It’s not about the money, it’s about freedom.

think, think, think...

Hey wait, I just came up with an idea.  Research… Ha, it doesn’t seem to exist yet!  How could it not exist?!  I would be first to market with this?!  I have to do it!!

So my friend and I talked about it.  It would cost a modest amount of money to setup (because I am not a web programmer) and yeah, it has the potential to make a lot of money.  Ok, it would make a shit load of money especially because when I get the ball rolling with something, it becomes PERFECT.  When I want something, I do everything to get it.  Study how to obtain it, research attempts that have failed, take what has succeeded and improve it, ask for feedback.. most of all, don’t do anything at “half-effort”.  But is that what I want?

Building this blog kept me up late at night with excitement.  It still excites me to think that I exist online now… this is mine.  It’s not Facebook’s, it’s not Myspace’s, it’s not Geocities’ (yep, I’m old).  It’s my own pretty, shiny dot com where I can pretty much say what I want, when I want and how I want and it’s not censored.  Esti que c’est l’fun!

The more I think about the talk we had, the logistics of building the backbone of my idea, the money I’d have to invest in it, the more I started to wonder if it was really something I wanted to do.  Thoreau said, “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”  Do I want to trade my free time and the money that I earn during the day to work on something commercial for a year or more?  Am I really that passionate about it?

The truth of it all is that I really don’t care about the money.  While the money would fund all of my dreams and then some, it would mean a longer commitment than just saving and investing for the next few years.  That’s why the short-term effort seems more of a pain than the promise rewards much later on.  I really care about the idea but possibly not enough to trade my life for it, even if it’s just for a little while longer.  So what do I want?

Well, what do I always come back to?

Jackson Pollock at work in his studio/cabin.

I saw a documentary a while back that showed the cabin that the artist Jackson Pollock worked in.   There was excitement in my eyes as I watched that…  It’s not his art nor his cabin that has been in my thoughts for most of my life.   It’s the idea of living in seclusion and making art. That’s all I want.  I don’t even care to sell anything I produce.

I want the experience of freedom.

Life without any obligations to anyone else other than to myself.  Life where I can create in my cabin and then wander off to help people cross the street, or build their own cabins or teach them how to read.  Life without rent, mortgages, bills, malls, parking lots, sidewalks, suits and ties, high heels, boardroom BINGO, the daily WTF, plastic cards, commercials, sirens and traffic lights.

La vie sans l’amour compliqué.  (Do you really think that the squirrels and raccoons and blue jays will care about two women sharing a bed?)

Life that makes more sense.  Have fun folks, I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.  Visit, sure.  Stay, no.

I know, I sound anti-social and I swear that I’m not.  I just prefer that my social activities be simple.  When I’m around you, I really want to be around you and not just for the company.  I want to talk and share and exchange and have moments with you that I’ll recall with a deep smile. And then I want my alone time.

So I found this last night: property for sale just outside of North Bay.

Six acres of beauty in Northern Ontario

If the timing was right, I might have bought this property to build my perfect cabin (which would only be about 700sq ft at the most).  I’ve always said that I would never return to the North, not unless I could do it without the want and need for work.  And in that case, that’s exactly where I want to be: go North, young lady.

The timing’s not right and it will take a few more years to be able to survive financially and pay for everything, in cash.  When it happens, new works will emerge, new sculptures, new drawings, new stories… and possibly, a new blog.  Perhaps we could build a planned community of small cabins and tiny houses, far enough from each other for ultimate privacy but near enough that we can still enjoy the company of another human once in a while.  Most importantly, all cabins would be off the grid.  There are better ways to live and that’s one of them.

Oh, and now that I started cooking everything from scratch, I want to keep doing that.  I want to grow my food, and kill it if I have to (um, fishing would be the extend of my rampage).  And spend some of my days trying to make a decent chair out of wood.   And I want to study insects!

I want to try and make a flute out of wood that is just as good as the one that my father made.

Dad's homemade flute.

And once in a while, I want to change into city clothes and city shoes and don a city smile and make my way to spoken word events and art galleries.  I want to survive amongst the crowded sidewalks of indifferent businessmen during the lunchtime madness and endure the smell forgotten alleyways.  I want to see the human marks left as graffiti.  I want to run into Sid, the street accordion player again and see if he’ll play a waltz for me as my exit song as I make my way back to the country.

Back to the country so that I can create…

Yes.

That’s what I really want.

A few days before leaving home to move to the capital city.

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