“I’ve always thought it would be fun to just go live in the country and write stuff.”
That’s what a former co-worker of mine told me a few months after I’d started my own self-employment on the 100-acre farm my wife and I and our then seven children had moved to about two years earlier.
Although at the time, I was doing a lot more than just “writing stuff” to make ends meet, I was living in the country and doing life a lot differently than most of the people I had known up until that point in my life. And it was the way I wanted to live more than anything else.
So, what was the difference between my co-worker and me?
One thing: I believed life could be different.
In fact, I believed that the different sort of life—self-employed, living on land, and sharing daily life with my family—was possible.
Your different probably looks different than mine. I know people whose dream is pretty much the opposite of mine. For them, big cities hold the ultimate adventure.
One couple I know, for instance, saw adventure in life in New York City. They didn’t know anyone there, and had to figure out how to get jobs, but they did it. And life in New York satisfied the itch.
The point is, if you really think it would be fun to just go [fill in the blank] and write, make, construct, craft, grow, create, or manage stuff, you start by believing it's possible to do that.
It's the most important thing I’ve thought in order to be so different.
I’ve imagined and believed that things could be different. I believed it first even though I was living the normal life and didn’t have any people to model how it could be different. I just knew I wanted it.