On the move

Retirement is something everyone wants. Who wants to work? No one. Why do we work? Money. We all need it in todays society. It's rare in built up areas to be able to head down the grocery shop and say "I'll clean the floors if you give me some eggs, carrots, potatoes and onions."

When I look at people who live off the grid or on the land, away from it all, there's a level of comfort that I can see. You can grow your own fruit and veg. You can have your own chickens for eggs and meat for the special occasions.

But what about the life of a vagabond? My wife and I like the idea of retiring and hitting the road for the rest of our lives. We like the idea of a motor home or something like that. Though I like VW Kombis. She likes the fully kitted out caravans that I wish not to tow.

What can you do with regards to food when it comes to a life on the road?

I thought long about this and only came up with one thing. Money.

The vehicle needs maintenance, fuel, servicing, unscheduled breakdowns, and there's no where really to grow anything you want of substantial significance that you could live off. You'll have to pay for food too.

Paying for it isn't so much the problem as much as more and more people these days talk about never retiring because their pension won't support them once they stop receiving a regular income from fulltime work. That is, if there is a pension when they retire, and by "they" I mean "me".

While you can live quite frugally, and I know I have had to in the past. I do believe it would be quite difficult at times.

Watching the River Cottage series, the main guy starts off living on the road, but that soon changes and the "cottage" turns in to a full blown farm/restaurant thing with a full production farm that comes with beef, milk, chicken, eggs, fruit and veg. Sure it cost more than a van, but this is where I can see obvious signs of self sufficiency. On the road, I just can't see that and I'm curious how it works.

How does life on the road differ to life on the land?

Possesive posessions

Over the last few years I have been thinking about all that I have accumulated. And when you start to think about how much junk you have, you start to realise that more than half of it is useless.

When I sat down to really think about it, I reckon 99% of what I own is a burden. One I could do without.

Why are we so insistent on having all these things? Why can't we just ignore the Jones' and make our own lives happier by leaving all that crap behind and making do with what we need instead of over indulging on what we want.

I'm not going to preach and then lie. I have a life that's filled with unnecessary crap. I have a couple of laptops, when I only need one. I have a desktop PC, when I don't even need one at all. I have a TV that's too big, a fridge that's too big and if I look around at everything else. There are only two or three important things for me. My wife, my house and my guitar.

Sure, you need a fridge. And entertainment is nice. But we don't really need them. They're just conveniences. Our stove is broken, but rather than buy a new one, we just use an old burner that does the job.

I write this post because we all live a life of excess. I do it, you do it. Why?

We work. Why? To pay for these things. What if you lived off the land, you land? You wouldn't need so much work. You could get by with a few dollars, and the rest of your time you work your land. You'd have to in order to survive.

And that's really my point. The responsibility for survival has changed. No longer do you have to grow your own food or hunt it. You just buy it. You don't have to build your own dwelling. You buy a house, or pay to have one made for you.

How can a meagre lifestyle be lived in a society so full it's exploding?

Do you become an outcast? Hop in your car and drive around in the sticks?

You would have to, because if you stopped working you won't be able to afford your mortgage, rent, bills, rates, land tax, etc.

Because of this, you would be stamped as a hobo, a tramp, a bum. Why?

Because society has a preconceived image of what the ideal life should be like?

My wife and I love the idea of retiring, selling everything we have, buying a mobile home of some description and living somewhere new each day.

How will this be possible? We gotta work hard to build up savings to be able to live off them comfortably when we're not building that savings fund. With our only hope being that it lasts until we die.

That's the dark side of it all. Either way to look at it, you need money. Whether it's a little or a lot. Even the motor home will need maintenance, fuel, parts, and so on. It's going to have to be paid for somehow.

And after all that's said and done, while I have harped on about this subject in a different guise once before.... you need some cash to free yourself from this current lifestyle.

One of my friends father retired and escaped the rat race to live in the country side. He bought a place and now lives off his savings. When they get low, he goes into town and cleans windows for shop owners. Does the odd weeding for people with large properties and gets by. I guess there's always a way to do things to get by. My wife and I recently sat down to enjoy a few episodes of The River Cottage. And it's inspirational to see how someone can drop it all and go follow their passion and to see if it can be done.

Most of the people I follow in other blogs have done just that. And I'm using their thankfulness to share their experiences as a learning tool to get me started on the right path. One day I'll be able to turn around and wonder not how I accumulated all this crap, but where did it all go? Hopefully to someone else who needs it more than me. And I can set myself free from the artificial umbilical cord society grafts to you from your first breath to your last.

The expense of it all

I wanted to start by asking, "Is it just me, or...." but that sounded too cliché. Though I want to ask the question. Is it just me, or is everything bloody expensive?

Sometimes when you look at something you can determine the price. If someone asks you how much a 2L bottle of milk is, you know it's about $3.00. I'm talking Australian dollars here. If someone asks you how much a medium sized car is? You can bet that it's going to be about $25,000 to $35,000.

Then there are times when you see the price of something you know, love and may have even owned at one time in your life which you look at and safely assume the price will be, say $60. Maybe $90 if you're pushing it, with inflation and all that. Only to see the price sitting at $290. A price which makes you stand back and think "Oh shit, scrap that idea"

I had an idea. It turns out I can't afford it.

I'll give you the background of it first. My nephew is obsessed with video games. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that when my brother died, my sister in law spoilt him with whatever he wanted. Until then, his video gaming addiction was non-existant.

Between his Playstation, Game Boy, and a host of other small consoles and hand held gaming units, the poor boy is transfixed on the stuff.

When I identified this, I decided that I will never buy him anything related to video games. Last year he received a Playstation Portable for Christmas, and he asked me if I could get a memory stick for it. I said no.

The presents I have been buying him are LEGO. Meccano. Puzzles and so on. Meccano he didn't like. And he told me straight out why, "It's tool hard having to put together something with nuts and bolts."

I was dumfounded. Too hard? I remember building massive Meccano sets when I was half his age, and I was upset that I didn't have enough parts to engineer certain objects I wanted to make.

Anyway, so I figured if I'm going to buy him something he loves, it might as well be LEGO. He loves it so much I find him in his room building whatever his imagination lets him build rather than playing that stupid video game machine.

I have been keeping my promise to myself about never buying him video game material of any kind. And latest idea to have some fun together with him was to buy a slot car race track set.

This is where I'm getting right onto my topic for the day. I decided I'll start on Ebay and a few local hobby shops that have websites. My jaw slung open and I looked at the price of some of these sets. The basic set, which came with two cars, two controllers, a power pack and enough track to make a circle.... Not a figure 8 or anything exciting like that.... a circle. $90

Larger tracks were starting from about $285 and worked their way up to the $500 mark.

I recall getting a figure 8 track with two cars and two controllers for something like $20 when I was a kid. My brother and I played it each day after dinner. It was amazing. And while $20 back then was still a lot of money, I assumed that same track, which is still made today would have been around $100. Not so. Try $285.00

WHAT?

Now, before I go on. I want to say that I do spend a great deal of money on the LEGO I have bought my nephew, that we spent hours and some times days putting together. These aren't small sets. They're those big bastards for young adults like me who haven't finished growing up.

These kits retail from $70 and work their way up to nearly $200. Despite this, I knew LEGO and the like were always pricey. I know because I use to pester my family to buy me LEGO and I never got it because it was unaffordable for us. But that was okay, because the slot car track was just as fun, and much cheaper, and much more entertaining.

When I started to think about the cost of this slot car track, I started to wonder about everything else that's not cheap anymore. Or more specifically, things where I thought were cheap, but are really not that affordable at all.

I know it's all about inflation and relevance to income in the country you're in. Like when people from the UK say how cheap everything is here in Australia or in the US. Maybe so, but try living there or here, and see if it's really that cheap. It isn't.

Nothing is cheap any more. Bargains are rare. Everything is always on sale, despite being over inflated in price to begin with. An example of this is a certain large music shop in Australia. I know for a fact their prices are higher than retail because I use the same suppliers for my music school and the suppliers give me their price, retail price and this music shops price, then they tell me I can sell it for anything from RRP to Music Shop X's price.

While this is great for profit margins, it's still a rip off.

I wonder if the same is true for slot car track sets?

I have no doubt it's not only just for slot cars. I believe everything is over inflated. And it's spoiling the fun I could have with my nephew.

Live to live

I recently read a message that essentially said "Don't live waiting to die. Live life."

I sat back and reflected on this for a moment, and realised everyone is guilty of this. Everyone is guilty of waiting for something to happen. But it never does.

I've done it. Friends have done it. We all have.

I won't say much more about it. Just giving you time to reflect on that.

Newtown RSL gig

Craig emailed me just yesterday mentioning a gig he booked us in at the Newtown RSL. I was happy because it meant I got to try out my new cajon I bought.

When I got there it was empty. Then 5 minutes later Dennis rocked up and introduced himself. Dennis runs the show down there. It wasn't a regular gig, it was an open mic night. All the same to me. I still get up on stage and play music. So I'm happy.

Dennis asked me "What's in the bag?". "A cajon" I replied. He was confused. So I explained it to him, stopped talking and then said "Here, it's better if I just show you"

So I pulled it out of the carry case it came with. And he knew what it was then. Asked me to set it up on stage. We put a mic near it and I did a sound check. Then he said "stay there" as I got up to take a seat in the audience. All of a sudden I was playing some beats to his music.

I guess I can live up to the name my mates give me "band whore", especially as Craig and my wife walk in to see me up on stage playing music with yet another bunch of blokes.

Newtown RSL is one of the best venues we've played at and the guys who organise the event each week invited us back.

The Sando gig

Made it to the Sando for my first paid gig with Craig lat night, early it turned out. But it was okay because I ended up meeting some other good bands. One of which was Satellite. They were fantastic. I liked them a lot. Kelly, the singer apologies to me before getting up on stage saying they were going to be a bit louder than us. They were, but they were also awesome. They rocked.

Little do they know I listen to metal but seldom play it. I like hearing it but find it boring to play.

Met another guy, Andy who was on after Craig and me. At first I thought I may have booked us into a rock gig, which is weird because we'd get up there and play some acoustic stuff when people are expecting something a little harder. But Andy made it much better by arriving in the nick of time, because he double booked himself at the Gaelic Club last night too. So he raced over and played his set. Good acoustic sound, I can't wait to here more of him.

Craig and I played well. Audience input says I need to play more percussion. Not sure whether that means I suck at it or I need to do more in the beats department. Craig and I recorded ourselves and we both felt I should have played less than what I did, so I've held back a lot.

And by the time we left, even though the Chocolate Dog may have been shut.... I was really hankering for some good Mexican food, the cafe up the road had a massive serving of nachos of which I ate every corn chip, bean, the guacamole and meat.

The waitress had a breakdown, not sure why. But the kitchen staff came out and handed us the waiters book and said "write down your order please, the waitress is having problems"

The waitress came back, crying, but still serving. The guy next to us spoke to her, but before he did, he looked at me and asked, rhetorically, "What did you say to her?"

I love the blame. First I had to take down my own order, then I get blamed for a waitress crying. Nice. I'm surprised at myself for not blowing up about it. But I guess I'm in a different place now.

I enjoyed everything about last night, the bands, the music, the people, the cafe, nachos.

It was truly Bizzaro World, the friends that said they'd turn up didn't. The ones that said they can't make it, did. I had to take my own order. I didn't go off at a stranger for blaming me for something I had no involvement in. Weirdness all around. I hate being blamed for things I didn't do.

Writing

I appreciate all forms of creativity. It colud be singing, art, music, or just playing. It's why I love LEGO so much. Your imagination is the limit.

If you know me well, you'd know a person I hold in high regard is Sir Ken Robinson. The guy who thinks schools kill creativity. And I agree with him to the extent that I wish I came up with his ideas first.

Today I thought I'd talk about other areas of creativity that people wouldn't generally associate as being creative. The obvious one being writing.

Since sparking my interest in reading books again, I have also had a kindling to write. Hence this blog, while it started out as a form of easy to access journalism for my own benefit. I started to see the benefit of reading other peoples blogs and decided I wanted to share my thoughts rather than just keep them to myself.

As such, I have grown to appreciate writing as a creative outlet to myself, being a creative person. To promote further writing. I stumbled upon this blog with a brilliant idea. Write something, anything, in 60 seconds.

http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com

I have been writing my one minute brain farts on there for maybe just on a month, and have recently won an award for an idea I came up with under the guidelines of the topic of the day.

Here's what it looks like.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Today's Writing Prompt: Prescription

The pharmaceutical companies come up with such creative names for new medications. Dream up a new medication--its purpose (as realistic or outlandish as you want it to be) and its name.

One-Minute Writing of the Day:
Writer: Pipsqeek

Re-Lax.

The chill pill and constipation fixer-upperer.

Congratulations, pipsqeek! You may have a million-dollar idea there.... Feel free to put a One-Minute Writer WINNER! button on your blog!

Posted by C. Beth at 5:00 AM

I had in fact forgotten about the entry I submitted. Having been so busy setting up the music school, I have put a lot of things aside recently in order to get this business up and running so I can pay the rent for the place I've leased out.

It's funny, being an IT guy... or should I say, former IT guy.... People assumed I know it all about technology, but the whole concept of online marketing and networking with people is vague to me. Though I am learning. Yesterday I set up a Facebook page for Revolution Guitars, and instead... or more specifically, I got a personal page too.

Now I'm going to have ex-school mates contacting me and asking to meet up, even though we either never will, or it'll happen once. Or better still, existing mates who've all been talking about Facebook will now be able to include me in their conversation and jokes. To which I'll probably still not understand because I don't plan on being social on that particular time waster of a social network.

Now that I've gone waaaay off topic, I forget what I wanted to really talk about.... ah yes, writing. I think everyone should write. Even if you're not a writer. I think a diary is a healthy thing to have. If you're too manly to have a diary, you can have a journal. :)

Even if you're not creative. I've looked back at things I've written on a piece of paper in school that I found when moving house and thinking "Wow, how naive." But at some point you look at the note and wish you were back there.

I'll burst that bubble easy. All I have to do is think about the rest of my school life and it's easy for me to balk at the idea of wishing I was back there.

This entire journal entry is creativity itself. I'm putting a recollection of ideas, experiences and thoughts into a palletable order. I'm not a professional, but I try and write how I speak, rather than put on words that I never use in real life.

If you enjoy writing and can spare a minute, then maybe you should head over to http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com and starting replying to topics that interest you.