I recently read Nicole’s blog post about being on the “treadmill of modern day life” as she and her husband endeavour to transition “from a hectic Southern Ontario lifestyle to a back to the land approach that will hopefully lead [them] to Nova Scotia in search of a simpler life.” Nicole recognizes that she’s “building the foundation to a simple life” and that it takes time to get there.
Nicole’s post (in which she explains that she’s tired from her full-time job and progress toward their goal is not as quick as she would like) reminded me of our own struggles as we transitioned from urban to rural life a few years ago.
I provide this video as inspiration (I hope). This video was taken right as the transition was starting to happen, and I fondly remember the excitement we felt as our dreams were starting to become reality. It was all the more exciting because it had taken us years to get to the point that’s captured on film.
As I wrote in Nicole’s comments, achieving a dream may take a while. But if you really want something, make a list and write down the 38(?) things you’re going to need to do to achieve your ultimate goal. Then just keep plugging away at your list and eventually you’ll find yourself in a grainy moment like the one captured in this video.
The video was taken in our old condo in Victoria BC, in late 2007. A few days after the video was taken, our dreams started to become reality. We were leaving urban life behind and heading to the country. We moved out of our luxurious condo…and began living in our car. A month later, we arrived on Prince Edward Island; soon after, we moved into the country farmhouse we affectionately call Whimfield.
The video is just of me (Laura-Jane) talking a few nights before our adventure officially “began.”
Hi Laura-Jane, it’s me who also has left her job with the City of Langford (long story). I too am turning my back on being on “the treadmill of life”. I’ll be seeking a part-time job only so that I have more time to enjoy the simpler things in life. There seems to be a growing movement following your footsteps.
I loved being able to see and hear you talk again. Love you.
Beverley
i liked hearing your voice and realizing you dont even seem to have what we in ohio call a “canadian accent”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! weird!!! it must be an ontario accent. LOL. my friend from wisconsin has it too though…..hmmm.
gah i think we need our modern life to be able to afford our rural life. somedays it’s frustrating but most days i realize it is a unique thing that we will be able to take over the family farm someday if we stick around this area. also, i like that my job has me home by 3 pm and off all summer :).
but yeah, loved the movie. makes a whole new dimension of the blog. i want a MOVIE tour of the house and the land next!!!!!
Just an observation……
You looks heaps better in your farm life pics, even when you’re saw-dusty!
I guess nature’s manicures and pedicures andblah-blahcures are hard to beat!
I love how you subtly dropped that “spend a week in Parksville” bomb. You’re so cute. Packed in two days? Wowza!
I got laid off in Jan/05 and told my husband that I was going to pack one box per day because come summer, we were leaving BC for the East Coast. And I did just that… till mid-May when my husband called me from work (he was having a hard time leaving a job that was killing him) and asked me if I was really serious about this. Well, duh! there’s four months of packed boxes stacked everywhere. Two weeks later, we hit the road. Such memories…. exciting and scary at the same time. It was HUGE!
We moved from Southern Ontario to PEI just over 5 years ago. It was an exciting time for us and our children. Renovations are done finally. Now I don’t know if its the yucky summer or the very long winter but right now I miss Home. Going home this weekend for a week….I know we planned a simpler life but really we are not working any less…there is more to do as far as home maintenance…….17 acres is a lot of yard work, chickens, wood cutting, maple syrup. And yes it really did seem like a big adventure for the first few years, but the simplier life is not always an easier life. I miss having pizza delivered, sidewalks,higheels and dress boots,neighbourhood pubs, and 24 hour grocery stores and Sunday shopping, neighbours and friends……I believe that we appreciated the Island much more when we spent 3 weeks vacation here. I’m hoping this trip will make me remember why I moved here….or maybe it won’t. I know now how to survive without electricity, water (since ours seems to go out alot) and have learned valuable skills about gardening and how to survive bugs……but like anything else…….its be careful what you wish for…… Hopefully this is just a temporary faze and maybe my trip will reenergize my commitment to a simplier life.
You continue to inspire me!
Hi L-J
I agree with Christy in that your video adds an extra dimension to your blog. Do you have any more in the Whimfield archives?
It would be really nice if you could do some videos. A house tour and a property tour sound like they would be most interesting.
Have you ever thought about doing an audio podcast? That might be something that could work. Maybe even talking with one or two others who are working on the same type of lifestyle changes.
Expanding media horizons can be a very positive experience.
Smiles :o)
Gary
you are so adorable and fantastic! I love reading your progress here, so thanks for taking the time to update this site so often. xo.
How wonderful to hear your voice again (even Cameron’s in the background). Hard to believe all that’s gone on in the last 14 months!!
@Beverley – As per our telephone conversation :)
@Christy – What? Accent? Me? No! Never! I sound normal to myself, that’s all I know. :) I’d love to do more movies, but don’t have anything that takes movies these days. It’s on my “to be purchased” list though. Hmm, although I don’t know if I want to give a tour of the inside of the house because…because…then I’d have to clean something.
@Sayantanee – Lol, is that good or bad??
@Michelle – Woo, I love that condensed version of your story. Sometimes there’s that, “Are we really doing this??” moment that finally hits you. So you were the instigator for you two. Cam was the instigator for us; I just kind of followed along once he convinced me that it was a good idea.
@Nora – (Scroll down!)
@Nicole – That’s the plan!
@Gary – Ooh, audio podcast. Would love to!! I have a microphone. But would anyone listen to them? What if I read the posts out loud and recorded them, but still kept posting the written entries, as well? I don’t know if people would listen, though, because it’s hard to scan a podcast, do you know what I mean?
@Jumbly – Thanks Jumbly, my friend who once sent me a delicious valentine. Hope you’re well!
@LJ – I know, it has happened all too fast. Does life really go this quickly? Miss you!
@Nora – That was weird, I skipped you! But then I was walking down my driveway in the dark to get the mail just now, and I realized that I skipped you for some weird, cosmic reason. Maybe it was so I could write more and give it more thought:
I bet by now you’ve gone and maybe even come back to the island by now. I wonder how you’re feeling now that you’re back.
I am a bit of a commitment-phobe, in the sense that I never give my whole heart to one thing because it scares me. Even now, I don’t say that I will live here forever. What I will say is that I will live here until I don’t want to live here anymore.
Some people might say that once you start something–move to a new place, get married, whatever–you have to see it through to the very end (your death?) or it’s a “failure.” Take marriage, for example. If you have a wonderful relationship, are together for twenty years and were very happy, but you eventually grow apart and divorce, does that mean that your marriage was a “failure”? How could you call twenty years of happiness a failure?
The same goes with PEI or whatever life path you choose. It’s OK to want to try something, give it your all, and then realize that you want something else.
Any adventure becomes normal life at some point. I guess some people might read this blog and think that we’re having an amazing adventure and we must be blissing out in eternal happiness all the time. Of course, this is not true. Things are great, grand, wonderful, but sometimes things are hard, crappy, ugly.
Chickens, maple syrup, firewood, farm work, housework, raising children, oh my lord. The fact that you are not relaxing on the farm drinking lemonade doesn’t surprise me one bit.
I know this is just a weird babble, but what I am trying to say is that I hear you.
Laura-Jane and Nora,
I wanted to comment right away on Nora’s post because it struck a chord of sadness in me but I, instead, thought digested it and then put it on a shelf. In the almost four years of being here, I’ve had only one serious “what have we done” moment. I quickly came round and it left me.
When I see there’s a gang shooting almost everyday for two weeks in a row in the city I left behind and hear from an ex co-worker that the company I worked for just laid off 100 people, I take stock of where we’re at and what we left and all is OK within the tiny, humble framework of my world once again. We’ve learned to live lean and remain debt free but this is what we strived for when earning a decent living in the city.
I’m a person who commits and stays loyal to such. I tend to worry about money and how things are going to get done around here when my husband struggles with debilitating back, shoulder and hip pain from too many years working his butt off. It can be overwhelming but then I place my focus on what’s right and good where I am. When I stand in my driveway on a calm winter night with a full moon casting a blue glow on everything, listening to the river ice cracking (it’s awesome) and coyotes/moose sounding off in the forest, I’m thankful. The sounds of frogs and crickets on a summer evening, the morning sun glistening like diamonds on the river across the street from us, reaping the rewards of a chemical free garden… the list is endless.
No sounds of screeching tires from police chases, no sounds of drive-by gunfire, no light pollution blocking out the stars in the night sky, no smell of car exhaust or neighbours coming home at 3 am, loud and drunk, no insane commutes to work over congested bridges which are sometimes stopped up by a suicide attempt, no road rage, no stress to meet the financial demands of the high cost of living in the city, no office politics…. I could go on but the “finer” things of the city are not all that appealing to me anymore.
This is just my perspective. I don’t have the workload Nora speaks of and I don’t have children to raise so I can’t really say how I would feel if I were in the same situation. However, I would wonder if there’s some satisfaction in living off the land, producing your own heat, food and revenue then finding just a little bit of time to sit on the porch drinking lemonade to focus on what’s right in your world.
There are battles going on in every aspect of life, no matter where one lives. How one chooses to see those battles can change how one views the world and life in general. Perhaps some people are not hard wired for the “simple” life but to have taken the measures to find out is an experience in itself and one to be admired. Some people dream and do nothing; other’s dare to take the plunge and make dreams a reality. There’s something to be said about that.