I’ve been doing some admin stuff today between little domesticities like making a casserole and doing a couple of loads of laundry. I went out around 5 to see if I had any mail at the office. En route, I scared a flock of mallards and they flew off in thunderous synchronicity. There had to be at least a hundred of those ducks and they blackened the sky with a deafening honk. A few remained on the ground and they yelled at me before taking off, too, making sure to fly straight at me before veering off to join their flock. It was straight out of something Hitchcock would have written, except ducks are such droll creatures that the effect was more funny than scary!
Day: October 25, 2010
Lifestyle Design
Today’s post is for those who are dissatisfied with their lives and unaware that there are other ways to live. Did you know that pre-retirement age RVers are lifestyle designers?
Corbett Barr claims that there are five categories of life plans, of which life style design is one:
Lifestyle designers believe there is a better way. They essentially ask, “why wait until you’re rich or retired to live the life you really want to live?” They start with the concept of an ideal lifestyle and work backwards to plan a career that will suit that lifestyle.
He also has this to say about lifestyle design:
it’s about examining your life and your goals and thinking unconventionally about how to make things possible now instead of later. It’s about designing your life instead of letting society design it for you.
Many pre-retirement age full-time RVers are living their dreams right now, instead of deferring them. They are committed to the notion that life experiences, not material goods, are what truly make you rich. They may camphost long hours during the summer and then spend the rest of the year living frugally in a warm climate. They might decide on a smaller and less flashy rig so they can have better gas mileage and stealth boondocking capabilities. And many choose to work longer and defer retirement since they are already doing what they planned to do when retired.
Lifestyle design does mean choosing an unconventional path. But that does not mean it has to be a difficult one. After all, what is harder: getting up in the morning every day when you hate how you will spend it, or working long hours at something you love that let’s you feel free?
There is certainly more to life than ‘this.’