Dig Deep for a Better Future

I am SOOO excited about the time we are now living in!  I have to admit I LOVED the time of COVID! Not because of people getting sick and dying, but because I quit my 23 year career as an aircraft mechanic and started REALLY working on myself. 

I broke down all the things I hated about my life and took a long look at the commonality, ME. Not blaming ANYONE else for what has happened in my life, no matter the reason. It’s about taking responsibility for my individual part of the situation. 

It was extremely tough to focus inward and truly see why I was THE problem in my own life. I spent many many moments crying, furiously angry, and exhausted. I didn’t know how to handle all that was happening and all that I wanted to change.

I sought help through many different resources to be able to see things in a better light and to see how I could be shown the way.  All of those sources were helpful, some more than others. 

What came out of that time frame was me now.  I learned that I am the ONLY one who can tell me what path I should take. I am the only one who can make the decisions I need to make. I can choose to chase money. I can choose to chase freedom. I can choose to chase dreams. I can choose to do NOTHING at all. 

Even though it was EXTREMELY tough, I am so happy I chose to take the path I did and leave my career to chase my personal freedom and dreams. 

I also learned to trust myself, the knowledge I have and to not let ANYONE take my knowledge away ESPECIALLY when I know something to be the absolute truth. This is definitely not to say that I know everything and that I am never wrong. It’s to say that TOO many times I have been told that I am self righteous and made to believe that I am wrong because other people don’t want to hear what I have to say. 

I make other people uncomfortable. I know that. It’s ok. I can accept that. I make them uncomfortable because I have learned to be strong, independent, and brave.  

I have learned to be ruthlessly authentic and genuine when it comes to me and when it comes to the people who are around me.  

I was INCREDIBLY angry about all the things we are doing to each other and to the planet. It seems to be that I have been ahead of the majority of the people in so many things that I have done in my life, by about 5 years.  I think this is why I find the timeline we are in so fascinating to me. 

FINALLY! People are waking up to all the atrocities that are happening all around the world and especially in the United States. It’s not that I am excited to see everyone in pain, it’s that I am excited to see what the end results will be. 

If we look at the past, we see that every time humanity has gone through major upheaval we see that after the horrors have gone away we get to a place that is better for everyone.

I am excited to see the entire planet come to a place of peace.  I want to see humanity see that we need to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce our consumption of things and COMPLETELY do things in a different way. 

Some people call me extreme when I say the things that I would like to see, but the reality is that I am not extreme, we have been doing most of those things for millenia. 

I want to see people living much smaller. I currently live in 160 square feet. I know that is very small, even for me, a wee bit too small. However, my long term plan is to build a place that supports more people to live near me and we then share resources. Community is the only way we as human beings are truly able to survive and thrive. To a great degree, we have lost that. 

I could go on and on about ways we could do better for the planet because there is SOOO much there that really upsets me but I shall keep that for another day. 

I want to see people truly supporting each other. This right here is something I already get to experience! I never really knew what that was going to look like until I came to Maine.  

I live in an area that mostly voted opposite from what I did. I live in a red area. The thing about Maine though is that the people here are made from different stuff. They are tough. Maine is remote in general but especially when you get away from southern Maine. When you get to the places away, the people have had to survive on the basics. They had to support each other. 

There are Facebook Groups here that CONSTANTLY have people asking for help like “Can someone come help me get my 100 pound dog in my house? I can’t lift him, he is old, it’s freezing, and my husband is at work.”  Someone from and HOUR away responds and drives to her house to bring the dog inside to drive an hour back home. 

That story resonates with me so much because where I grew up, I had a friend who lived about 15 minutes from my house and her mom refused to drive her to my house and pick her up because it was too far. 

I love seeing all the supportive stories coming out of Minnesota and other areas of the United States from neighbors bringing groceries and other necessities through a chain of custody because they are protecting those that are being targeted because their skin is brown, black, or anything besides white. 

That’s the kind of humanity I want to see. 

The kind that helps. The kind that supports no matter what. 

I also see that we can’t all get there unless we see that we could be in that EXACT same position one day.  When you become as obsessed with tiny living as I have you see that tiny houses are one solution to the housing crisis and homelessness. This also led me into seeing exactly how close I could be to that situation because of the way I was living, because of the way I thought I had to live, because that is what we are taught. 

I had $800,000 in debt between the houses, the car payments, the credit cards, and the loans. When you see how one mistake, one illness, one accident, or one job loss can result in your whole world crashing, you see how desperately things need to change. People thought I was rich because I had a rental house. Little did they know the truth. This is my truth. 

I hardly have any money now, but I am so much HAPPIER! I love my life now. It’s not easier, not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s harder in many ways. 

Now I compost my own poop. (Yes, you heard that correctly, I can tell you about it later) I am starting to grow more food. I feel really worried about staying warm in the winter if the electricity goes out.  

I wouldn’t change any of that for the old life! I love the difficulty of basic living. I love that I can ask people for help and to know that they will help. I love that I hardly have any obligations to the system of corruption. I feel free to chase my dreams. I feel free to have depressed days. I feel like I can just be me.

I don’t want to see people in pain, but I believe that pain leads you to a much better place. I want to see everyone dig DEEP in their soul and SEE themselves and who they could become. I want them to see their flaws and imperfections. Not to become who everyone else thinks they SHOULD become, but to become a better version of who they already are for the betterment of humanity and for OUR home planet. 

No one is perfect and never will be, but I think we all can do much better. 

Lots of Love,

Katie

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