Why Are You Doing This?

Why am I doing this? Why leave a perfectly good living situation and head out for the unknown? Why live in a hotel room, day after day, for one or two months? Why live out of a suitcase and walk among strangers daily, eating alone, driving for endless hours, and praying that I stay healthy for the duration? Those are perfectly good, and sane, questions. Searching my own motives has been an ongoing mission for the last two years. Decisions weren’t made until those questions were answered to my satisfaction. Let me see if I can answer your questions by telling you a story.

My husband, Dominic, was a self-made man. Long before I knew him, he went to university while working and supporting a wife and four children. He left with a Master’s degree and no school loans. He loved his children and his extended family. A divorce sidelined him for a while, but he rebounded and taught school until he earned a decent pension. We married a few years before his retirement. Then he retired. He was an artist and began to spend his days pursuing that avenue. That was a good thing. But, unless it involved his art technique, he was done with higher learning and he was done with working too hard anymore. He had excelled in a world before computers and other technology and saw no reason to learn such craziness. It was enough to hide in the home he had worked so hard for.

There was one little problem. His children, whom he loved with all his heart, were adults, and out in the world, living lives of their own. They did not have time to sit on the phone with him for 20 minutes or more. When cell phones became a “thing” his kids made him buy one so they could text him. He bought a flip phone that made reading and sending texts three times harder than a more modern phone could provide. So, he would call and not get a call back. And he would never notice the texts that they would send to him. He would miss them so much, never getting the vital connection he so desired. And the worst thing of all: he did not want to learn how to text. He had spent so many years learning and working. He was done with all of that. He should not have to learn brand new things. The kids should come back into his world to connect with him. They had moved on in the modern world. He had not.

I must tell you that he did finally get a smart phone and he did learn to text. The kids answered his texts…most of the time. He even learned how to connect on the world wide web, which upped his game with his art. He just had to learn that being retired doesn’t mean you stop learning, and doing, and living in the outside world.

After dealing with his passing, and the passing of my beloved mother, I bought a place of my own. It was the first time I owned my own place with no other name on the deed. It was all new for me and I thought I had found my place in my world. Still, something began to gnaw at me.

Do I really want to be a homeowner?

Do I want to be attached to a place?

Do I want to be free to travel and explore, and to learn, and have experiences?

When I can no longer take care of my home, or even care for myself properly, is this where I want to be?

And while I am still healthy, shouldn’t I learn new things? What is my version of “learning to text” that I have been avoiding?

Dominic had to decide to learn how to text before he could begin to learn. I also have had to decide that I am ready to learn. Truly, I believe this is a good path for me. I hope that answers some of your questions.