The Begining -- The Freedom Project

It needed a name. We needed something to call this crazy idea. The germination of this came from some other posts in my personal blog and, as we started taking the steps necessary to make The Freedom Project happen, Kerry asked me if I was going to blog about it.

At first I was reluctant, because if we fail at this, everyone gets to watch. Then again, if we succeed, everyone gets to watch. In either case though, everyone gets to learn. Mulling this over, it makes sense to share the process so others who wish to follow along a similar path can do so.

Here are the two posts that started it...

http://yes-anything-you-want.blogspot.com/2010/02/stuff.html

"George Carlin (bless his departed soul -- wait, he didn't believe in God), once said, "you need a place for your stuff. Then you get more stuff. Then you need a bigger place for your stuff. Then you get more stuff..."

To that, I ask, "what if you got rid of your stuff?"

What if you got a place so small you can't get more stuff.

Would that free you from stuff?

It just may. "

Which was followed by this one:

http://yes-anything-you-want.blogspot.com/2010/02/plan.html

"It's good to have a plan, to figure things out, to plot, conspire, until you have just the right path to take to, dare I say it, rule the world?

Well, my world, at least.

I've been thinking about stuff, and lost dreams.

I've been thinking of all the plans I made (be an architect, a photographer, a writer, a pilot, a cop) that didn't come to fruition, for whatever reason. Everyone has false starts, dreams that never come true once you wake up and have to go commute an hour to the job that pays the bills that keeps your lovely wife and beautiful children in a home, with good health care, in a good school system, in a community 40 miles from where you really want to live.

And now they are gone, grown, out on their own, and you have a chance to live the life you dreamed of, you read about, you drew up plans for that never got executed because the needs of other people came first above your own. I'm a Daddy - it's my job.

But, it's not my job anymore. I am answerable to myself and my new wife.

So...

What now?

Well, the house is for sale.

My guitars, my books, my bicycles, my motorcycles, my bar, my tools, my furniture, guns, gun safe, ballistic vest (interesting life, no?), the movies, the records, the stereo, computer, not the art -- it goes in storage, the stuff I don't need to carry anymore -- it's all for sale.

And, we are moving, after the house sells.

Where?

To a yacht, on Lake Union, the Ship Canal, or Shilshole Bay, to live simply, in a small space, that is a sailboat.

And when the muse strikes us, to slip lines, raise a bridge or two with a sixty foot mast, and take our hearts and our souls to the open water; living an adventure under sail, on the water, with the clouds as our shade, and the wind as our horses.

Wait till you see the chariot. "