WHY Enlighten the Load

In 1997, at the age of 27 I enjoyed one of the best years of my life. Among other things, I backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. All 2,175 miles of it over six months. At that time of my life, I was free of material weight, financial weight, and emotional weight. And at all times I was safe, secure, and happy. My total income in 1997 was $972.

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Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
In Maine, September 1997

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Fast forward 12 years later to March 2009 where my life looks and feels very different. I have allowed an enormous amount of clutter to enter my life, way too much for me to maintain. I am weighed down materially, financially, and emotionally. I feel unsafe, insecure, and unhappy and it is affecting every aspect of my life. I just lost a job I did not expect to lose, my wife and I are proceeding through a divorce, I am trying to save my home from foreclosure, and I am contemplating bankruptcy.

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I am not modeling what I want my kids to learn from their father. I am not modeling what I learned from my father.

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My children need to know they can make choices that allow them to be free to experience the world with joy. I want to inspire them to fully utilize their imaginations and be grateful for what the world offers in return. I was there once, but I lost my way because I traded my imagination for an archaic, unoriginal belief system around responsibility. I allowed myself to believe that “responsibility” meant “self-sacrifice.” And since at the time I was free and living simply, I sacrificed what I had: my freedom and my soul.

I convinced myself that this made me “a man of virtue.”

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But I stopped focusing on doing the things I loved. I entered what most people called the “real world” and I got a “real job.” I did okay but not great. I’ve had good times and am surrounded by great people, but I am ripping them off because I am not the man I can be. I have not been honoring the voice of my soul.

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So I am going to start “enlightening my load” and I am going to document it through this online journal, initially by reliving my 1997 trip on the Appalachian Trail. Every journal entry from March 20 to September 29. I will likely follow that with my 1995, 22-day kayaking trip through Grand Canyon.

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Where it goes from there, we shall see.