A pirate looks at Forty…Five
I remember hating birthdays.
Each one seemed to loom not only as a reminder of the fact that I was getting older, but also seemed to serve as an unavoidable reminder that nothing had changed despite desperately wanting/seeking just that.
I think Ive been pretty raw and honest here over the years about the fact that I spent the first few decades of my life fairly unhappy. Lost. Adrift. Searching for something without ever knowing where to look or what exactly it was I was even looking for. Each birthday seemed to be nothing more than an annual reminder that I still hadn’t figured "it" out. That I still had no idea how to get out of my own way.
But most of the problem was that I was trying to fit in somewhere I didn’t belong. My youth was spent as a "damn yankee" living in the deep south to say nothing for being the awkward nerdy kid (not fitting in it seems was a given). My college years were spent focused on/obsessed with an education that I never truly wanted with an end goal of beginning a career that I never really wanted to choose. I imagine years spent pursuing the wrong destination rarely makes for an enjoyable journey.
But somewhere along the way things changed. As they often do with age, I assume. Things happen and impact change to our journey… some of them planned and some completely unknown.
I typically look back at the last two decades as the entire extent of my life. Before that, who knows whose life that was I was living... but it clearly wasn’t mine. I barely have memories of it not formed by pictures I’ve seen or stories I’ve been reminded of. I eventually removed myself from that person and life and the number of connections between that life and this one are few and impossibly far between. A handful of emails to my mother each year are the last remaining string tying me to the first two decades of life.
These last two decades, the two that I’ll claim the ownership and memories of… they began much the same. More years of working hard toward a goal that wasn’t mine. Working a job I didn’t like just to get a paycheck to cover a mortgage and car payment I never really wanted but felt like I “should” have. It was the adult thing to do and what we’re all told is the only way. The fruits of our labor. The american dream. Success.
But somewhere along the way I met a muse that altered the course of my reality. While I thought we were supposed to talk about and focus on our career paths and professional goals and retirement plans she would laugh and simply redirect to much more vague discussions of lifestyle choices and happiness and embracing the now. Of sunsets and unicorns and rainbows and other impossible crazy talk like living the life of one’s dreams.
I of course thought she was crazy, but was also in love with her spirit through and through and over time it broke through the logic and drive that I thought made up who and what I was. At some point I began to relax and lean into the change. To embrace the now and ask the scary questions about what I actually wanted from this thing called life.
It began with a decade of frustrating attempts at change.
A few years of fighting to make some kind of a difference while still playing inside the rules of the same game. Another string of birthday reminders of how nothing had changed… not in real ways at least. But that was followed by a few years of shifting. Hints at change and occasional glimpses of us changing the course.
This last decade however... If we could teach children to begin from a place of endless possibility and set them off into the world unencumbered by the stresses of the known world that we’ve built for them - this decade would be a decent start. No more years spent wishing or hoping for change but birthdays that suddenly were more about how impossible it was to remember who I was a year or even a few months before. A decade of living life as though there was no tomorrow and no rules or restrictions. A decade that looking back seems at best a blur and least a dream.
10 years ago we had decided and committed to making a great change in our lives and were in the midst of doing so. We had purged most of our belongings and simplified almost everything about our life with the focused goal of running away. We were hard core minimalists years before someone far smarter than us (@theMinilmalists) filmed the journey, made a movie about it and turned it into a multimillion dollar trend.
9 years ago we quit our jobs and ran away without a plan. We moved what belongings remained into an old 1967 VW Bus that had become the icon on our newfound freedom and pointed south to drive the beaches of mexico and central america and possibly beyond. We lived and breathed the beauty of #Vanlife years before there was a hashtag and well before influencers would get paid to do the same or an international lifestyle movement would take hold.
7 years ago we were seeking home and friends and built a tiny home out of our garage so that we could be nearer to them. It gave us stability and a foundation to return to if/when we needed it but also somehow turned us into local “experts” on a tiny home movement sweeping the nation and we started a small passion project turned business helping others design minimalist homes for themselves or to begin changing their own lives through downsizing and/or passive income.
4 more years we spent following our creative energies, living in vans and traveling full time. We explored the west, hopping between outdoor adventures and events with our loved ones. Soaking up the best north america has to offer in all four seasons and living free while the tiny home we built for ourselves back home was rented out on on a new app called AirBnB and somehow helping afford our off-grid adventures.
3.5 years ago we started another business helping others build their dream adventurevan so that they could experience the freedom we were living day to day. Another passion project turned business started entirely by sharing our lives/lifestyles with others. It seemed we had finally found a sustainable project to fund our lifestyle purely by following our passions… but during a road trip to the arctic we met a man around a campfire who made us realize our true dream was still out there. It was hidden away in a box we had long ago labelled “impossible”, but we decided to take a leap and live that dream despite all odds and logic all against it. Three days after that fateful campfire we bought a boat, set out to teach ourselves to sail and have been living on the water ever since.
2.5 years now we’ve floated in foreign lands, somehow in an almost perfectly timed isolation amidst a global pandemic and still spending our days helping those back home design their dream adventure vans so they too can make their own escape. Somehow working remotely from 1000s of miles away and doing something we love during a “covid camper craze” that might be the strongest and most massive of all the trends we’ve accidentally found ourselves in.
Campervan companies like ours are now popping up by the dozens across the country trying to cash in on a craze, but we simply keep doing what we’ve always done. We wait for a handful of the right clients to come along and help them build the physical manifestation of their dream.
To us this craze isn’t a chance to triple our business size. It's business as usual (meaning barely a business at all). This started as a passion project and as long as we remain part of it that’s what it will remain. Are other companies building lesser quality products at 2-3x the price we currently charge? Sure.
Does it matter if we still find clients that we enjoy working with, still find a balance between putting them into a van they love and also make enough money to keep our own adventure rolling/floating along and also finding some version of live/work balance along the way? It doesn’t matter in the least… because the second our business becomes about money is the second I hand the keys over and move on.
There is still much to refine in our lives. Balance is still a struggle, often daily.
While the dream has always been to live anywhere, travel full time and still pursue creative endeavors; but it does come with its own struggles (not the least of which being that everyone around you is on permanent vacation).
Turning a passion project into a business is hard enough, trying to do so without losing that passion is even harder.
Trying to do it all from a few thousand miles away without hiccups… an act of magic.
What’s next for us you ask??
Who could possibly know!
I’m still struggling to admit that these last 10years are real and pinching myself that today (or every day) is even happening.
It’s not like we made choices to end up in all the places and movements and trends that the last 10 years have seen.
There was never a bigger picture or some master plan… we simply continue doing what we committed to ourselves a decade ago.
To wake up each day and ask ourselves if we are truly happy, and if not… to make change (quickly and decisively.)
What I do know is that I now embrace birthdays just like every other day.
I no longer dread them as a reminder of getting older or another year of failure to achieve my goals. I now find myself waking up thrilled to be alive, full of energy and hope and excitement for the future because now I know that I have the reigns and I get to control the trajectory of where this strange journey goes from here.
That single point of knowledge, the idea that I actually have full control of my path and the infinite options and opportunities along the way - that has done far more for my personal happiness and freedom than any other thought or change we’ve made along the way.
I embrace each birthday now as a reminder. That if I can barely remember where or who I was last year… there’s almost no limit to who I can become or what I accomplish or achieve in the next one.
