Yeah, I’ve had camping on the brain lately. I keep seeing RVs and try to imagine what kind would be reasonable with my truck. I think about what tent I should get to replace the one that died an early death last year. I dream about trips I’d like to take and places I want to see. My summer camping group finally got a messenger group started and spent yesterday determining who is likely to go in June. Another friend came over for coffee and we were talking about how she tries to keep their gear organized for impulse trips, but her husband keeps raiding the bins. So I’ve decided this is the year I’m going to make the list.

I’ve been a camper most of my life. My parents had an old green canvas tent that could open on one side to connect to the back of a station wagon. My mom told stories of when her family went to Yellowstone and came back from a walk to find a bear in their tent. She said the bear decided to leave really fast and made a door for itself in the side of the tent. I celebrated my 10th birthday on a backpack trip with the church youth group. I took my husband camping early in our relationship and we kept the tradition going with our kids. Along the way I’ve figured out a lot about what works and what is unnecessary.

I’m a tent camper at heart. I’ve tried the RV style of camping, but it just isn’t for me. I like the feel of being down to the bare basics. I like to leave the rain fly off and see the stars. RV walls keep nature at a distance, and that ruins the entire point of camping in my opinion. If I ever do get one it would be no more than a glorified tent, a mechanism to bring along a more comfortable bed. Camp cooking is best done outside. I hate RV kitchens for how cramped they are.

Yeah, I’m pretty opinionated. But I know what I know and the biggest thing is that camping doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. I think you should be able to throw a couple of bins in the car, a bag of clothes and a box of food, and just hit the road. That’s an idea of camping Nirvana that I strive for and have not yet been able to reach. That’s why this year is going to be all about the list.

Every camping trip starts with a list. I pull out a notebook and write the same thing I did last time. Then I go through my bins and organize and make sure everything is there. Then I wonder what I forgot and why I don’t just print out my list and tape it to the bins to make my life easier. That’s what I’m gearing up to do this year. I’m making my list and running it past my kids and my friends to see if they can add anything helpful. Then I’m going to share it. And I’ll discuss my choices for the items on the list. And maybe someone will find the list and the discussion and it will help them have fun camping. So for the next couple of weeks I am going to be all about the camping list. This should be fun!

Happy New Year! Last night I made a bah humbug post about not needing arbitrary days and times to make a fresh start. Every day, every hour can mark a new beginning if we choose. But there are some dates that just beg to be used. There’s something psychologically satisfying about dividing time into chunks. So let me review my decades and look for themes before I say what I have planned for the next one.

I don’t remember much of the 70s. I only got to experience half of the decade. I do remember turning 4, just after one of the only times I remember moving house. I know, some people move dozens of times but I moved when I was 3 and lived in the same place for the next 34 years.

The 80s were all about school. I was good at academics and terrible at people. I remember hating algebra homework and programming the VCR to record Friday Night Videos so we could watch Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul.

The 90s were about growing up. Finishing high school, first job, first boyfriend, marriage, children, coffee shop that was fun to run but failed… Life teaches more than school ever could, and if you pay attention the lessons stick.

2000s were about settling in. Now they seem like a blur. Routine, work, get the kids through school. Not that nothing happened, but it all fit into the routine.

2010s have been about change and adaptation. Moving, loss, working around limitations, watching my kids turn into adults. Making plans for me.

Now we’re moving into the 20s. I can set up my intentions, but I know that can go sideways. Still, this decade gets to be about me creating a life for me. My kids get to find their own way. I’ll be there to support them, but their lives are not mine. I can’t live for or through them. I get to be an example for their future. Hopefully positive.

So, specific plans are in order for the new year. I have three main projects to work on. First is a change of career. Second is to do with my property in Alaska. Third has to do with this blog and writing. I’m working on the career change. I have a couple of people to talk to and a couple of quick certifications to get for one of my possibilities. Those have to be done this week. The Alaska plan is for the summer. I want to get a first cabin put in on my land. Coordinating that with my job change might get interesting, but I’m determined. And finally, I have decided to do a 60 day blog challenge. That means I will post something every single day from now until the end of February and beyond. No excuses. I know what I’m going to write about. You see… I’ve been thinking a lot about camping lately…

Life has been doing what it tends to do… Time flows by and if you don’t pay attention it disappears. You blink and a couple of weeks are gone.

Thanksgiving happened. There were three turkeys in the freezer and three more came home from work with the boys so the four in the pen are still out there.

November 30 was my parents 50th anniversary. I held the party on the following Sunday so that it didn’t interfere with other people’s holiday plans. The party came out perfectly. I cooked a Cuban style dinner and had chocolate cake. There weren’t as many people as I expected, but they were all good friends. The whole day ended up being about family because we spent the morning sorting through old photos. I liked it better than any fancier kind of party with more people, and I think my parents felt the same.Now I’m back to work. Fighting off a bit of a cold. I figure I’m getting my annual immunity boost. I don’t trust flu shots to cover what’s actually out there, but the general public does a great job at exposing my immune system to everything. I rarely get really sick anymore, and when I do I seem to fight it off fairly quickly.I still haven’t decided my purpose for this blog. For now I guess I’m just working on developing the habit of writing regularly. It hasn’t become a habit yet, but I’m working on it.Another thing I’m working on is deciding what direction my career shift will take. I am torn between digging in here in Portland and heading up to Alaska. Ultimately I think it will be a little bit of both. If I can follow through on my plans for my property up North it can provide some income flow. If I can follow through on my plans for my property down here it could also provide a certain amount of income flow. But neither one can provide all of the income I want in order to hit some of the financial goals I have.I am supposed to be putting out feelers to people in the various positions that interest me. I am supposed to be asking questions that will help me determine which paths are the ones I want to pursue. Every time I think about it my mind goes blank. Part of me says that means I am not ready. The more logical part says if not now, when? It isn’t as if I am getting any younger or any stronger. I am not 20, I am the mother of 20-something children. Time is infinite, but my path through it is not. This is the time to act. So why does it have to be so hard?That is a fraction of what cycles through the background noise of my brain. By putting some of it out into the public I am hoping to make it obvious how weak some of my stumbling blocks are. I never want to put them out there as excuses. It is a daily fight to avoid making excuses and I don’t always win. But I have rambled on long enough for now. This should satisfy my blogging itch for today. Maybe tomorrow I will have something of more substance to say.

I’ve expressed my dissatisfaction with my current job already. I’ll only repeat that I’m burned out on this type of customer service. To say anything more would be to tempt me to slide into negativity and I won’t go there today.

The problem with looking into a career change is that everything has changed in the last 14 years. Everyone wants me to have a resume and a cover letter to apply. The last time I made a resume was fresh out of high school so I’m a bit clueless there. Cover letter? What is that meant to do? Everyone I ask says to Google it, but that just created more questions and confusion. So I signed up with a career counselor. Two sessions in and I have homework to do, a bit more understanding of myself, and I’m being encouraged to pursue something that my fear gland says is just a pipe dream…but I want to do it anyway, even if it stays a hobby.

I want to turn Caosville into a working farm that pays its own way. My homework is to contact a few people who are doing it. Ask questions about their business model and how they market their products. Attend a farmer’s market or two and talk to the vendors. All things I know I should have been doing already but chickened out of. It terrifies me, but then change always does.

So my planned schedule for my blog hasn’t worked out the way I wanted. I think that’s okay for now. I’m still figuring out the purpose of writing here. I know at some point I will use it to talk with people doing business with me so the personal exposition feels a little awkward, but I also know that it proves I am a real person with obstacles to overcome. We are all human, like it or not. Some days that has to include forgiveness for your own weakness while pushing yourself to step forward anyway. And at some point in the future I will come back to these early posts just to see how far I’ve come.

Okay, time to do some research so I know where to explore. Hooray for new experiences!

It’s easy and popular to live by the idea of no regrets. To say that you regret nothing implies that every choice you have ever made was the exact best one and could never be improved upon. Or that you are going to ignore how it might have gone better.

It’s a nice goal.

But I have regrets. And I regret that I have regrets. I could dig a hole with this line of thinking but it would do nobody any good.

I disappeared for the past week into some sort of hole of darkness. I don’t know what happened but I blinked and days had passed where I went through the motions and did my job and didn’t work on my stuff. Autopilot can be a lifesaver but it doesn’t help you build anything better than what you have. It just helps maintain the basics. At least I woke up from autopilot after only a week instead of a month or years. What woke me up was thinking about regrets.

I made two comments on two different posts on IG. Both of them were “I wish…” I wish I could do that. I wish I could be there. Why can’t I?

How many times have I said those kind of things? I wish I had the time. I wish my schedule worked out better. I wish I could fit in to that social group. I wish I was bold enough or brave enough to do that or say that. I wish I could step out of my rut to make a change.

Every one of those statements disguises an excuse. Every one speaks of regret. When will I get tired enough of saying “I wish” to start saying “I will” and then actually follow through? Because I know that one day I am going to look back at now and wonder why I didn’t do the things that I wanted to do.

Even just this month I told someone that I only had one real regret. When I was in high school I had the choice between working the summer in the school library or going to my great aunt and uncle’s ranch to work. To this day I kick myself for choosing the library. I enjoyed the work, but I know that I would have gained so much more working on the ranch.

Now I have started to realize that I have more regrets than that. I will never regret that I have put so much of my time and energy into work to support my family but I do regret that I have not managed to find much time to work on myself. Now that the kids are mostly self sufficient it is time to put my energy into supporting myself and my own future.

I’m old enough to look back and see missed opportunities. I can learn from all of them. I am still young enough to make up for what I’ve missed.

Next year is 2020. For several years I have toyed with the idea of creating a personal project and calling it “Vision 2020.” I didn’t think it could happen, but the way my mindset has shifted…it just might be possible. I’m getting better at seeing what is most important to me. I’m getting better at seeing the possibilities that were always there. Now I want to get better at finding ways to bring those possibilities to life.

I need to think about it some more, but someday soon I will write out my vision for next year. It might not include goal dates for everything because next year will have a lot of real change and some things will depend on others to be able to happen, but I’m sure I can outline some priorities that can get multiple goals attached. We’ll see…

I’m off to kill some future regrets.

I trashed yesterday’s post. I tried to ponder my creative life, but was blathering on so badly that I lost all sense of what I was trying to say. Rereading the draft was painful. Why does the subject of creativity have to be so difficult? Every child starts out so wonderfully creative that we adults can barely understand the world in their head. Then we spend 18 years suppressing that creativity to make them fit into the world we inherited, all the while complaining about how we as adults aren’t creative enough, how we can’t draw or write stories or imagine new possibilities. It’s kinda messed up.

I know two things about myself in regards to creativity. First, there is always one or a hundred project ideas simmering away on the back burner of my mind. Second, that most of those projects will never see the light of day. Part of the problem is time. It is hard to find time at this point in my life the way my work schedule is set up. One of the biggest ideas simmering away in my project cooker is a plan to get my life back under more of my own direct control. And by life I mean time. Once that happens I plan to prioritize more of my creative ventures.

Most people live their lives as if there are no alternatives to how they are currently living.

I have spent many years living as if the path I found myself in was the only possible one. My life hasn’t been bad for the most part. I have had more stable and better paying work than most. The benefits are great. The place I live is pretty good. I keep joking that this is the best place to live because the weather might get gray sometimes, but at least it never tries to kill you. Up until a year ago I could not have imagined wanting to go anywhere else. Except that my life is shifting. My needs are different than they were a couple years ago. I see options and possibilities that were probably always there but I couldn’t imagine wanting them.

My creative side has spent years deconstructing clothing to figure out how shapes get made. I have mentally designed a thousand dresses, bags, and quilts. I have thought up ways to build outdoor pizza ovens and walkways. I have cozy homes planned out in my mind. Fictional characters have told me their stories into the third generation. But their time has not yet come. My creative dreams will wait a bit longer. I have a new life to create.