Choose to Live the Life You Most Envy

That is a perfect example of how deceptive the “grid” is. I used to think that the grid was the only place that offered security, but I was wrong, it really offers slavery. When people find out what is really important to them, what will really make them happy, that’s when they realize that their dreams can become reality, and they don’t need to commute 90 minutes a day for the paycheck that they can’t maintain their lifestyle without. I just went on a fishing trip with my 3 year old daughter, the trip was relatively inexpensive (under $30) and I had so much fun every time I think about it I smile. I can’t think of another activity I have participated in that truly made me as happy as that fishing trip did. Having time for my children is a priority, work can come second!

Will be starting to look for a new job this week. The commute is starting to really wear on me. Usually, i skip the commute hours, but that requires me to stay later and later at work. I’ve tried negotiating a flex-schedule with the company, but they are not budging. C’est la vie.

The other thing we need to do is take a vacation at home. Even if its only a weekend. Don’t do dishes, order in food or go to new restaurants. Go to different places, or favorite ones. Do it as a family. Open your eyes and take a new look at where you are. Could be the life you envy is already yours. Maybe you need to get rid of a few committments and baggage that isn’t making your dream come true, and shabam!, there’s the life you always wanted. Try it.

I’ve have known a prayer most of my life that goes something like, God grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It took me a long time to realise, I couldn’t change the education system where I taught for 17 years. I could only change my little corner of this earth. So with some helpful inspiration from ADP and a few books, “Your money or your life, Domingues/Robbins”, my family took on a new adventure. We eliminated our mortgage by building a home with cash and savings. Quit our stessful jobs, gave up on all of the extra time fillers which were supposed to be fulfilling, but were not. We started living and enjoying our time. We get up each morning to our own schedule, share coffee and breakfast together and wonder off to our passions, for my wife, it’s ebay and me remodeling homes. At the end of the day we’re physically tired, but our souls are healed and at peace. The saying goes,” do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. I now know this is true for me. The dream is available to all with courage to change.

After years on the treadmill, I choose to downsize. Now I live in a small seaside town in California in a 400 square foot flat 6 blocks from the beach. My income has been cut in 1/2, but seashells are free…and the cost of losing all that stress? Priceless! P.S. Kudos to the attorneys demanding better hours. We also have to put an end to “character assasination” being an acceptable form of behavior. The insurance/legal machine (that we pay for if you follow the supply chain) rolls over the little guy.

After decades of becoming even more frustrated and less satisfied with a corporate sales career I decided to pursue another vocation–helping people keep more of their hard earned income. I enrolled in training with a Green Box tax preparation school and began an “apprenticeship” doing personal taxes during “tax season”. I loathed the corporate culture of that rather poorly run organization but loved the interaction with clients of all income levels and occupations. Some of them have even tracked me down just because they appreciated the human approach and thoughtfulness with which I engaged them in the collection of data and output of results. Now I roll out of bed and “commute” to my computer, log-in, and do as many hours as I wish completing returns in my own home office. I’ve switched from chain-return training to “Tax School” at a nationally recognized Graduate Business College where I’m enrolled in a Master’s Program in Taxation. Not bad for a guy with an Art degree from the California University system. The culture doesn’t include award trips to the Caribbean, President’s Club placques, or hours of daily commute time. I’m paid for what I produce, not for whose boss’s boss is impressed “with the numbers”. Did I mention no quotas and QBRs. Yeah, its a step down on the financial scale but I still make short and long-term goals for my adopted career and have a vision of expanding and training my own crew. I specialize in estates and trusts and people are dying to have me do their returns (pun intended). Added bonus, when I absolutely have to make a client visit, I am forced to drive through some of the most beautiful countryside that God ever created here in the San Francisco Bay area. Get to set my own hours to avoid traffic congestion periods. And I’ve taken up watercolor painting and got a little Martin six-string just because I can. I’ve passed throught the belly of the corporate monster and washed up in different surroundings. I wish everyone the opportunity to pursue alternate dreams and the drive keep steady on the trail. No guarantees, but lots of gratitude for what I’ve received. First stuggle, then redemption. Ciao, Peace, Love, WD Ford

I have been thinking a lot about this particulair blog, and “The Grid”. Personaly I am in a situation that leaves me neither free from, nor entirely enslaved by the Grid. I insulate myself from it through my attitude, and set boundries on how much control I will allow others to insert in my life, although sometimes I feel like the grid tries to use the well being of my family as a hostage. The other thing that I’m beginning to understand is that you need to take one step towards your dreams every day no matter how small or insignificant it might seem. It’s important because it establishes a mind set.—Now back to “The Grid”. If you ask yourself what it’s purpose is you come to the inescapable conclusion that it is to make the wealthy wealthier. It is shocking that senior executives can make multi-million dollar severence packages for poorly done jobs when working americans (not the willfuly homeless) are forced to live in their cars. I certainly believe that initiative, effort, and education should be rewarded but how much is any ones persons time worth compared to anothers? 3 or 4, maybe 10, certainly not 3 figures. Why do we become slaves to support an endless array of trinkets that do little to bring real improvement to our lives. Computers are helpful, cell phones are helpful, but do we really need an endless array of new features that makes us feel we need to upgrade every year? Is that worth a life of slavery? Unfortunately the systems that we support are just as much in slavery to “The Grid” as many people are, and we are forced to flip the bill. Now, how do we dismantle “The Grid”. Will, if you get some time to give us your thoughts on that question, I would love to hear them.

I decided upon the onset of this century that I would no longer require or own an automobile. My partner and I are beginning our eighth year without the many restraints of automobile ownership. We are both fortunate enough to live within a ten minute stroll to our workplace (we work in the same hotel). That is twenty minutes per day that we spend walking to and fro. We don’t even have to rely upon public transit. We currently live in San Francisco - a city known for public transit, albeit far from efficient - and rather easily circumnavigated and pedestrian friendly. However, we lived in Miami for two years without cars also, and we managed to figure out a relatively easy commute on commute rail. It takes some creativity and planning and some personal sacrifice to live without a car, but I propose that the advantages by far outweigh any small loss of momentary freedom. Allow me to highlight the advantages of remaining outside the automobile industry loop. 1.) Economic advantages: These are many. We are a working class, blue collar household, and even though we are living without children, it takes both of our salaries to pay the basic necessities of life - namely food and shelter. We like most people in this country live from paycheck to paycheck. Home ownership in the cities is prohibitive for us, but rent tends to be more affordable, so we rent. If we were to choose life in the suburbs, undoubtedly we could rent something for less, and it would likely be larger than the one bedroom apartment we now have. Yet to do so would require that we own at least one car. Since we do not have the economic means of purchasing a new car, that would mean financing one at a high interest rate. We then would have to purchase the most costly insurance. Even if we decided to purchase a used car, then one has to factor in higher maintenance costs, and the unreliability of such transportation. There are registration and smog fees. Gas is soon to be $4 per gallon here. Even if we were not to commute by car, it is almost always necessary to drive to the train station, in which case parking is yet another expense. And we have not even discussed time lost during one’s commute, which would be close to two hours per day in the best case scenario. All this said, we would be better served by ownership of two cars in such case as our shifts do not coincide, or if one needed to run errands on his day off. So for the sake of argument, let’s say we purchase one economical new car and one fairly used car. Let’s assume we commute by rail and limit our driving to the most essential errands. Cost of automobile #1: $15,000 financed over 60 months, or $350 per month. Approximate cost of insurance for 2 cars: $200 per month Gas & maintenance: $200 per month Registration/licensing & other fees: $100 per month Approximate commute costs: $200 per month Time spent commuting: 80+ hours per month Right here one can see that by a very conservative estimate, we have over $1,000 per month dedicated to automobile ownership and over 80 hours of lost time in order to either rent or purchase a home in the suburbs. Now one can work in the suburbs, but due to the nature of suburban living, a car is still pretty much a necessity. So one could save time, but the economic forecast remains. A two-bedroom apartment in the city is around $2500 per month. If one rents in the suburbs, the monthly rent could drop to $1500. Notice that the difference in rent is offset entirely by automobile ownership. And more than likely, it would indeed cost more to live outside the city, even with savings in the cost of food and household items that one generally sees in the suburbs. 2.) Psychological & Health Advantages: Obviously living without a car is more conducive to healthy living. First of all, one tends to walk. Walking is the main activity that human beings have engaged in since before we were homo sapiens. Walking is an amazingly efficient mode of transportation. As a matter of fact, it is the most efficient means of transportation nature has designed. Humanity did one up nature with the invention of the bicycle. However, the automobile is amazingly inefficient and destructive to the environment, both in its manufacture and its operation. One of the most life threatening things we all do on a regular basis is to drive our car. Even with seat belts and airbags, driving has been shown statistically to shave off 19 minutes of one’s life for every hour of interstate/freeway driving and 8 minutes for every hour of city driving (not to mention the danger to pedestrians!). Ironically, cardiovascular disease and obesity are the biggest killers, and much of that could be prevented by living a life other than the sedentary one many of us now live. Get out and walk daily. Driving is a highly stressful activity, especially when one is stuck in traffic and running late. I oftentimes wonder just how much impact this has on productivity at work and anger and rage within households. However, all this stated, most American cities and towns are not built for pedestrians. I commend a fantastic website: (www.carfree.com). 3.) Environmental Advantages: Ivan Illich published an article in “Le Monde” in 1973, entitled “Energy & Equity”. It is available online at: http://reactor-core.org/energy-and-equity.html It goes without saying that automobiles have had a tremendously negative effect upon the environment, both in their manufacture and operation. Petroleum is a natural resource that is quite literally wasted in making of fuel for automobiles. The greenhouse gasses and other noxious substances emanating from tailpipes is doing plenty to degrade our quality of life. We are now fighting “corporate wars” over petroleum in order to maintain our current paradigm. Lives are being needlessly terminated, science is ignored and underfunded, democracy itself is at stake, our environment is being plundered, we are borrowing upon our grandchildren’s futures and all this for the sake of driving the latest model of S.U.V., or as I prefer to call them, S.A.V. (Suburban Assault Vehicles). Once one opts out of the current automobile paradigm, it will begin to shift. The more people that do this, the more resources we will have for alternatives. We can no longer afford to continue in the direction we’ve been headed. Now is the time for immediate action. Get out of your car now. Stop supporting terrorism by walking to work.

This is all wonderful and great stuff. However, you may be missing something with this article and others like it. That would be that many people, and I mean scores of millions of Americans, are just living lives that are hanging on by one or two paychecks. What about all of these, almost a majority by the way? If we are going to change lives, then we have to also consider this, don’t you think so? Ten or twenty people does not a nation make. I would like to get directly involved in doing soemthing to shift and change the general consciousness of this segment, the larger segment by the way, of the American population. How about addressing this? Affordablity is a very real and serious issue and I have yet to see it in the writings that come over this seriously wonderful site,… and I mean that by the way. This site is a serious step in the right direction and I am all for it. But discussion is only a beginning.

This is equivilent to wanting change in our government, but not voting people out of office, and deciding that someone else somewhere else will do it, and we will just take care of our own small places. As you can now see, over the past 30 years of this sort of thinking, this is not a viable option for change. I agree evolution/revolution begins in the consciousness, but then it has to take form into the physical world at some point. I want so much to take action, not some crazy thing either, but with thinking and seriously patient and intelligent individuals. Folks with viable plans. I also have viable plans myself, and this is certainly a good place to share those plans. vincent peppers/ san diego CA

Good info and right to the point. I don’t know if this is truly the best place to ask but do you guys have any thoughts on where to employ some professional writers? Thanks in advance