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Re: [RC] Enduring posts-nothing wrong with introspection! - Chris PausOh, Lynne, I agree... I was thinking more of the endless debates on the middle east riding, the barefoot wars, etc.
Actually, I've gotten a chuckle out of this thread. I REALLY miss my RV which burned to the ground last May. I loved camping in comfort! Part of it is because I lived camping out for too long....
I lived in northern Wisconsin, doing the back to the land thing through the 1970s and 80s. Completely missed the disco era, LOL... We had no TV, no running water, used an outhouse, heated and cooked with wood, going through more than a dozen cords of wood a season! It was damn cold up there.
I had to walk 300 feet to a river to get water for the horses and other livestock. In -30 temps, that's not a lot of fun! Our bathing was done in a round wash tub, dirtiest one in last, with water heated on the wood stove. Almost all our food came from our garden and the chickens, pigs and cows we raised. We were dirt poor, but at least we ate very well!
After living that life for more years than I care to remember, I don't begrudge anyone a nice, comfy RV or LQ with air, heat, water, bathroom etc. My RV had all that. It's been replaced with a 1978 model goosneck trailer with many fewer amenities. It's all we could afford. it's safe and sturdy and keep the rain off my head, but no bathroom, no running water, no gas heat, no kitchen.
I feel blessed to have the trailer, even so. But after a ride, I sure am glad to get home and take a real shower, LOL!
I was on the corporate treadmill for years. I worked my way out of dire Appalachian style poverty in the north woods by going back to college when I was 30 something. I got a job in the computer software industry, which shotgunned me to a whole new world!
That job led me to Kansas City, out of the woods, and back to civilization and the area where I grew up. I stayed in marketing-pr-meeting planning for about a dozen years. I made more money then, but alas, had no time. 50-60 hour corporate work weeks suck. I stepped down from there to a job I really loved and always wanted to do, newspaper reporting, when I married a man with a good job.
But reporting is a grind too, and after a decade of that, i was burned out, so I took a part time job that I can work from home managing a nonprofit association. I have much more time, but far less money now. Especially now that my husband is disabled and his good income has been replaced by peanuts from his disability retirement and social security.
Now I'm finding I have to start making some hard choices. I can go back to a 40 hour a week job and keep the number of horses I have, but give up my time, or I can cut back on horses, give up breeding them, and just keep a couple of horses to ride. I simply don't have enough money to do it all.
Life is choices, plain and simple. I've enjoyed raising the younguns and am proud of the babies we've put on the ground, but if I'm going to have any kind of a distance career, I have to make some more choices...
Oh, where is an Arab sheik when you need one!
Like the others, if I came into that mythical million dollars, I'd get out of debt, build a horse barn and maybe upgrade my trailer, but otherwise, just keep living life the way I'm doing it.
chris
Lynne Glazer <anyone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: You know, I've spent a bunch of years reading ridecamp, nearly from the "If I fill this moment with gratitude, the next moment can't help but bring blessings." Chris and Star BayRab Acres http://pages.prodigy.net/paus
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