Daily, I long for a life I don’t feel like I have to escape from. I find myself constantly Googling, “How to make money from home.” It’s not that I don’t want to work, it’s that I want to work on my own terms, make money on the go, and spend time I’ll never get back with Caesar and Jeter. I love writing and I dream of the day where this blog is my job.
I saw a post recently that said, “I honestly believe human beings are not meant to live like this. We are meant to live in loving communities and be around nature every day and grow our own food and create art and not work day and night until we die. This longing for another life is not human nature, it’s a symptom of modern society.”
I can’t stop thinking about that. We’ve been conditioned to think that NEEDING a vacation away from life is “normal.” Suicide and depression rates have been on the rise every single year. This is not normal. How we are living and our longing to escape is not normal. What if we each did live in loving communities and spent our energy creating beautiful things and finding solitude in the woods? I have to believe we’d all be more patient, kinder, and less full of anxiety that is crippling us.
I am a symptom of society. My anxiety eats at me and keeps me awake at night. My depression makes it hard for me to keep caring or to connect with others. I spend 99 percent of my days anymore longing for a way out of the mundane. I scroll through social media and see someone taking the most beautiful photos of a cross-country road trip with their dog and I think, “They are living my dream life.”
We are all so scared to take big leaps of faith that result in major change. I’m a firm believer that “change” is one of the scariest words in the English language, but how many times have you taken a leap of faith and it all worked out?
In 2015, I was working at a job that was destroying my soul. I would cry in the parking lot because I hated it so much. The people were nasty and mean, and the company did little to stop the workplace bullying. I spent the entire summer on short term disability because of stress-related illness. When I went back to work, I realized that if I didn’t make a change, I would be destroying myself and my health in the long-run.
I quit my $17 an hour job and went to work for $9.25 managing a record store. It was the best decision I ever made. Sure, I wasn’t making big money anymore but I found a way to live within my means and I was surrounded by music and music lovers every day. I talked about music every day. That was an incredibly scary change, but I have never regretted making it.
Before I quit, I worried “What if I can’t pay my bills,” “What if I regret leaving?” “What if I’m making a mistake?” The “what if’s” were endless, but I took the chance because I had more to lose by staying at a job that was stressing me to the point of physical sickness than I had to gain.
The universe has a way of making things work out. If you want to accomplish your goals and dreams bad enough, no matter what gets thrown your way, I believe it will happen. Don’t let things discourage you. Maybe you’re not moving as fast as you want, but remember, life is not a race. It’s not about how fast we get things done, but the fact that we do in fact get them done in the end.
Every single person has a breaking point. Whether it’s in a relationship or a job, eventually, the thing that is not making you happy and not fulfilling you will cause you to snap to the point where you finally say, “I no longer care.” When that happens, you will finally be ready to grab at that big “change” you’ve been thinking about.
Jump when you are ready, be confident in your decisions, and don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re not moving fast enough. You are not a turtle or a hare, you are you and there’s no set definition on what that is supposed to mean.
Every day I get a little closer to jumping, and to be honest, I don’t know how much longer I can stand on the edge and just look out at my dreams without taking that leap.