Okay - well, here I am. Sitting in an office in Flower Mound, Texas, striving to put together the words to make this blog interesting and engaging while avoiding even the thought of spending another moment typing inane letters for a boss I have seen exactly 4 times in the last 3 years. I hate this job - hate it so utterly and completely that I am overcome by that butterflies/sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach every morning as I drive to work. The closer I get, the more intense and consuming the feeling becomes.
My hatred for this job is important, but only in the sense that it has motivated me to make a change. The idea of spending another year typing 1/2 page memos, 8 page memos, 25 page memos, and countless other correspondences and documents 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is so repulsive to me that I have decided to make a drastic decision and do something exciting.
It isn't the work alone that has compelled me - it is a combination of this horribly pointless and utterly unfulfilling job, the monotony of the routine (get up at 7:30, smoke, shower, dress, drive to work, work, smoke, work, eat, work, smoke, work, leave work, fight traffic on the drive home, hang out with the hubbiest, eat, sleep - repeat), the absolutely incomprehensible and overwhelming slew of necessary and unecessary utilities and bills and fees that are seemingly mandatory in mantaining this American lifestyle (credit card, mortgage, car payment, insurance, cell-phone, internet access, rent, storage, bank fees, late fees, overdraft fees, living fees, peeing fees, blinking fees, breathing fees, ad nauseum), the recent plummet of the economy and the concurrent leap in the price of everything (while, I might mention, my wages and compensations have hovered steady and lazily at the same rate for three years now), and my apparent inability to keep up with the careful balancing act that is required to successfully navigate the pitfalls of this lifestyle.
Combine that with volunteering with the local community theatres, trying to get my theatre company up and running with a solid and vocal fan base, and the non-stop ups and downs of my 4-year relationship with the best - but most stressed out - man on the planet and the net effect is that I am becoming increasingly inclined to pack a backpack, walk off into a forest somewhere, and never come back.
I want to garden. I want to walk down the street at noon on a Wednesday. I want to go to a museaum, a castle, any building built prior to 1850, a botanical garden, a rainforest, a flee market, a bazaar - or simply just sit on a beach for three solid hours contemplating nothing of greater import than belly button lint. Three months ago I would have given just about anything for a solid 5 days off work to spend time just piddling about the yard, getting up for a liesurely breakfast with Russell, going to the Farmer's Market together, followed by a trip to the garden center, and then some hard work in the yard during the afternoon. It has progressed past that now, though. I take a couple of days off work, and when I get back I hate it more than ever. I need a holiday. A real, God's honest, pack a bag, buy a ticket, board a plane, and don't look back 6 week+ vacation from life.
Reread the paragraph above and ask yourself this: What kind of vacation is there where you can do all of these things? More important, What kind of vacation is there where you can do all of these things, but not spend outrageous amounts of money that you haven't been able to save-up because you work in a dead-end underpaying job that hasn't given you a raise in 3 years?
WWOOF
No, I didn't just bark - but I AM 'barking happy' (I am sure this isn't really an expression people use - it should be.) that I have found, with the help of a good friend, a solution to my dissatisfaction with life, work, and the American culture.
WWOOF - Willing Workers On Organic Farms - is a volunteer work abroad program that matches willing volunteers with host families running organic farms/businesses in exotic locales across the globe (honestly, anything is exotic compared to Flower Mound, TX). The volunteer pays their own travel expenses (and, obviously, brings along some pocket money for sightseeing, etc.), and the host family provides lodging and meals in exchange for a few hours of work on the farm each day. Think this sounds awful? Reread the fifth paragraph of this blog. I would GLADLY spend 4-5 hours a day working in someone's garden or helping them out around the farm in order to be somewhere - anywhere - that has something more exciting to do than shopping at WalMart, Target, World Market, or any of the other crap-warehouses designed to separate finances from shoppers in interesting and colorful ways. I am SO there.
I haven't started packing yet - hell, I don't even have a passport anymore (pretty sad admission for a guy who lived in England and traveled Europe as a child). But, the passport application has now been completed and is ready to be walked into the Passport Office along with two identical color photos, a copy of my birth certificate, and $100. Photos and birth certificate are no problem, I'm just waiting for payday to get that $100.
After that there still remains Working Holiday Visas to be obtained for the countries which require them, the appropriate WWOOF organizations to join, the WWOOF host list to receive and peruse, travel arrangements to be made, and the liquidation of my posessions (have to pay for those tickets somehow, boys and girls). But the passport is an important first step - what sense is there in having a passport without using it? If I get it, I will travel - it would be stupid not to.
Then, after all those arrangements are done, it is off to New Zealand! Yep, New Zealand. Since Winter is approaching, we are heading to the Southern Hemisphere first. South America and Africa are out due to concerns over white slavery and civil war, leaving Australia and New Zealand as the only truly viable options to start our trip. Since herding cattle through a desert for hours each day isn't the most appealing option for our first destination we are going to shoot for the Christchurch area. Beaches and snowboarding, year-round, fjords, rainforest, and kangaroos? Count me in!
Just looking at the list of hosts in New Zealand, I am pretty sure I could spend an entire year there - but I want to see more, and I want Russell to see more. We will most likely spend a few months in New Zealand working and staying with a good variety of hosts with different types of farms, businesses, outlooks, and lifestyles (kangaroo ranch, chocolate factory, native lifestyle on a coral island in Tonga, nude gay male organic farm colony, and downtown Christchurch helping a single mother around the house being just a few options that sparked our interest from the preview list), and then pop over to Australia for a couple of months. I figure that by that time we will have adjusted to the climate and hard work, and will be capable of running cattle in the Australian outback.
As Spring draws on we will wing our way to somewhere in Eastern Europe. We both want to see Prague and Krakowa, Vienna and the Wachau Valley, Bavaria and the Schwarzwald, Olympia Athens and Santorini, and Rome and Florence. Perhaps we'll check out France (although neither of us speak a word of conversational French beyond "I don't speak French") and Spain. Then end our trip with the grand-daddy of all destinations, Amsterdam. Then it will be back to the States to enroll in college - or, who knows, perhaps buy an organic farm near Santa Fe somewhere...
These plans are all preliminary, of course, and could change substantially as we get closer to booking the trip and actually setting off. Who knows, we may totally fall in love with New Zealand and stay there for an entire year. That is the best part of this trip, in my mind, the opportunity to be entirely free with our travel - as long as there is a host listed in the WWOOF book for a destination we want to check out, all we have to do is give them a call and see if they would be willing to put us up. Once we get to Europe we'll grab a Eurail Pass and we can then effectively travel anywhere we want for free.
So, that is the plan. I just wanted to get this blog started - both to provide a complete narrative of the process, and to give me something to remind myself of why I decided to make this leap in the first place.
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