Simple. Organized. Life.

My friend Katie runs a site called NorCal Katie, one of a bunch of different projects she is involved in. This post from a few days ago is important and you should read it once or twice. Whenever I have doubts about making all of this work, I am reminded of my friend Katie, who has an amazing outlook on life after going through a life-altering experience.

“Being deathly sick changed my life in the most profound ways. I changed as a person, as a human living on this planet. It changed the way I think and the filter through which I see the world and act within it. It certainly clarified what I am here for on this planet. Although it drives Mountain Man nuts, I have a morbid premonition that my life won’t be all that long, or not as long as the 96 years I once projected. I think of my health issues as a nod to being alive and a constant reminder of my mortality.

When I was still at my full time corporate job, my intuition sat down next to me on my desk her legs swinging back and forth not touching the ground and said, “You need to take some time off. Do something different.”

“But what?” I asked her. “I can’t just quit my job. How will I make things work?”

She was relentless, sitting and swinging her legs all the time. “You need to do something different. You need to take some time off.” is all she would say to me. Nothing else. No advice. Just direction.

Last time I didn’t listen to her, I almost died. So yeah, I’m all ears now.

Please, check out NorCal Katie. Subscribe, comment, tell her how you feel. You won’t regret it. I know I don’t. I’m still not sure how to make this whole “freelance” thing start paying the rent, but I refuse to give up easily.

I came across this the other day and thought you all would enjoy it. No idea where it came from, but worth posting for sure.

Make the most of today.

We’ve arrived. And so far, after one week, it’s everything we had imagined it could be and hoped it would be. North Bennington is a little village in the Vermont woods, with just a 175 year old coffee shop/deli/mini-mart store, a lawnmower service shop, a barber shop, and a very elegant dinner place. Oh, and there’s that little thing called Bennington College, which was founded in 1932 and has an incredible campus. Lucky kids.

The entire town is seemingly small enough to sit atop a sheet of plywood and be a decoration for a small scale train set at Christmas, if it weren’t life-size. And if you want more, you have to drive the 5-6 miles down to Bennington where the grocery stores, the old main street with shops and restaurants, and the galleries and museums are. It’s an easy drive, but it makes all the difference in the world being just a few miles up the road. It’s like being in the middle of nowhere while being surrounded by everything you need in life. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is incredibly friendly and nice here. Too nice, at first — it’s awfully strange for everyone you pass by, everywhere you go, to say hello. Walking down the street? The people in the cars that pass you wave at you. But after a week of being here, you rather enjoy it and you know you would miss it if it weren’t going on. When the sun goes down, it’s dead quiet outside and you can see the stars forever. It’s fantastic. Hearing booming car stereos and roaring motocycles that could raise the dead are now a thing of my past.

I have mapped out our morning 3-5 mile run on picturesque dirt roads by farms and horses, and I even ran into my buddy from high school at the store the first day we were here. (I knew he lived 20 minutes up the road, but what are the chances?)

We are currently renting a furnished condo, and soon we will begin searching for a small house to rent immediately outside of “downtown” North Bennington. Am hopeful for some space to garden, some room to stretch our legs a little more, and a woodstove to warm our bones by on these cold Vermont winter nights.

The beginning of the adventure is starting off on the right foot. Can’t wait to see what’s around the corner. Simple living, it’s what’s for life.