Building a Life, Not Earning a Living

My passion, or my life goal, isn’t something you can simply achieve with positive thinking.

Have you ever had someone tell you to just think positively about something and it will happen? Extremely frustrating! Especially when you're already well into adulting with tiny humans and responsibilities...

When I was about 27, I began to realize just how lost I really was. I was perfectly comfortable in life, parenthood and marriage, but I was not content.

As the years went on - which they tend to do quite quickly when one has small children - I grew closer and deeper into my ever-growing passion and desires. The older I get, and the more I see the way the world around us is evolving, the more I feel my yearning is true.

To leave.

I don’t want a six-figure income.

I don’t want a six bedroom house with a white picket fence.

I don’t want a sweet ride or even a vacation (it’s been over a decade since I’ve had one, so I suppose it's a good thing)!

I actually want the complete opposite of everything the 1% have.

(Look up the 1% of society, basically, it’s those who have “everything”) So spit it out already, what do you want!

In a perfect world, I want a community of nothing. I want a self-sustaining holistic community built around the Forrest trees and nature’s things! I want to live where money is a novelty, not a necessity. With solar panels, wood sheds and year-round garden beds. I want to live where kids aren’t concerned with things like sexual identity, deep anxieties and a belief that pills fix everything.

I’ve always had this deep urge to escape our materialistic, autopilot culture, but realizing it after you've already added 3 tiny humans to your life, can really make those giant leaps so much scarier! It’s been a number of years now, (I’m not sharing how many) and the answer to the big burning question is, no, we aren’t off the grid yet and yes, we still pay an electricity bill and shop at the grocery store. However, two months ago, we took a small giant step in the right direction!

we got out of town!

We gave up the beautiful live-in-it-forever six bedroom, 3 bathroom house with a huge private yard with already established fruit trees, in a cul-de-sac in the perfect neighbourhood, central to everything we loved!

We gave it up for a tiny 3 bedroom, single hallway modular - 15 minutes from town with six acres of borrowed freedom.

We’ve got chickens and pigs and a small greenhouse that I’m still very much learning to utilize. We haul our own water and burn wood for heating. We’re renting a tiny section of someone else's dream, while we slowly learn how to remove ourselves from the hidden dependencies of our culture that no one talks about.

We are definitely way out of our depth and comfort zones!

Let me just say, this is not a rebel move, or a doomsday prep thing. The entire essence of your soul is changed out here - even without the full off-gird experience! Menatl health is a hugely talked about epidemic of it's own lately, and honestly, I say stop medicated and hospitalizing and throw them into country life! There is something so serene about this lifestyle, it makes the mess of the world just fade away - no stress! You know that feelins you recieve when you go on an all-inclusive vacay? Imagin something similar to that feeling - ALL THE TIME!

I’m homeschooling four children now while learning how to grow, raise - and butcher - our own food. My husband and I are both city bugs, we lost our first animal about a month ago - it was a rooster. We knew not to eat it because the death was uncertain and sudden, but for the sake of learning, we went through the entire butchering and prep proccess anyways - THAT was an experience!

We live in a small rural community of like-minded families all around, but still a distance away. There are three other large homesteads on our dead-end road. Everyone keeps healthy boundaries from one another, but there's still a sense of community. Everyone waves as they drive by and when we first moved in, everyone stopped to introduce themselves, welcome us and offer aid. There are those few neighbours who are eager and excited to help new people learn their way around this more sovereign lifestyle, and we are so grateful for their shared knowledge!

Everywhere we look, there is life. You can close your eyes and just feel it! I don't think I've ever seen so many birds just naturally about either - they're everywhere!

Our children are learning to appreciate one another and we are learning to appreciate them!

We have yet to experience our first Canadian winter out here, but so far - it’s totally worth it!

Why would you want to support and follow us into this journey?

If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s how absolutely dependent we are.

People were hoarding all kinds of things from milk to toilet paper! Every time we ventured into the grocery store last year, shelves were bare and we got what we could find within our means while surviving on a minimal income with all the same bills we had the year before. (No we didn’t get any of the “emergency benefits”)

I knew before and I knew even more then, that this lifestyle has an expiration date. This lifestyle has no independence and it has no true community.

So follow me and support us while we learn true independence here as a family, sharing our successes and our failures growing closer together, creating a life - not earning a living.

-

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this article, please consider leaving a tip and don't forget to share!

Until next time,

- DW