Yesterday my adorable One undauntedly took the leap off the highest cliff in the hemisphere, selling off her Toyonda and declaring her full independence from oil wars and car doors. This lovely being keeps my heart for all time but this is my proudest fatherly moment, to see her follow through with her plan of modest needs and self-directed exposure to all things wonderful. I'm only partial influence because this was a step in her grand dream before we met, and probably why we met in time, but she trusted my exuberant experiences of car-lessness and personally tried them out in full cheer and faith. To see her grinning face in the headwind confirms to me that the bicycle must be the most cosmically significant invention. It's the quickest and most beautifully precise of all humanity-fueled kinesis and to watch her gliding on her vintage Steyr, bread baskets fore and aft, is the most achingly sweet sight of my life. This is the same lovely that was as locked down in the corporate sentence as i was, numbing the weekdays by padding the credit, solitary in an enormous post-marriage condo-nest, and wrapped in costly couture coordinating with the graphite ultralight . Now she stables an eager steed for every purpose, shopping, touring, sprinting, and strolling her way crosstown in exquisitely charming style. It all goes together and comes together in the most delightfully creative ways with her. You'll see.....
Exultation
Friends
Don't be afraid to confide your enthusiasm and fears with your friends.
Be confident in your assertions. Your friends' reactions may initially not be what you wish to hear, but know they do want you to succeed in your convictions. Most often they are still locked into the fear and loathing of corporate society so any positive feedback will be an encouragement. The look on their face will likely be one of bewildered admiration that you are embarking on everyone's sublimated fantasy.
Family is just as unlikely to be encouraging. Remember that they don't want you to make the same life mistakes they've experienced, either first-hand or from some soap opera or b.s.-reality show, the distant-future benchmark of the dark ages and downfall of broadcast media.
To speak your convictions, what has come to make perfect sense to you, will reinforce and confirm your circumstance. Nothing is set in stone, especially in your apprenticeship in adaptable life. Things change with the wind and you will bend like the tree, still firmly rooted.
Avocation
Can you recall your younger days? Less money, more time. We couldn't afford that esoteric guitar or bicycle but we found the way to an acceptable substitute. You bought a Schwinn Varsity instead of a Campagnolo-gruppo Unobtainium racycle. Time and money morphed these acquisitions into whatever the magazines are selling and we succumb to upgrade-itis. With musical instruments, they called it Gear Acqusition Syndrome (G.A.S.) and include the addict's excuse of being able to quit anytime. Easier said than done until the money supply is cut off.
The loss of steady income is a perfectly welcome opportunity to reintroduce our youthful ideals of minimalism, green consciousness, and economic freedom from the man. The unconscious state of making money to spend money is awakened and we're suddenly fastidious accountants and stewards of the here and now. The daily mocha and breakfast burrito at the company store which was the affluent personal treat for showing up in the same building every day turns into a regretful waste of savings for a rainy day. It was a matter of survival of a different sort back then, so bygones, right?
Now the time has arrived for unconventional thinking of the ideal kind. Do we choose to despair over the bleak economic indicators and threadbare classifieds? They can be little more than depressing, especially as listings for your field are gobbled up by graduates going to work for peanuts to pay the student loan sharks. Channel those daydreams in the soft time at work. Recall the moments you fantasized about doing what you really enjoy, what you know how to do, what you do in your leisure time, what you read about. Ask yourself if this is possible to pursue. Take the money factor out of the equation for now. Try to forget the mortgage and pressing bills for just a moment. Ask yourself if it's at all possible to make even twenty dollars a day doing this. Be unrealistic. Is there somewhere you can volunteer for a month to bring you up to speed as a go-to person someone will seek out. I'm not talking about something you haven't a clue, a total fantasy with no practical experience. I'm suggesting a passion you already have, that you never imagined anyone would pay you to do, that has held your interest for years. Mine's bikes and guitars, the adolescent's mainstays. I never grew out of either one, continually justifying each as an organic miracle of technology and craftsmanship. They are my sure thing, my friends and children, my conversation guarantees. No matter the walk of life, the financial discrepancy, the social distinction, the wind always delivers the scent. Someone invariably will approach and meet on this common ground. If it's not them, it's me. The guy's wife will roll her eyes and say it's always about the bike to whomever i'm with. The conversation runs rampant through the opened window and we both know there will be backpressure if left running too long. The greatest luxury is having all the time in the world and circumstance to let it run its course and full length. That's rare because of our heightened consciousness of the tape measure of remaining days, but it should be attempted. Your head will hit the pillow that night with a contented sigh. These are good days.
Analysis of Things Past
Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Bob Slydell: I'd like to move us right along to a Peter Gibbons. Now we had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
- Office Space, 1999
So where were you all that time? What can you account for this lost time of your life? Is it measurable?? A week after my release, a friend in conversation offered a perversion of a college career visual that startled me to the core. He took a tape measure from the kitchen drawer and pulled out my age in inches. He asked me to estimate an arbitrary age when the quality of life is recognized as heading downhill. I thoughtlessly chose 80 just to be compliant since i was used to his joke style. "Okay", he says as i balance the long reach of the tape on the table and adjust my 55 inch/year mark under my eyes. My past life, gone for good, was practically out the window, and in my immediate field of vision were the inches i have left, if i live that long.
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
-Uncle Bob D.
The Portable Life
I felt the cold wind under me for years but endured the pop-tests of being hauled in to HR with every regime change. My immediate supervisor always had some issue with my behavior and would hatch a new plan of attack with each new reassignment of HR representative. Why was it that everyone in that company was happy with me but the manager? Was it a personality clash or just my attitude? Obviously to me, it was all about control, the hallmark of middle management. I truly and admittedly wasn't much of an ass-kisser, in fact, i often took opportunity to express my feelings which didn't always worship of the bottom line. I enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with one hundred percent of my clients, practically inventing the job at the beginnings of digital presentation. I was the go-to guy for every formatting headache relief. Now, who knows where they go for help, although few have called me at home in a panic. I liked the work, but it was a long job sentence after all, full of little murders, and a time of bittersweet memory. I didn't rule out freelancing and still help out old friends.
Back to the past, in this job of putting out the fires of panic, five minutes before showtime, there was quite a bit of soft time, with internet access and time to take ergonomic breaks. That time was ripe for daydreaming and possibilities. More than a year before the axe, my mind was filled with days of heaven, open-ended thoughts and schemes of bicycle touring, of blood transfusion in the band, of life's inevitabilities. The writing was on the wall and i was waiting out the coming storm, but in an almost natural selection perspective. I made an unconscious decision to gather acorns, research and buy all things for a year off, while i had income, while i was in spending mode. It was a joyous spree, collecting objects and tools of long-distance cycle touring, figuring and rehearsing what would suit a comfortable time off for adventure. The ultralight tent and cookstuff, the building of a dedicated expedition bike, the first-hand advice of seasoned trekkers was exciting to the core. Maybe that's what's kept my mental momentum rolling, that enthusiasm for what i really plan to enjoy, every detail reconsidered every day, to prolong and enhance the interest and conviction. It took a long time but the G.A.S. has leveled and there is now a true appreciation for the reliable and cool tools, the things that work and that return great pleasure in their use.
These are the tools of adventure away from the nest, what you can take with you, ever more efficient and economic. If you're a homebody and can leave your nagging mind, then organize to where you don't spend all day looking for misplaced tools of enjoyment. But, if you're outward bound, take inventory before each outing so you can stay as long as you like in the undiscovered country.
Truly consider crazyguyonabike.com for limitless inspiration and valuable insights of personal interaction as well as the psychology of the solo pedalist. Hundreds of people are out there exploring on foot or on two wheels at any given moment in every country. The gear lists are fascinating, the bare minimum people estimate and revise since weight and bulk is a major issue when touring. Tour your own town with your custom gear list.
Connection
So how does one reconnect with the world, renew a sense of belonging in the most positive and nurturing sense?
Consider touring your own town. Find the independent coffee shop or tea room, especially one with free wi-fi. You'll find people there relaxing, working on far more interesting projects than company assignments, and in lively conversation. It can be a central station for forward-thinking day people. Stay connected in the symbolic sense as well as the physical. Conversation will come to you if you don't initiate it first with your recharged sense of curiosity and comfortable fearlessness.
There will be an astonishingly large population of day people busy into their own developed passions, coming up for air and retuning their strings. You'll do the same in short order, after a reasonable time of detached and amused observation. Treat this as a prelude, a small and necessary step toward connection with the music of the universe.
Learn to carry your essentials with you, so you don't have to return home for any small excuse. Home is not your reward for venturing out. The reward is wherever you are and wherever you're going. For a gadget freak as myself, this is the ideal reinforcement for my wish come true.
They say be careful what you wish for, since the power of that thought will influence its outcome. i got lucky, eventually, after feeling years of containment and persecution. The day came, as destined, and i knew everything i had bought and hand-picked from online catalogs was going to be put to immediate use.
Let me back up here and give you the short of this chronology. As is easily surmised, my job was of personal service to physicians and medical staff, assisting with their publishing and presentation needs. Essentially, I helped them look good in front others by reformatting their content, and smoothing the delivery. It was a niche job that didn't pay very much, being a sub-department of one. This kept me under the spreadsheet radar for years, although the collective paranoia was refueled with every wave of restructuring and downsizing. Whole departments fell to the axe and yet I was untouched, presumably by someone at the occasional breakfast meeting that spoke up for my service. It didn't take more than a couple years of doctors' heads posted at the village gate to realize no one was exempt or unnoticed by the red flags of database.
Awards and Recognition
America loves awards and recognition, the key to fame. Remember the Wizard of Oz giving the scarecrow a diploma? The official (to whom?) piece of paper, the dimestore medal for courage, the baroque-font university degree, all validate the effort and experience of hard work, yet anyone with a printer and convincingly manufactured testimony can form a foundation out of thin air. The lifestyle one adopts in the rejection of social programming is the living proof, the national treasure of unconventional thought, the seeds of contentment to be out of the rat study. The superior mouse climbs the perimeter wall rather than repetitiously seeking the food or addictive substance planted in the maze. The badge of honor you wear is the success of happiness, the personal identity in an infectious smile, the enthusiasm of the day ahead.
The greatest reward is staying out, away from retreat. Buy yourself a tea, enroll in an adult education course. The minimal money this costs is an investment in your peace of mind and a stimulant to personal growth.
Acceptance
When your immediate superior and the Human Resources company tool call you up to the quiet room on the second floor, the immediate gut-wrenching, realization is the time has come for the hanging. It usually happens on a Monday or a Friday and they run through a blizzard of well-rehearsed business-speak of severance (if you're lucky) remnants of benefits that will be gone before you know it, and procedures of acceptance.
The bigger corporations may offer a package "deal", an acceptance document that will prove to you this was no surprise to the weasel manager, that it was a long time brewing to cut you off before a raise in your vacation hour accrual. In my case, it was a couple months before my fifteenth year of hire. The others in my wave of dismissal was an older guy just short of eighteen years work, a Hispanic male in his twenties, and a woman a few months short of full retirement, the reward they used to treat with a trip to Hawaii. Rest assured that those Hawaii trips have been monopolized as retreats so deservedly and humbly accepted by upper management every fiscal quarter.
The "acceptance deal" is that they'll give you a week's pay for every year served, penitentiary-style for good behavior. This is unless you sign the document as a revocation, that you have a waiting time, my case was 45 days to ponder litigation for age discrimination. This kicks in as a factor for those dismissed after 45 years old. This is a serious consideration, even if they stacked the demographic deck against you in your group. Again, the game is different for upper management. They're most often offered a relatively nice package that provides a year's health coverage and golf-membership time while pondering how to pay the looming and over-extended bills. Seems these guys always come up smelling like a rose, but the reality may be their ulcers have grown a bit more, less because they are still despised for being career sellouts known for brutal decisions, rather more for how to grovel for starting again at square-one for another heat of olympic ass-kissing. Believe me, they had it much worse than those of us who actually worked.
BikeTart Dream #1
My life changed forever with the most intriguing and beautiful sidelong glance from the yet introduced BikeTart. I had no idea what effect she would have on me now and forever, but at that moment I knew I was significantly touched to the depths of my soul.
This burst out of my chest and scattered into the breeze to seek root..
Until you found me
i thought i was free
Days gave me friends and plans and jokes
No expectancy
Your smile made me see
Love wasn't to be
Until you found me
Until i found you
Your hopes were thin too
Only light raindrops in this flood of desire
That i cannot subdue
Discontent grew
There was nothing quite true
Until i found you
-bridge-
Now we've reached our destiny
We dared never dream
The highest of mountains
You lift me to view
In my angel eyes' gleam
Until you found me
It was what was to be
Wandering aimless days
Of coffee and tea
Your love made me see
Life wasn't to be
Until you found me
BikeTart Dream #2
Funny how being in the right spot at the right time is guided. Where is that banshee the rest of the time? Probably waiting all your life for that perfect moment. I know for certain it happened to me when I felt least receptive, but now realizing was delivered in perfect harmony to the possibility. I'll be forever grateful for that enchanted semiquaver in time, and even more delightfully astonished that she could so naturally feel the long now in us. Nothing short of miraculous to me...
I know it's over
Your arms pulled me free
Gone is the hopeless veil
of complacency
i know it's over
my solitude's done
i have my One
The day that you found me
The look that you sent
Blew sparks to my soul, my mind, my heart
i could never invent
i know that it's over
The new world's begun
You are my One
bridge
No need to analyze
We fit hand in glove
So quickly become, we're certain is real
i finally know love
You give me your sweetest smile
Enlighten my day
Delight in your glow, your thought, your touch
In every way
I know that it's over
Waiting is done
You are my One