The `There’s More To Life Than This’ Feeling

This feeling has come roaring back this past week and I know it’s not your ordinary post-holiday blues.

I know there really is more to life than this. But I’m stuck in a holding pattern, a waiting pattern. And I have no patience with this pattern.

I know soon we will escape the hold of full-time work and its wasteful ways. But, again, I have no patience. I’m stuck working, commuting and paddling, paddling, paddling.

I had a few quiet moments last week and finally I managed to think some quality thoughts. You do need a bit of time and space for thinking and our modern life is set up to distract everyone from thinking. IPods, iPhones, movies, tv, newspapers, magazines — relaxation or distraction?

These quality thoughts may well turn into income. Maybe. More thinking is required. But it’s a catch-22 situation.

To prepare for our next dropout, I’ve taken on a second job. It’s tiring but this is the job that will fund the dropout. The job will transform into my first client once I launch my online business. I need to do this second job and I need to do my main job. There isn’t much time left over and this is something the baby just does not understand.

As I tell people — a select few — about my proposed business, I start getting leads. This person has some work they need help with – and a budget to hire help. That person knows someone who needs help. And another person makes a suggestion, which gets me thinking of a whole new product I could offer. Things are happening without happening. It’s the paddling, you see… or don’t see.

And the impatience. I just want to be out there swimming, not moored to my employer. I need a few more paychecks before we can cast off, though.

I want to reclaim those two hours a day I spend commuting. Wasting those hours is particularly painful because I could do my job from home, working online. That’s two hours a day – 10 hours a week – I could be sleeping or playing with the baby or thinking quality thoughts. Instead, chunks of my life are squandered.

The long hours make me grumpy. I want to ditch that. I want to revert to our old lifestyle, where Darling Man and I had time to enjoy each other’s company and laugh at silly things. I want time so I can remember the baby as a baby. Already she’s running and using her fingers to pick up microscopic bits of fluff. Soon she won’t be a baby anymore. In fact, she probably isn’t a baby now. And I missed most of her babyhood, stuck at work.

It’s clear that my glory days were the dropout days. Nearly four years of living in Vietnam, working but not consumed by work. Well off but not rich. That is the lifestyle I’m aiming for.

When I finally sit down to draw up a business plan, I won’t be focusing on ever-increasing profits. My goal is to build a sustainable business that requires only four hours a day of my time and generates enough income for us to live in Southeast Asia and build our savings. I do want to travel beyond Asia but the primary goal is a sustainable life here.

I am on the brink of being a location independent professional, a digital nomad, a webpreneur, a lifestyle designer. On the brink… perhaps that’s why the `there’s more to life than this’ feeling is so strong right now. Little bolts of excitement zap me from time to time, too. It’s not all frustration and gloom.

So here’s to our most exciting journey yet, into entrepreurship and self-employment.

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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.