit, Travel Trailer fail­ures, Thun­der­storms, Vom­it­ing, Diar­rhea, Mos­qui­toes the size of birds, Truck fail­ures, and on and on.…! How did we man­age? For those that were for­tu­nate enough to fol­low my vaca­tion on my Face­book, you were able to see the daily strug­gles that we encoun­tered on our vaca­tion. Many peo­ple com­mented that they would have quit by this time! But NOT us! We were deter­mined to have fun irre­gard­less of the dif­fi­cul­ties that were fac­ing us.

It had been a long time since we were able to be together as a fam­ily like this and to come through this tri­umph the way that we did. The kids were Fan­tas­tic! They were such troop­ers and flex­i­ble and strong! We were all deter­mined to be adven­tur­ous and have fun! We had such a dif­fi­cult time in the last two years with the strug­gles of a grow­ing busi­ness and a hurt daddy. This trip had more mean­ing than any other fam­ily trip I can remember.

Yel­low­stone was amaz­ing, truly a won­der of the world and per­haps one of the most beau­ti­ful places I have seen. The rivers were wide, the grasses were green, and the sky was def­i­nitely the most blue that I have seen. It was so refresh­ing. On day 9 we were on our way out of the park, dri­ving through Wyoming, on our way to Pow­ell, WY to visit friends. My busi­ness part­ner called.… I was anx­ious to find out the news of a meet­ing that he attended in my absence. Sud­denly my fun stopped. The news was not what I was expect­ing and I became anx­ious. So anx­ious, I felt that my vaca­tion needed to stop and I needed to be back at work today. I became so anx­ious, I didn’t stop wor­ry­ing for a day and a half.

The next day was spent at our very good friend’s house in Wyoming, which I must say is absolutely God’s coun­try! Rolling fields of wheat are con­trasted with fields of corn and painted hills of red, orange and burnt umber. The sky is like sap­phires in the evening and the clouds are beau­ti­ful. The neigh­bors are friendly and every­one waves at a pass­ing vehi­cle. The atmos­phere is relaxed, and fam­ily is more impor­tant than the dol­lar here. Imag­ine that.… They are out-riding the “reces­sion” because peo­ple in Wyoming just make it work. They are in it for the long haul, not work­ing for the money, but work­ing to cre­ate a pur­pose for them­selves and their families.

The Fourth of July parade in Cody WY was a cel­e­bra­tion of a cul­ture that I do not rou­tinely see in the hus­tle and bus­tle of the SF Bay Area. It was a cel­e­bra­tion of com­mu­nity and a cel­e­bra­tion of true free­dom. It was the first day that I real­ized I was not liv­ing my life truly free. I was trapped in my work and also in my fear.

The last five years of my life have been a strug­gle for riches and glory. I felt that if I strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed that I would be able to work less and have more time with my fam­ily. Boy, I really did not know how much I was miss­ing my kids! I had the par­a­digm shift that over this quest for finan­cial free­dom, I may have been going about it all wrong! Oh no! Has it all been wrong? All of a sud­den the money did not mat­ter to me so much. I would have given every­thing up just to have more time with them. I was liv­ing in such fear and felt so shack­led to the busi­ness that my time and my emo­tions were trapped. I was a caged bird.

But that day in Cody and the three days we spent dri­ving home, I did some seri­ous search­ing. How could I be free from worry? How could I get more time with my kids? And I was not going to accept “I can’t” for an answer. My mom…and bless her for teach­ing us this.…taught us that “Can’t NEVER could!” There is a pos­si­bil­ity for everything.

Often as I do, I pick up books in stores, or just out of curios­ity and some­times hang onto them for a time before I start read­ing. I picked up a book called “The Secret of the Ages” by Robert Col­lier. Not really know­ing what it was going to say, it really looked inter­est­ing, or at least inter­est­ing enough to buy it on sale for ten bucks! I don’t always nec­es­sar­ily feel that one book is bet­ter than another. I really feel that a lot of them have mes­sages that are very impor­tant. This book was really able to speak to me in a time where I really needed to receive the mes­sage. A cou­ple of notable quotes from Collier:

“Begin to free your­self at once by doing all that is pos­si­ble with the means you have, and as you pro­ceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more. ” “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself every­thing needed for its fulfillment. ”

The tim­ing was right for me to free myself from the inter­nal fear that I was expe­ri­enc­ing and real­ize that there was an option for me to change my sit­u­a­tion. Not only my sit­u­a­tion of fear, but my sit­u­a­tion of miss­ing my children.

So as I am mov­ing for­ward with this inten­tion, I am work­ing on find­ing ways to work on my Lifestyle Design. Work­ing less.… Mak­ing more. Evolv­ing from my exist­ing place in my life into a more sat­is­fy­ing and rich lifestyle. Stay tuned! The adven­ture is just beginning!