Personal

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A Life By Design

I tend to present my projects as faits accomplis, done deals, except to a chosen few who are cursed with hearing all the details about a plan. I’m not sure why I do it that way. Fear of failure, perhaps? Fear that if I bring my project into the light of day, the universe will strike me down for my pride and put stumbling blocks in my path? Who knows.

There’s a lot going on with me right now that I think I need to share because I have chosen to put my life out there with this blog. I know that I sometimes appeared scattered, jumping from one idea to the next, but I actually do have a plan for my life and it is coming together behind the scenes. I think it’s time to draw the curtain. When things come together for me, they tend to do so very, very quickly and I don’t want to feel that I need to explain myself with any future moves.

I’ll start off by saying that I have always known what I wanted to do with my life: see the world. Travel has always been the constant yearning and everything else has been but a balm on an itch. Science has proven that there is such thing as a wanderlust gene. If you look at my family tree on my mother’s father’s side, you will see the names of some of the greatest explorers in Canadian history. I am hardcoded for wanderlust. It truly is a biological imperative.

It took me a very long time to figure out how to see the world. I can’t count the number of hours I’ve spent tallying up how to pay the rent and the bills and maintain a certain lifestyle while saving up to take two or maybe three weeks, if I was lucky, to go exploring. I took a few trips, most notably to Scotland in 1998, and the more I traveled, the worse my urge became. It actually helped somewhat to not travel and focus on the half of me that is a stereotypical 1950s homemaker.

But then, the door to travel opened for me after my dad died and somehow, with a courage I did not know I had, I stepped into the unknown. Followed some of the most amazing years I will ever have as I traveled the continent on a super tight budget, seeing more of it than I could have ever dreamed of doing on four, even five times the annual income. I thought RVing could be It for me, the way to soothe my wanderlust forever, but, like an addict, I needed a bigger and bigger fix. After just about completing my Canadian and U.S. bucket lists, Mexico beckoned, but was just out of reach.

I thought that spending a few more winters in the U.S. while I continued to get my financial footing before going to Mexico would suit me, so the next logical step in my life was to get a home base. Some permanent travelers have friends or family they can always return to and where they are nearly indefinitely welcome, but that wasn’t the case for me. I had to find my own Haven, and I did. I think I knew deep down as I signed the property transfer papers that my RVing life was winding down, but it took those final two cross-continent journeys to prove it to me. I had an amazing final winter on the road, but the journey to a place I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go was fraught with difficulty… and wonderful encounters with generous people.

I was afraid when I landed here in the spring of 2013, afraid that this was going to be It for me because I couldn’t see a way past being here, and that fear mounted as my summer stretched into a winter and then a second summer. I was financially and emotionally at one of the lowest points in my life and so very weary, but this place renewed me. I knew that I finally had a well of infinite energy from which I could draw, that no matter where my life took me, I could return to this place and emerge renewed.

And sure enough, from my time here, where I could focus on monetary matters, the future became a little clearer. I got the contract that gave me the courage to head for Mexico, and we all know how that turned out (for those who haven’t be reading, Mexico was an amazing fit for me!). That contract did not pan out, so I was left in Mexico with just the contracts I’d had before, which I would never have thought would be enough to sustain me in so bold an endeavour, but I did just fine.

I figured out very early in my RVing life that working for myself was going to be the key to my freedom to see the world and there were a lot of false starts as I figured out what I could do from the road and find enough work to support myself. By the time that big contract came in late February of 2014, I was at my limits. If a big break didn’t come, I was ready to give up and get a job. So while the contract didn’t work out, it came at just the right moment, buying me enough time to get to Mexico and realise that I wasn’t ready to give up all my temporal freedom for the sake of a full-time job. I did consider a part-time summer job in Saskatchewan, however, and that’s rather the mindset I had on my way home last spring. But I’d built up enough of a buffer in Mexico that the urge didn’t feel as pressing as it had a few months prior. I knew I wouldn’t have many distractions this summer and that I could focus on getting better paying work.

Things came together for me as they always do when the time and place are right and my dream job fell into my lap. I still don’t want to say too much about it, but I am working for a company whose founder had the same dreams for his life as I do for mine, and fulfilled them, and so I know that I can always fall back on that if an immediate supervisor who doesn’t understand my lifestyle gives me grief when asking for a modicum of flexibility. In fact, much of what I proofread is relevant to the next step in my life journey and is helping me prepare for it. If that is not proof that I am firmly on my Path, I don’t know what is!

Let me backtrack a bit here to reiterate that when I bought my property, I expected it to eventually be a place I could retire to. I envisioned my future with the resources I had then. I don’t play the ‘if I win the lottery’ game, but plan with what I have and remain flexible if things change.

Well, everything has changed for me this summer because of this new client. I’m really pleased that I pushed the internet thing through as far as I did because it not panning it out was just the kick in the seat that I needed to stop clinging to old ideas I had about my future when so many doors have opened up to me. It’s a really surreal. I feel like I won the lottery without having realised that I was playing all along.

It was only seven years and three months ago that my old financial planner told me to go out into the world and play. He warned me that I would have years of misery as I built my new life, but that he was convinced that I would do better for myself financially than I ever could working my 35 years for the government and that I’d have a life to show for it all. He was absolutely right.

Why remain here in a (beautiful and wonderful!) Canadian backwater when I can work from anywhere? I am too young to be here puttering around and working myself to the bone. My second Mexican winter is upon me (in fact, I will be arriving this day in two months!) and it will be glorious, with all that extra free time and money available to me.

But what of next summer?

Even though my internet situation is greatly improved (and due to be blogged about), the severance has been made. I love this place and it will always be here for me, but it has played its role for the time being. I’m going Somewhere Else for most of the next summer. I need good internet, a time zone difference compatible with work, a super cheap cost of living, and a stable enough political situation. The answer is a country so far off my radar that I didn’t even know where it’s located until I pulled out a map! So here is my first big public announcement after all that bla bla bla: I intend to spend 90 days next summer in Bulgaria.

A decision like that always leads to new discoveries as I do research. Bulgaria is part of the Schengen Agreement, which comprises most European countries. Ninety days would be barely enough to see all of Bulgaria; what if I wanted to stay in Europe instead of coming back to North American so I could try another country? This question led me to the jackpot.

The gold standard in passports is to have one from the European Union. It opens up the entire European continent and all its benefits. It is also very difficult to get one unless you work in a specialized field or marry a national. I have tried for 20 years to figure out how to get myself a European passport short of marrying someone and the answer fell into my lap today. Just like that. It was one of those lightning bolt moments that makes me understand some of the trials I’ve been put through as it makes sense of a lot of my pondering.

Some European countries, like Spain, have a permanent residency scheme and path to citizenship for freelancers, folks with independent income from outside Europe… Of course, there’s a lot of red tape and it’s never as simple as it looks on a website, but the short of it is, you move to Spain as a freelancer, get your permanent residency, and then ten years later, sooner if you meet certain criteria, you become a citizen.

I could do that!

But here is where things get a little interesting. If you are a citizen of a Spanish-speaking country, you can get your Spanish citizenship in about two years rather than ten.

It takes about five years to get Mexican citizenship. On paper, it looks like I could get both Mexican and Spanish citizenship in less time than it would take to get just Spanish. Of course, I’m sure I will encounter tripwires with this idea/plan, but it’s one worth exploring. So discovering that I could get a European passport doesn’t derail at all my plan to get Mexican citizenship.

So from where I’m sitting tonight, with the resources currently available to me, I see myself back at Haven for about three months next year, as bookends to my Bulgaria trip, and then off to Mexico for as long as it takes to get my citizenship. It could mean being in Canada well into the winter as a good part of the permanent resident visa process must be done from your home country. But with the nearest consulate being in Calgary, I’d probably just get a short-term rental there while I deal with the paperwork so I wouldn’t be living in an RV in -40 weather again.

Once I have my Mexican citizenship, the next step would be to move to Spain and repeat the process there. And then? Who knows… I’ll be nearing 50 by then and could, in theory, retire at 55, especially if I choose to base myself in a country with a low cost of living, like Mexico. That will be the beauty of having all these citizenships, that I won’t have to base myself somewhere that I’d have to pay usurious taxes, which eliminates Canada and most of the European Union.

But Haven will always be here. I like the idea of finishing up enough work to have a rentable property here, just for a bit of added income, especially if the oil comes, as we suspect it will. I will always have this port of call in between projects. For instance, if I find that I can’t get everything aligned to go to Mexico right away, it won’t cost me much money to wait here, and the same for going to Europe. I am aware that I need to figure out a modicum of property management while I’m gone, however.

Some or none of this may come to pass. But many more possibilities exist where fewer were before. And long-term blog readers will remember that I talked about RVing till I was about 40 and then taking off to see the rest of the world. So rather than shaking your head at me with my grand ideas, take note that I’m four years ahead of where I thought I’d be… and I have a paid for property, not something I had factored into those dreams. When I want something, I make it happen. So don’t be so surprised next year if I do end up blogging from Sofia!

This was post was edited on November 4th, 2016, to add categories and tags. I am just grinning as I reread it, having come from four months in the Balkans, including 90 days in Bulgaria. I do talk big… but I get things done. 🙂

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Reflections From the End of the World

As long-time blog readers will know, I was based in Yukon for two years and traveled all over the territory and parts of the Northwest Territories. What some of you may not know is that I spent time shopping for a home base up there, but any decent land meeting my criteria wasn’t affordable. I was looking for a frontier experience but not a deep bush one, something I could easily drive to and that would have basic services.

I eventually decided I didn’t want to be that far north as it would limit my mobility. To my surprise, I discovered that I wanted to live where the vast majority of other Canadians live, within about 100KM of the US border.

And then I found an anomaly along that densely populate strip, southern Saskatchewan, which promised the wide open space and frontier experience I wanted right in the heart of the continent. I had my pick of affordable lots and I settled on the perfect compromise between deep rural living and suburbia, a charming little hamlet with most services. It didn’t have internet at the time of purchase, but was slated for improvements that would be cellular connectivity in the next year. No one cared if I used it as an RV home base and never developed it (an issue I faced when I was looking at properties 10 times the cost in southern Alberta). And incredibly, I could pay cash. It was perfect.

Sure enough, when I arrived the following year to spend my first summer on my very own land, we were on the coverage map! But surprise, the telecom company had made a huge mistake in locating the new tower and we still didn’t have service. As those of you who have been following the saga know, I’m now able to prove that SaskTel made a mistake. They are a Crown corporation and accountable for how they spend their money, so with a little help from the NDP in pushing the ‘this is a waste of public resources’ angle, I just might get this resolved within my lifetime…

Something else has come up that makes life here difficult and which will be next summer’s fight, our lack of civic addresses. Even though we have a post office, I frequently can’t get things delivered to it because ordering systems now have a database of valid civic addresses and I can’t just make one up and put my PO box number in the next row. I’m figuring out how to work around that. I have a neighbour who works in town who says that as long as it’s not 10 parcels a day, I can have things sent care of him and he’ll drop them off when he passes by my place in the evening.

Today, I saw how absurd the civic address thing is when I couldn’t confirm on the Elections Canada website that I am registered to vote. I called and the front line person I spoke to couldn’t find where I lived. I’m waiting for someone higher up to get back to me.

A reader who probably isn’t reading anymore actually came through the hamlet recently, although she didn’t look me up. She has the same attitude as others that I live ‘in the middle of nowhere’ or ‘at the end of the world’ and therefore I don’t deserve basic services. Having lived and traveled through the far north, where I never had major connectivity issues (a shortage of bandwidth, yes) or difficulty getting parcels or proving where I lived, I still don’t think that I was that naive in believing that I could get such services here in southern Saskatchewan even in a rural community.

I’m figuring out how to make my life here work and I’ve been asked by more than one person why I don’t cut my losses and just go.

It’s easy to lose sight of the positives when I’m so consumed by an issue like the lack of connectivity. But believe me, there is more positive here than anywhere else I’ve ever tried to make a life.

Most especially, once upon a time in Quebec, I faced many of the same challenges (especially lack of connectivity) even though I lived just 50KM from the capital of the country. It was impossible to get anything done there because of the entrenched corruption and apathy at every level of government. I saw that in most of the rest of Canada, how traditions and procedures are deeply rooted and unchangeable.

There’s something delightfully rustic about this part of Saskatchewan in that it never quite figured out how it fit into the 20th century and so is still struggling to fit into the 21st. The population basin here is older, coming from a generation that doesn’t understand the need for internet or cellular phones. We still write cheques here and call each other rather than email.

It’s the frontier I was looking for and I am part of the first wave of young pioneers flocking to the area in search of some of the last affordable real estate in this country. Since moving to my hamlet, two couples of my generation and another gal my age have moved here. More are going to come as they get squeezed out of Assiniboia, whose prices are steadily rising to Moose Jaw levels.

So the services we want are going to come because the market will eventually force it, but we can shape how those services will look. None of my neighbours today appear to really care about my fight for connectivity, but I am keeping records so that I will be remembered as the one who brought broadband internet to the St. Victor valley, much like people are lauded for bringing the railroad. The metaphor sounds silly, I know, but that’s what the government is actually using when it talks about increasing broadband internet across Canada!

Another thing is that big oil is coming in the near future. There is going to be money to be made here and our cheap property values are going to skyrocket. This is something that the economists on Bay Street are talking about, not just our belief. They say that Saskatchewan is the only Canadian real estate market that hasn’t exploded yet and when it does, people are going to make a killing on their investments, like some Manitobans did.

I know I have to be patient because this is an unshaped world I’m living in. It is so bright with promise and I want to be involved in shaping the future of the area I have decided to make my home. I refuse to sit and wait for other people to make the changes I need to be able to thrive here. Wanting to make things better and actually doing something about them is very different from bellyaching.

I love it here. This is Home.

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Addressing Comments

For some reason, I haven’t been receiving comments to my email, so I’ve been missing the fury behind the scenes.

Nicole asked why I am expecting other people to pay for the booster. Well, I’m not. I’ve been crunching numbers for days trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to make this happen this month. It’s either the booster or I find an apartment in town for the rest of my time here. I’m just grateful the company in Texas is helping me spend my money in the right place.

Yes, I had a very good month of July. I also had the July money earmarked for several other things because I have been backed up on other things. The booster wasn’t in the budget so I’m now having work extra hours to make up for it. I have been doing 14-hour days now since about July 15th with no end in sight because of this extra $1,200 expense. Yes, I can cover it. But it is causing me stress that I shouldn’t be experiencing. Just because you can pay for something doesn’t mean you can afford it.

I’m never made such a blatant a public request for help in my seven years full-timing. I didn’t ask for help when I had $4,000 worth of damage after losing my brakes on the Sea to Sky Highway. I didn’t ask for help after my car was totaled and motorhome home being badly damaged after being rear ended in 2012. I didn’t ask for help after my truck broke down in New Orleans in early 2013. I didn’t ask for help when I had breakdown after breakdown coming north in 2013, which was the same time I didn’t ask for help putting down my cat because it was going to cost my entire food budget for the entire month. And speaking of food, I didn’t ask for help in February of 2014 when a client was a month late paying me and I literally had nothing to eat in the house for three days or in December of 2014 when I got dropped without warning by a client and had no income for a month while stranded in a foreign country. Just a few examples of the top of my head.

I’ve hinted at times that I could use some help and been very grateful to receive it in the form of blog donations, a meal out, or a place to park my rig while watching other people in my online community hold fundraisers for other RVers in distress and come out in droves to help.

I haven’t asked for help because I believe in personal accountability and that my budget shortfalls are not anyone else’s responsibility. But you know what? This isn’t a budget shortfall. This isn’t something I could have prevented because I sure as hell didn’t vote for the government that gave SaskTel all this power.

Yes, I chose to live here. But come on, was I that crazy to believe that a community located between the U.S. border and the Transcanada, the most densely populated part of all the other provinces, would not be online at SOME point in the next decade?!

So going through GoFundMe was more of a social exercise and these four ladies who commented on my last post definitely helped to prove my theory:

How many people hear of someone in distress halfway around the world and rush to send them help when there is someone in their own community needing help? It’s as though because we are in the first world, we are so much better off than anyone else that we shouldn’t have the audacity to ask for more.

I don’t blow my own horn the way some people do on their blogs and talk about what I do for other people and how much time I volunteer or how I make it an effort when I am financially able to to take someone else out. I don’t talk about the hundreds if not thousands of hours I have donated to answering the questions of other RVers, although I might have mentioned once or twice that blogging has been at times nearly a full time job.

So pardon me for saying that for once, it’s my turn to get some help. Nobody has ever offered to hold a fundraiser for me, so I’m holding it for myself. Some of you might be lucky to have parents or family to go when times are tough. I’ve been on my own for a very long time. You are my community. And like with any community, there are those who help each other out and there are those who don’t. I’d rather be part of the community. Sometimes you give and sometimes you receive. That’s how it works.

Once again, thank you to everyone who has saved me about 12 hours of work towards paying for the booster.

BTW, yes, it is for work, but I’ll be lucky to be allowed to claim a third of the cost on my taxes.

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One Person’s Trash…

Something I knew I would eventually want for Haven as soon as I got outbuildings was a treadmill. There’s not really any place to walk to around here unless you want to walk around the block 50 billion times and there’s certainly no place to run. Because of my bad knee, I am very picky about where I run and so I haven’t had a regular running routine since I hit the road eight years ago. It’s something I miss and that I always pick up again when I have a good place to run.

Last summer, after getting the buildings, I put a wanted ad on Kijiji for an inexpensive treadmill. I soon discovered that treadmills are something people buy, don’t use, and then want a full return of their investment. The market was saturated with treadmills and no one wanted to offload one cheap.

So needless to say, I got suspicious two weeks ago when I saw an ad in the local buy and sell paper for a FREE treadmill. I figured it had to be a crappy old manual one and didn’t bother calling.

The ad was still there this week, so tonight I decide to assuage my curiosity and called. As it turned out, it was not a manual one, but an older basic electric model.

I asked the giver awayer where in Assiniboia she lives. She apologized and said that, yes, her number is in Assiniboia, but she actually lives in… my hamlet. She’s my postmaster!!!

Reeling from shock, I asked if I could go pick it up right away. She pretty much begged me to do so, saying that it had been (covered) on her porch (also covered) for about a year.

I drove over there and she plugged it in and turned it on and I gave it a try. It needs some cleaning, but works great! She, her husband, and I wrangled it into the truck and I somehow wrangled it into the cabin, facing the door so I can look out in my yard when I’m exercising. There’s a stand on it that will hold my iPad so I have something to watch while I’m working out.

Ta-dah!

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Now, if I can only get a bench press to materialize the same way, I’ll be well on my way to a little gym. I also have my stepper, which I use quite a bit, but which I don’t enjoy nearly as much as I know I will enjoy the treadmill and which is harder on my knee. And by the way, running is a much more natural gait than walking and causes me a lot less pain.

I’m waiting on a phone call, so I can’t go out and try it, but I’ll pull out my running clothes so I’m ready to go first thing in the morning!

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Return of The Moth

The audacity of The Moth increased moments ago when it came out in broad daylight and dive bombed me! It landed on my picture window and I came at it with the fly swatter.

It landed on its back on my desk and raised its legs in supplication. I could hear it begging me for mercy. I told it to surrender. It rolled over onto its stomach and tried to rise to its knees, then collapsed.

I scooped it up and brought it outside. It took a lurch step and then took off on shaky wings. Will it live? I have no idea. Will it come back? I doubt it.

To be continued?