The Good Life - 08/09/2023 - Crossing America in a wagon
Yesterday’s decision was enormous. Choosing to give up my home when my wife and daughter leave next spring moves the dial forward half a year for the day my next Great Life Adventure begins. I have just nine months to prepare. I’ll need to get rid of almost everything. I’ll need to figure out how to live in a Prius with two dogs. I’ll need to buy camping gear and a tent to sleep in. I need to get Starlink and figure out how to use it. I’ll probably start my life on the road in the desert, maybe out at Siberia ghost town—a place where I thought my work was done. It’s familiar there. A good place to begin. Six months alone with my dogs wandering California living in a tent. This should be interesting.
In a way, such a nomadic life just before Japan feels like a journey to somewhere far and new—like a pioneer crossing America in a wagon, six months on the road to a new land and life. When I get there, I’ll be a new man. The person I am will once more die, like all the me I’ve been before, dead and gone and good riddance—always striving to improve. And when the journey is done, my six months are up, I’ll burn the wagon so there’s no going back, and get on a plane with my dogs to join my family someplace new. And then I’ll make myself again into what I hope will be a better me, in a new land, with a new life; but with the same woman I’ve been with all my life, and our two little dogs, and our memories—all the rest a smoldering ruin in a burned-up heap left behind in a life of nevermore. Just the way Yumiko and I like it.
The Good Life Meditation is my daily recitation and reminder of personal objectives and principles used in pursuit of a purposeful life in spite of a universe of seeming indifference. Learn more about The Good Life at my website GoingAlone.org or by reading my book Going Alone. And visit our Discord at: https://lnkd.in/gFgfGmY6
OBJECTIVES: 1. Be Always Ready to Die 2. Make Good Use of Time and Resources 3. Develop Good and Sound Life Principles 4. Cultivate Good Emotional Reactions 5. Perform Good Actions 6. Recognize True Limits and Opportunity 7. One Thing Slowly
PRINCIPLES: 1. Principle of War 2. Principle of Reason 3. Homunculus 4. Anchorhold 5. Home of Good and Evil 6. Principle of Purpose 7. Atomic Principle 8. Principle of Nature 9. The Pirate Ride 10. Principle of Maturity 11. Social Principle
12. Principle of Family 13. Public Speaking 14. Temperance 15. Life Will Not Go Well 16. The Horror Show 17. That Which Must Be Borne 18. The Feast of Offal 19. Distraction 20. Agency and The Great Indifference 21. The Best Seat in the House 22. The Restless Man 23. The Path of Wildness 24. The Great Life Adventure 25. The Risk of Avoiding Risk 26. Sin and Damnation 27. Complete Oblivion 28. The Season of Philosophy
29. Scriptwriting 30. Bullseye Aim 31. The Uphill Climb 32. Arena and Utility 33. Nothing IS enough 34. The Principle of Fun
#Stoic #Stoicism #StoicPhilosophy
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.