Many struggles to this point, but this one is the worst.

A few days ago, I was getting in my truck to go do a travel massage, when I got to my truck there was an envelope on my windshield. I looked at it and saw that it was from my brother. Lets introduce him now...

My Brother, Drew, is my best friend and confidant, we were roommates for a few years after I graduated college, and he lived with me at my first beach house in Chic's beach. Everyone has their own demons and Drew was no stranger to his. Roughly 30 days before I'm supposed to be on the road moving out to Arkansas, Drew has his demons show up in mass and made him go off the deep end and he has decided to disown his family and run away out to who knows where to go find himself, leaving his business, cell phone, credit cards, most of his belongings, and a worried family and friends behind.

I respect his decision and will learn to live with it as hard as it will be to do. I feel like I have lost not only my best friend and the person I can tell anything in the world to, but also obviously I feel like I have lost my brother. The way he wrote his goodbye notes made it seem like I may never see him again and it breaks my heart.

I may never know why Drew has to do things the way he does. It seems like we are both pursuing the same thing, but obviously I am trying to keep everyone in the loop and share in my experience. I feel horrible that he feels that his walk through the world will be better without his family. I wish him the best of luck, the most amount of love he can handle, and I wish him happiness. I truly hope he finds it. 

Drew was also going to be my partner in crime in my move out to Arkansas, he was going to drive his truck and trailer, while I drove my Xterra. then he was going to hang out for a few days and maybe even help with some of the first easy projects around the homestead before he headed back home. Obviously, that will not be happening anymore, and now have to figure out a different way to get my stuff out there.

On top of that, he has asked me to sell his stuff and his business, so now I have to do that in the midst of moving out myself. Looks like it will be a bit harder in the next month than I was hoping for, but that is what life is all about. Gotta roll with the punches. There is the old saying, "Life's a bitch... and she's got puppies." Lucky for me, I love dogs.

I was really looking forward to spending some great quality time with my brother out in the woods next month. Again I hope and pray he is doing fine, I hope he reads my blog from time to time and thinks of me!

I miss you brother, with all my heart! :(

The Master Plan

Pretty much every single one of you are probably wondering why I am doing such a drastic change in life style. Everyone wonders what the grass is like, but most people are smart enough to stay on their side of the fence and try to figure their life out with what they have. This is not the case for "Big" Dave.

There is an genius motive to my madness. Basically, my ultimate goal in life is to have a working farm or homestead that I own and operate. While living that adventure, (since farming doesn't pay bills), I would need an alternate source of income. Here comes the bed and breakfast or retreat center idea.

Invite people out to my land, to get away from the city. They can have their own mini adventure, where they can wake up in the morning, collect some eggs, milk a goat, drink coffee on the deck as they watch the sunrise, do some YOGA, relax and read a book for a while, go out in the garden and pick out what they want for an afternoon salad. Take a stroll through the nature trails that I will have in place. Meditate in the meditation garden. Pet some farm animals and get back to nature! To me, that sounds like an awesome vacation! If I knew of a place where I could do that for a week, I would probably go and spend some good money to have that experience.

The best part about that plan is that not only do people pay you to have that experience, but while they are there, they will be helping with the "chores"  of the farm, (and they will be doing it with smiles on their faces, because it is out of the ordinary for them).

Lets talk retirement for myself. I have paid off the farm, im getting older and don't want to work to much anymore... Its easy, I stop letting people come over to my retreat center, by that time, the farm is fully self sufficient, and I can live off the land and die happy and peaceful at an old age of 94! (sounds great in theory huh?)

Maybe im crazy for thinking this, but I feel this is what more and more people are wanting these days. We have inundated ourselves with convenience and technology so much, that I feel a trend coming where people will want vacations away from the development of society... which is already been proven with the rather large and very much growing green movement. This is great and all, but before I drop hundreds of thousands of borrowed dollars in starting a farm with no experience whatsoever... it might be smart to have a practice run.

Here is where my current adventure starts. My very good friends are starting up a farm for themselves as a retirement dream. Like me, they are starting from the ground up, the property consists of a large wood cabin, and a 20x50 insulated workshop on 10 acres of land. They were awesome enough to invite me out to the property to live for a while and help them start their farm. Like me, they have very little to no experience! What a win win situation.

Economically speaking, this move will probably be a disaster! Before I head out, my goals were to be completely debt free, which I have accomplished (WAAHHOOO!!!) Except for my college loans (grrrrrr).... But even with paying extra on them every month, it comes to $300. Add car insurance, cell phone bill and a $100 bucks for gas, and I'm at around $550 worth of monthly expenses. I don't care where you are at in America, you should be able to somehow make at least $1000 a month take home... for the time being, that will be more than enough to get by. Retire? No, but get by, yes. So, while I am out there, I LEARN... every day, learn how to dig, cut, sow, make, build, demolish and reap. Obviously, we all know how to do all of those things, but my goal is to figure out how to do them the easiest and best way imaginable. Will I finish this dream penniless? Probably. But the experience in it will be the reward. 

So, whats next? Who really knows at the end of the day, I am no psychic. But for now, I am starting on this adventure one day at a time. Yesterday, I packed up my first two boxes. A Box of my favorite books, and a box of extra shoes and hats... seems like a small step, but its the first step necessary to get my butt out of societies hair for a while and connect back with nature myself. Till next time...

First Post!

There are a few people who have read the book "Into the Wild,” A story about a man who completely ditched society to live life wild and free across America and eventually in Alaska. At the end of that story I am sure plenty of people put down that book and dreamed about getting away from it all, living off of the land, ditching society and saying "screw you!" to “the man” and living out our own Christopher McCandless adventure.

Of course most of us wake up and think "wait a second, I like my house, I like my car, I am a slave to society, money and monetary objects, no way am I going to try anything crazy like that."

Then there are the people who read it, had the fantasy, and then went on their own adventure and are either doing well… or they have ended up like Christopher… alone and dead in a bus in the middle of nowhere.

Then there is that select group who had the fantasy and ever since, couldn’t quite shake the idea of it. Everyday going through life is a constant state of “what if”, “what if I did that, could I pull it off, am I nuts for even thinking this stuff?” Then after a few years, you start saying “I’m not getting any younger, I have paid off a good amount of my debt to society, why am I not happy?”, and you start to feel that change in your mind that the city will eventually kill you. A few more years pass, and all of the sudden, City life doesn’t seem all that bad…. “Its ok, I can deal with it”… This statement was like a "whoa "moment in my life. That moment, I had somewhere in the summer of 2011, not too long ago from when I originally started writing this blog

During that summer, I started to notice that I was getting complacent. Most people would say that is the normal thing to feel, I disagree. It freaks me out, I can not have a life long dream of living an easy country life, just shatter and wither away in what seemed like a few months. I feel that I have the foresight to see that this was just a coping mechanism to get over the fact that I had pretty much surrendered to the way of the world and society and I would be a slave to my career and never know what it was like to be close to nature ever again. And I felt fine with that.

Let me give you some insight to the world of "Big" Dave, Ill tell you more of my master plan in another post later. Currently as I write this paragraph I live in Virginia Beach in a neighborhood called Chics Beach, I literally live within walking distance of the bay and have had the perfect view of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel  with the sun setting in the west behind it every night for years. I have had awesome neighbors, some were so close that I gave them permission to just come into my house whenever they would like to hang out, without even ringing the doorbell. My first house in Chics was right next to the beach, I moved out due to the high cost of living there, but memories will always be in my head of that wonderful place. My second house I lived in Chics was in walking distance to my work. I worked in a Chiropractic office as a massage therapist and had my own company out of that office and was doing very well for a single man business. I was fortunate enough to be in walking distance to several other things like a Kroger, Wawa, Walgreens, and multiple restaurants like a Mexican joint, Chinese, a bbq place, Subway and Wendy's all within about a five minute walk from my house! My family lives just down the street about fifteen minutes away, perfect amount of distance to make sure the parents don’t drop by too often, but everyone is in an earshot away for a family get together and whatnot. Downtown Virginia Beach has pretty much everything you need, and I mean everything, every type of business is here and is alive and doing well. Our economy, in VB, currently I believe is one of the best in America (of course we can thank the five big military bases we have here for some of that economic stimulus.) I have surrounded myself with the nicest things, like multiple guitars, and a plethora of electronic gadgets that make my city life very technologically easy and nice, amongst other fun things like a canoe and a kayak and a gas guzzling SUV… Most people will look at my life and be like "what the hell are you complaining about?" And I can understand where you can take that view point. All of these things are truly wonderful (and ultimately useless) in my life. You can say I have spoiled myself, or the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence…. But I still feel this void of un-fulfillment.

This void is a feeling of longing to get back to nature, work the land, live off the grid as much as possible, go barefoot for as long as possible, and grow my beard out as crazy as possible! I have preached to my family, friend and clients many times (even during massages) about my dreams of living the simple life for years now, and yet, here I am, living where everything is handed to you  (if you have the money that is) living the crazy non married mans dream, but unfortunately, as luck would have it… I don’t think this is the dream for me.

I want to live the near penniless adventure, I want to live off the land, I want to work my pampered massage therapist hands till they bleed soil! In my head this chant keeps ringing and this is the story of how I took that message, thought about it long and hard…. waited for the right moment or opportunity to arise… and then strike at that opportunity. 

Come with me now, as I throw what I call my life away, as I leave my family, my friends, my neighbors, my career, my comfort zone, literally my life as Ive known it for years, put that all on hold for at least a full growing season from start to finish and see what it is like to actually man up and take the “simple” approach… which means in my case, traveling 17 hours away to the sleepy little county of Fulton (pop. 11,650) where you find the city of Mammoth Springs (pop. 977), Arkansas. Home to the worlds tenth largest natural spring that gushes out 9 million gallons of water an hour at a brisk and constant temperature of 58 degree's F. This is the quiet place where I will start a new chapter in my life, a new adventure to go out and explore what it means to be an American that is living off the land!