Today’s our first sunny day in over a week and I’m feeling down. I spent a couple of hours this morning troubleshooting my water heater (more about that to follow) and I’m looking at a costly repair.

This is definitely not the winter I’d envisioned or saved up for. Just about everything I had went to the brake repair this fall and the rest to keeping me afloat until I got full-time work hours. It’s already the middle of January and I haven’t done any exploring or renovations. At this point I’ve pretty much conceded that neither is going to happen.

My cashflow has improved slightly, but not nearly enough to make up for how much financial bleed I’ve had since leaving the Yukon. I really don’t like to talk in great depth about my finances, but I think I need to make a comment on the subject. My global financial picture is sound, but my daily budget isn’t. I ‘have money in the bank’, however it is off limits for daily expenditures. The only way I am going to survive financially in this lifestyle of unstable income is to limit my daily spending to what I’m taking in through my various income streams rather than continuously dipping into my investments and savings. Exploring counts as daily spending. Renos and maintenance have their own saving account, but maintenance takes precedence, of course, and there’s a minimum cushion that needs to be in there at all times. Soon as I hit that limit, I can only use the money for real emergencies and not for sprucing up my home.

I’m a homebody, so a part of me doesn’t mind having an excuse to stay home, watch movies, read, and go for long walks on the beach. However, I didn’t enter this lifestyle to have such a monotonous sameness to my days. It’s only the thought of my imminent return to the endless Yukon summer that enables me to remember just what it is I’m working so hard at to build. I can tell that I’m making progress at supporting myself on the road in a manner that will enable me to travel freely. My various income streams are slowly picking up and my writing contract is a major step in the right direction. However, I have conceded that this winter is looking at being a wash and that there probably won’t be much more to blog about until I take off in May.

This situation is of my own making and only I can fix it. I never forget that I chose this life and the financial instability that it brings, that I made a decision to honour my belief that the true riches in life are not material. So, please do not take this post as a ‘woe is me’ type of update, but just an honest comment on where I am right now. I don’t deserve pity or sympathy because I could still be an analyst for the government, living in a nice house in the city with no debt and plenty of disposable income.

In my about me page, I quote Sterling Hayden. Here are more of his words that ring so true to me:

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsman, who play with their boats at sea — “cruising”, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and have the means, abandon the venture until your fortune change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
“I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it”. What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security”. And in the worship of security.

I’m off to take a long walk on the beach so I can enjoy some of that fleeting sunshine!