A Reverse Bucket List

Linda and I were discussing our minimalist journey to date and we agreed that our biggest takeaway has been learning to ignore peer pressure in order to live the life we envisioned for ourselves. However well-meaning even our families have been, we realized the need for us to focus on our dreams no matter how we were misunderstood by others. And suffice it to say that not caring what other people think of you and your plans can be incredibly liberating. 

There is a thought-provoking scripture that speaks to this very point as it urges readers: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” In other words, our belief systems determine whether or not we will simply “go along to get along” with other world views. And as it relates to our leasing lifestyle of “living large with less,” not everyone agrees with or supports it, and that is okay, at least with us. 

“People want you to want what they want. If you want the same things they want, then their want is validated. If you don’t want the same things, your lack of wanting can, to certain people, come across as judgment,” author Ann Patchett writes. “How I came not to care about other people’s opinions is…I was born with a compass…This compass has been incalculably beneficial for writing—for everything, really—and for that reason I take very good care of it.” 

“As we grow older, we shouldn’t acquire more, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, peace…What I need to do, in effect, is stop seeing my life as a canvas to fill, and start seeing it more as a block of marble to chip away at and shape something out of,” suggests writer Arthur Brooks. “I need a reverse bucket list [emphasis mine]. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form.”

So, I dare you to define your life’s dream and then pursue it with passion, realizing that naysayers may come and go, but desire prevails. Rather than striving to see how many items you can pack onto a typical bucket list before you die, consider going for quality over quantity, and intentionally limiting your list to truly satisfying experiences. If your journey is at all like ours has been, one day you may realize the life you dreamed of is the one you are living!

Dare to Dream

As regular readers likely realize, I love to write about dreaming because it has become the oxygen that I breathe. Without dreams we are destined for “lives of quiet desperation,” as Thoreau observed. But buoyed by our dreams, we experience breakthroughs that were once thought impossible. Upon perusing former blog posts I was reminded that I also have written about dreams since moving here a couple years ago here and here so help yourself to them.    

And for this post I’d like to share more excerpts from my latest reading to help inspire you to chase your dreams also. It was French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space, who reported, “If I were asked to name the chief benefits of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” How poetic.  

As for Linda and I, living at this circa 1895 lightkeeper’s house is literally the fulfillment of a dream for us, even if it comes with its share of tourists during the year. And Bob Trapani, head of the nearby American Lighthouse Foundation, notes that while Maine’s lighthouses attract people from all over the world, “They are places of solitude. The quiet is amazing. They are places where you make life-changing decisions.” And I add, dream. 

Author Erica Bauermeister writes in House Lessons: Renovating a Life: “It wasn’t until I discovered geographer Jay Appleton’s theory of prospect and refuge that I found a framework to explain my reaction [to home]. According to Appleton, humans are most comfortable in situations where they can observe (prospect) and feel safe (refuge) at the same time.” Our privy perch affords us the same perspective.  

For further reflections on the dynamics of dreaming, I welcome you to check out the video we filmed this weekend from our deck overlooking the lighthouse here. Linda and I feel very blessed to live where we do and we owe it all to God, who “works everything together for our good,” to paraphrase a favorite scripture. And suffice it to say that he delights in giving his people the good desires of their hearts.  

Finally, Rachel Carson wrote in The Edge of the Sea, “Like the sea itself, the shore fascinates us who return to it…In the recurrent rhythms of tides and surf and in the varied life of the tide lines there is the obvious attraction of movement and change and beauty. There is also, I am convinced, a deeper fascination born of meaning and significance.” But wherever you call home, dare to dream and discover your destiny!

The Write Stuff

Like most writers and other creative types, I am a list maker. And consequently, I am drawn to list making tools such as pens, pencils, notebooks, etc. For inquiring minds, I use a Pilot EasyTouch Fine pen, a Pentel e-Sharp mechanical pencil, and a Moleskine black unlined notebook (not pictured above). I like to make lists of all types, including what I call my Media Menu, which tallies all the books I read and other media I consume as a lifelong learner.

Research indicates that we are a third more likely to complete a task if we write it down, i.e. move from to-do to ta-da! According to Habakkuk 2:2, none other than God himself advocates list making: “I will give you my message in the form of a vision. Write it clearly enough to be read at a glance.” And suffice it to say that the Ten Commandments were the original Top Ten List (sorry David Letterman).

Another type of list with which many of us are familiar is the so-called “bucket list” of things to experience before death. I know they are popular but I am not a big proponent of them as I strive to live life in the present tense. As I have written about here earlier, our original vision a decade ago for the year 2020 was to own our house outright in order to travel and experience other desirable destinations. Yet little did we know that a global pandemic would one day interfere with those plans, so suffice it to say that for us hindsight is indeed 20/20. 

The past decade has been an amazing dream come true for Linda and I and we are so glad we stepped out in faith rather than wait for the housing market to correct or any number of other conditions to fall into place after the Great Recession. As Ecclesiastes 11:4 states, “He who observes the wind [and waits for all conditions to be favorable] will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.” Amen to that. 

As one of our goals here is to share with you all how leveraging the leasing lifestyle helps with “living large with less,” we hope to inspire you through our minimalist journey to live your dream sooner rather than later. And if waiting for retirement or some other deferment is keeping you from your dream then here is a reminder that you can use your head and follow your heart. Lease a home or vehicle to see if you like it before you leap, but do not put your life on hold indefinitely. By all means, list your dreams and then live them daily!

Visions and Dreams

As is relatively common here on the coast of Maine about this time of year, it has been extraordinarily foggy lately. I for one love it, but even I got tired of our lighthouse’s foghorn the other day! The thing about fog is that it has a way of obscuring your vision while lulling you into complacency, which can be all the more dangerous when you are trying to navigate uncharted waters. Thus, the need for another type of signal to alert our senses and help us get our bearings. 

All of which reminds me of how we came to arrive at our dream destination little more than a year ago now. The funny thing about dreams is that they become realized only after they are first visualized. And the manifestation of our dreams results from our movement toward them rather than staying within the confines of our comfort zones. As one sage once said, “Dreams unspoken die unborn.” So, to summarize we visualized our dream, moved toward it, and spoke it aloud.

But never in my wildest dreams did I ever visualize a year like this one, what with the viral pandemic and deteriorating economy. Yet in the midst of it all, I was recently hired as a technical writer at Linda’s company and we are able to both work from home together, saving tons of mileage and maintenance on our vehicle, not to mention all the time not spent commuting back and forth each day. Suffice it to say, our dreams may take detours on the route to realization.

As a matter of fact, my original “2020 vision” was to pay off our dream house in Florida and be debt free by this time. But I’ve learned over the course of time that our dreams can evolve into something even better than we originally envisioned. Just as corrective lenses can help us adjust our changing vision, so can dreaming new dreams chart a different course toward our destiny. If we are willing to adopt new thinking we can adapt to any challenges we face on the journey.

So, we exchanged our beloved Lakewood Cottage for living debt free here at the Marshall Point lighthouse. And truth be known, living here is a blessing that is above and beyond all we could ask or think, to paraphrase a biblical verse. Each day is a new opportunity to experience the goodness of God toward us and to delight in the fulfillment of our dreams. Wherever you are on your own journey in life, I hope you dare to dream big and then go for your dreams with gusto!

Of Time and Treasures

As we transition from one season to the next I am reflecting upon one of the highlights of the summer for me. It came in the guise of a serendipitous “development” that was years in the making. One languid weekend afternoon Linda and I wandered into a local consignment shop we had been meaning to visit as we were looking for a table. An antique trunk caught my eye so I lifted the lid and discovered a large camera bag buried beneath some cloth.

And upon closer inspection, I soon realized the treasure trove that was hidden within the bag: not one but two Canon A-1 film cameras, five Canon professional lenses, a Canon flash system and tripod, and assorted Canon lens filters and caps—all of which I got for the incredible price of $30! I was able to get batteries locally but had to order the black and white film I am planning to use with it from B&H Photo in New York City for another $30, but now I am all set. 

I got the kit inspected and appraised by a couple of world class photographers associated with the prestigious Maine Media school here. They agreed that it was quite the deal, especially given its exquisite condition, and said it was worth several hundreds of dollars, if not more. And upon hearing of my experience a while later, a professional photographer friend of mine GAVE me a third Canon A-1 another person had given to him!    

So, why am I sharing this story with you all? I simply hope to encourage each of you to keep alive whatever dream you may have in your heart, be it an artistic one such as mine, or another type. You see, I had dreamed for years of getting a professional grade camera like a Canon but I could not justify the cost and I was intimidated by the technical aspects like aperture settings, etc. But not only was this camera kit the deal of the century, the A-1 was the first single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera with programmable settings for relative newcomers like me.   

In case you are as curious about the backstory of the bag as I was, here it is. The shopkeeper said the bag remained in that trunk for three years after a widow dropped it off upon her beloved husband’s death. Apparently, the couple were IBM executives who traveled the world and spared no expense for state-of-the-art photography equipment. Not only was the Canon A-1 revolutionary when it was released but it is still regarded as one of the very best cameras ever made. And for this photographer, the passage of time served to preserve an invaluable treasure.   

The Stuff of Dreams

Longtime readers know that Linda and I sold our dream house in Florida eight years ago to pursue a new dream of living more lightly. And I am very happy to report that dream has reached its fulfillment in the form of our upcoming move to a lighthouse keeper’s cottage! You read that right: in a couple of months we are moving to the quintessential Maine lighthouse (pictured above) at Marshall Point in Port Clyde.

As I shared in an earlier post about our minimalist journey there is a moving quote attributed to Mark Twain posted at the Lake Dora lighthouse in Mount Dora, Florida. It is there we began this journey after selling our dream house that we custom built twenty years ago at this time and the quote reads: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Family members and close friends also know that the decorative theme at our beloved Lakewood Cottage consisted of ships, lighthouses, and other nautical memorabilia. And throughout our journey to this point, we have gravitated to coastal living, so it is all the more meaningful that we are landing at such a fitting manifestation of our maritime dreams. In the words of author Seamus Heaney, “Believe that a further shore…is reachable from here.”

Suffice it to say that our journey from there to here was made doable by our decision to live with less stuff. The keeper’s cottage is unfurnished, so we are gradually getting the necessary accoutrements for housekeeping after all these years of leasing furnished places. We do plan to maintain our overall minimalist aesthetic but we had to buy a bed for us and a sleeper sofa for all of our visiting friends!

Amidst our upcoming move, I have been thinking lately about how the places we inhabit seem to fit the personalities we exhibit. For example, the coast of Maine is ideally suited to someone like me who is comfortable with his own company. Lighthouses are isolated by design and the people who live at them must enjoy simple pleasures like reading a good book and love the life of the interior generally speaking. So, it is with fondness that I look forward to our special adventure by the sea. And I encourage you to reach for your dream, whatever it may be!

Sweet Dreams

The seventh anniversary of our closing on the sale of our dream house will be in a few days and it has gotten me thinking about what has transpired in the meantime. Suffice it to say that the journey from there to here has been a dream come true for us on many levels, not the least of which is that we get to live year-round here in New England rather than visiting from a southern state of it. Let me explain. 

Linda and I built our so-called forever home in the antique capital of Florida, a quaint lakeside town called Mount Dora, which for years had a sign at the entrance to town that read: Welcome to the New England of the South! It reflected the town’s unique (for Florida) New England-type architecture more than anything else, but also nautical-themed features like its inland lighthouse and yacht club.

What is more, we customized our Cape Cod-style cottage with such atypical (for Florida) amenities as hardwood floors and a wood-burning fireplace and decorated our cozy home with nautical accents like ships and lighthouses. Do you detect a theme here? And for years we subscribed to Colonial Homes magazine and eagerly awaited the latest issues of Yankee and Down East magazines at our local library. 

And you know what is amazing? We now live across the street from the headquarters of Down East, which just happens to be the official magazine for the state of Maine. So, it appears our coastal journey has come full circle, and it has been a blessed one at that. But it almost didn’t happen. You see, I got “cold feet” thinking about the weather-related changes we’d face (being southern-born-and-bred) and the prospect of uprooting Linda from her corporate job. 

Fortunately, I came to my senses just in time and we moved here during what proved to be an unseasonably mild winter. And we have since both adjusted nicely to our four-season climate here. It reminds me of a powerful quote attributed to George Addair that I recently discovered: “Everything you have ever dreamed of is on the other side of fear.” And Proverbs 13:12 states: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Sweet dreams are made of heart desires come true. As Maine’s own Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said: “My soul is full of longings for the secrets of the sea and the heart of the great ocean.” I now have trouble imagining what our lives would be like without living here. It is indeed a dream come true, and one made possible by us lightening the load of our lives, including the emotional baggage that beckoned us to play it safe. So, what is your dream?

The Art of Ideal

With our upcoming event at the Camden Library titled “Living Large With Less: The Upside of Downsizing,” Linda and I are planning to share about our experience of liquidating our stuff and leveraging the leasing lifestyle in order to live and move more freely. And we are discovering it is an ideal that many aspire to experience for themselves.

We presented this material earlier as an all-day course at the Senior College rather than a two-hour class and quickly realized that it is “more caught than taught.” As I share with attendees, it is as much about the “wow” factor as it is any “how-to” principle. What we endeavor to impart to others is a sense of potential that is available when one is willing to “think outside the box.”

Teaching involves the transmission of ideas, while training involves the transformation of identity, and that is what I hope readers here experience: a radical insight into what your life can become as you envision “living large with less.” As grandiose as that statement may sound it is truly what I desire to inspire through my writings.

On that note, I love this excerpt from “A Vision of the Good Life,” the introduction to Man’s Search for the Good Life by Scott Nearing of Harborside, Maine: “The man who has a vision of the good life and who decides to live it is an idealist. That is, he is forming a mental picture of the desired or the ideal and attempting to shape his conduct in terms of that mental image. He is striving to convert the desirable into the real.”

And I came across another useful quote from an article titled “Piano Lessons: Do Writers Need a Teacher or a Coach?” by Jim Sollisch in a recent issue of Poets & Writers: “The difference between teaching and coaching is the difference between thinking and doing. Teachers are in the concept business; coaches deal in the physical world. Theory versus practice.”

As the author continues, “Admittedly there is overlap. Coaches teach and teachers coach. And there are gray areas made grayer by semantics. But the older I get, the more I believe we too often teach when we should be coaching.” At times I am a teacher who writes and at others I am a writer who teaches. But nowadays I think of myself as a coach training others to also dare experience the ideal of their dreams. 

Of Sea and Sand

In the recent 30th anniversary issue of Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, I read an article titled “Why We Love the Ocean: The Psychology and Physiology Behind Our Attraction to the Water” by Catherine Schmitt. As the article suggests, “spending time near the water is good for our mental and physical health.” It even feeds our souls.

You could say that both the earth and humans are largely bodies of water, as both are about three-fourths wet stuff, so it makes sense that we would feel at home here. The article also states, “some people cannot stand to live away from the ocean, needing physical access to the sand, rocks, and surf.” That describes Linda and me.

As much as we loved living in the beautiful state of Tennessee, the one thing that was missing for us was the ocean. We simply could not get the New England coast out of our systems after our radical sabbatical of living on the island of Nantucket for a season. In the immortal words of Rachel Lyman Field’s poem “If Once You Have Slept on an Island”:

You may chat with the neighbors of this and that
And close to your fire keep,
But you’ll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell
And tides beat through your sleep.

And when it comes to decorating our home, we’ve always loved the nautical motif, incorporating our fair share of ship and lighthouse décor. So suffice to say it is a dream come true for us to live within sight of the ocean itself. Just this morning, I sat with my coffee and pastry down by the harbor to greet the dawning of another coastal sunrise.

When I was a youngster we vacationed each year at the beach, whether Virginia Beach, VA; Wrightsville Beach, NC; or Myrtle Beach, SC; and I always wondered what it would be like to daily wake up to the sound of seagulls, smell the salty air, and watch the tide ebb. And now we get to do just that since simplifying our lives to live by the sea.

As Maine naturalist and author Rachel Carson writes: “Like the sea itself, the shore fascinates us who return to it….In the recurrent rhythms of tides and surf…there is the obvious attraction of movement and change and beauty.” Whether or not your dream is to live by the ocean, I strongly encourage you to simplify your life and live with less stuff in order to chase your dream lifestyle.

The Tradeoffs of Life

As with life in general, there are tradeoffs with designing the life of your dreams. Suffice it to say that we must be willing to give up one type of life to get another one and only we can determine whether or not the exchange is worth it. In our case, my wife and I traded in the stereotypical American Dream of home ownership for the unconventional leasing lifestyle. And we agree that it has turned out even better than we had anticipated. 

One of the common misconceptions about “living the dream,” as we Americans like to call it, is the notion that we can “have it all.” But the truth is that counting the costs and making compromises is part of realizing a dream. And one way to cope with the challenges of life is to intentionally simplify it, including learning to live with less stuff, and thus less stress. 

The other day I came across a compelling quote from former hedge fund manager Sam Polk, author of For the Love of Money, who left his successful but stressful job: “The number of people who approach me to tell me that they want to walk away from it all versus the number of people who actually do it is shockingly inconsistent—only the tiniest fraction go through with it.” 

And here is the highlight of what he shared: “There is a writer named Donald Miller who talks about this idea of living your life as if you’re going to tell someone a great story about it [emphasis mine]. Walking away from a job that you’re unsatisfied with to start a great adventure full of uncertainty? That is the definition of a good story.” 

Other people often marvel at our mobile lifestyle but the secret, if one could call it that, is that we did what was necessary to make it happen. As I have written about here earlier it all started with trading our massive library for a mobile one. Books are weights that anchor people to places and we wanted to experience life more than simply read about it.

Another secret to our journey is that Linda and I have shared one vehicle for about 25 of our 28 years together. With the annual cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle approaching five figures, driving one vehicle represents a huge cost saving to us. Not everyone is willing to make such a move, but I know of others who could reap similar rewards and yet refuse to even consider it. 

Not only can we fit all the stuff we own in our lone vehicle, leasing it frees us from the hassles of maintenance. The many rewards of traveling so lightly through life outweigh the supposed benefits of owning more stuff as far as we are concerned. So wherever you are on your journey of life, consider limiting your possessions in the pursuit of your passions so you can ultimately arrive at your dream destination. 

The Power of Words

Words possess the power to move us. Not just any words, mind you. But words that are from the heart instead of the head merely. Suffice it to say there is a vast difference between inspiration and information. The former touches our feelings whereas the latter only teaches us the facts. And one year ago it was literally words that moved us here to where we live today.  

The reason my wife and I are experiencing our dream of living on the coast of Maine is that we expressed our dream in words, which formed the story that fueled our vision. The words we shared with one another created a narrative that became more and more powerful with each telling. You may have heard it said that dreams unspoken die unborn. But our dream not only was birthed, it came to fruition when we stopped our fears by stepping out in faith.

And to think we nearly talked ourselves out of coming here at all. Upon visiting the area for vacation last fall we fell in love with it and planned to make the move after returning home to put it in motion. Only I got cold feet thinking about what could go wrong instead of what was so right about it. That was when our landlady gave us the gift of a month’s notice to figure it out elsewhere. And then the power of words that generated our dream broke through the dam holding us back.

It was earlier in the year on our retreat to a nearby monastery that we came upon the book called At Sea With God by Margaret Silf and it served to put the wind in our sails for a return voyage here to coastal New England. And words spoken by another seafaring soul reminded us of why we love living here so much. The other day we attended a meeting at the local opera house with Linda Greenlaw, author of The Hungry Ocean, who said the title speaks of how consuming the ocean can be.

Dear reader, allow me to encourage you to give life to your dream by speaking of it until the experience of it resonates so deeply with your core being that the thought of not realizing it is consumed by the overwhelming desire to go for it, come what may. The power of words lies in their ability to keep afloat our dreams, no matter how seaworthy, until one day we spy the shore and sail into our safe harbor.

Living the Dream

It has been some time since I blogged due to our busy slate of holiday activities but I had to post today because we got our first snowfall here in Franklin. Snow is only covering the ground but it adds a festive touch to our already joyous holiday season. It has been such fun celebrating the holidays here that it has reminded me how very much I am “living the dream.”

The holiday festivities kicked off earlier with Historic Franklin’s “Dickens of a Christmas” street faire, complete with costumed characters from A Christmas Carol playing live at the circa 1937 Franklin Theatre. And speaking of the theatre, on Christmas Eve my wife, Linda, and I saw our favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, at the theatre and we return on New Year’s Eve to swing to the sounds of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

It is so awesome being able to walk downtown to the different cafes and shops and soak in the ambience of an old fashioned Christmas. We recently invited friends to visit our circa 1930 home in the historic district and to join us for a stroll downtown to the festivities when one of them exclaimed, “This is so romantic!” And it was just last year that another friend of ours remarked, “Your lives are like a movie!”

So perhaps we could describe our experiences as being like a dreamy, romantic movie? Whatever the description, Linda and I frequently feel the need to pinch ourselves to remind us of how blessed we are to live in such special places. As regular readers will recall, it was just this type of lifestyle that we envisioned a couple of years ago when we placed our house for sale and our dreams in the hands of the One whom we celebrate.

Nantucket Noel

My wife and I agree that this Christmas has been our favorite one together, which is rather ironic given that we are several hundred miles from family and friends on an island thirty miles out to sea. One contributing factor is that winter here strips away the distractions of life and helps us to focus on the reason for the season: the incarnation of Christ. Another factor is that we are living in one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, particularly during the holidays.

For its part, Nantucket has several hundred colonial-era buildings, more than anywhere else in America, a fact made all the more astonishing when you consider that many more were lost in an epic fire. Add to the historic buildings the cobblestone streets, old-fashioned lampposts, and traditional decorations of evergreen trees and wreaths with white lights and candles, and you experience a holiday dreamscape capable of soothing even the most jaded of holiday shoppers.

And speaking of shopping, its absence in our lives was another major contributor to our holiday bliss this year. With our yearlong downscaling of possessions, whereby we gave most of our stuff to friends and family before moving here, shopping wasn’t a big deal. As for us, we had bought each other several gifts before the holidays as the need arose so we simply exchanged a couple of gifts on the day of Christmas. The only thing missing was the snow that was forecast but failed to fall.

Testing Your Dream

I enjoy books about dreams and I thoroughly enjoyed one I finished today titled Put Your Dream to the Test, the latest by leadership expert and bestselling author John Maxwell. Subtitled “10 Questions to Help You See It and Seize It,” the book suggests you analyze your dream in order to move from merely believing in it to actually buying into it.

As Maxwell points out, it is one thing to dream and another thing to live your dream, and the determining factor is often whether or not your dream has been tested. He gently guides you to answer questions of ownership, clarity, reality, passion, pathway, people, cost, tenacity, fulfillment and significance. In his trademark style, the book is peppered with motivational quotations and moving stories of people who achieved their dreams by practically testing them and then tenaciously pursuing them.

No matter where you might find yourself on the dream continuum, it would benefit you to read this book and practice its principles. Whether or not you have mapped out your dream destination, you will find here the help you need to navigate the challenging detours of life and continue your journey toward a life of passion and purpose.