1997 was one of the best years of my life. Among other things, I backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine – all 2,160+ 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 something like $972.

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Fast forward 12 years later to March 2009 where my life looked and felt very different. I had allowed an enormous amount of clutter to enter my life, way too much for me to maintain. I was weighed down materially, financially, and emotionally. I felt unsafe, insecure, and unhappy and it was affecting every aspect of my life. I lost a job I did not expect to lose and along with it went my wife, my home, my excellent credit, and whatever pride I had left.

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I wasn’t modeling what I wanted my kids to learn from their father. I wasn’t modeling what I learned from my father.

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My children need to know they have the power to 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 and unoriginal belief system around the virtue of responsibility. I allowed myself to believe that responsibility was about self-sacrifice. And since at the time I was free and living simply, I sacrificed what I had: my freedom and, in a way, my soul. I convinced myself that all of this was good, I was doing right by others, I was 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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I’m loaded down and I need to learn how to enlighten that load – to induce some positive change through heightened awareness and action. I am going to document it through this blog and learn from it, initially by reliving my 1997 trip on the Appalachian Trail – every journal entry from March 20 to September 29, 1997. And then I’m just going to see what else comes up along the way. Here’s the first entry.