When I was 19 I had my whole life to look forward to. I was studying photography, I was going to travel the world taking pictures. The world was mine to explore and that was the purpose of life, to explore.
On my 20th birthday I found out I was going to be a father, my ex-girlfriend was pregnant. I remember sitting alone watching all my dreams and hopes come crashing down. No more traveling the world, no more adventures. Now I had a child to care for. It suddenly become very, very real to me that I had no real marketable skills, no experience, and no prospects.
What I did have was years of needing a lot more money than I needed just to feed and house myself in whatever shitty apartment was good enough for me. My standard of living wasn't good enough for a child. I was stuck.
Things didn't work out with my ex, and not long after that she decided being a single mother was too hard, so she bailed. I was 23, broke, alone and stuck with a toddler. Just when I was beginning to see a life for myself after becoming a parent, it all crashed down again.
I left the only place that ever felt like home to me. I left a job where I was making progress toward a career. I left behind my friends. I moved to the Midwest, to move in with my parents and start over again, with their help raising my child.
I built a life. Started a new job, which slowly grew into a career, and then into my own business. I moved out of my parent's house for the second time, into a one bedroom apartment where I slept on the couch. Then into a bigger apartment a few years later where I had my own bedroom. Then I bought a house and expanded my business.
I had a life. A good life many people would envy. A house, growing, healthy child, a business, friends, a string of beautiful and talented girl friends. I told myself I was happy, I was living the American Dream. I had no real right to complain and I didn't.
Inside, deep down, I wasn't happy, because this was not the life I wanted. I was doing the right thing, taking care of my son, making sure he had a good home, that he felt loved, and safe. People told me they admired me, that I was an example to others. But I wasn't happy, not on that deepest level where no one else can see.
When my son was 16, all that I'd build began to come apart. The Great Recession began, and my business, custom woodworking and cabinetry, was an early casualty. I struggled. I lost my girl friend, the house went into foreclosure, I had to borrow money from my family to pay bills.
After two years of fighting off the bank, my son graduate high school and left for college. My sentence was done. I had no business any more. I had no home anymore. I had sold off most of my possession. A week after my son lift, a month before my house was auctioned off, I packed up what I had left and headed off into the unknown.
I went back to the only place I'd ever felt at home, with no job, and only the cash I'd raised by selling everything at my yard sale.
Broke, jobless, homeless, with 15 years of experience in an industry that would not be hiring for years, I was in as good a position as I had been 19 years earlier, the day before I found out I was going to be a parent. I had come full circle. I was 38.
In the 80's the term "mid-life crisis" was used to describe people, mostly men, who suddenly began behaving like younger men, dating younger women, buying sports cars, wearing more stylish clothes, etc. It was term meant to describe a problem, to imply these men were broken in some way.
I think that idea was wrong. We live in a culture where we are indoctrinated from birth that there is a specific path we should take, and that that is the only acceptable way to happiness. The path is to make money at a "respectable" job, get married, have a family. That path was very rigid decades ago, but is becoming less so, which is a good thing.
That path is not the path to fulfillment for everyone. We all have our own dreams and goals and desires, and that path and its various subtle incarnations, is not ideal for everyone. It wasn't for me.
So when someone who has lived that life suddenly stops and decides they want to do things the things they did, or wanted to do, years ago, its not a crisis. Its an awakening. They have been unfulfilled and they are looking for a way to fulfill themselves. They have chosen to stop beating their head against the wall and try something different.
I knew I was not happy. I knew I was not fulfilled. The whole time, I knew the life I was living was not for me, and I took the first opportunity to leave it behind. I didn't have luxury of cashing out with a ton of money like some we read about. I started over at zero. But it didn't matter, all that mattered was that for the first time in nearly two decades, I was able to put my happiness, my dreams, my desires first, and I had the freedom to figure out what those were.
That's what this blog is about. Perhaps it will entertain, maybe it will instruct, who knows, it might even amuse. Its my story, my thoughts, my dreams and desires. Its my journey -- My ride.
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