Dear Friend,
There is a huge difference between being on vacation and adopting a creative family lifestyle, though, to people on the outside, that difference may not be readily apparent.
Being on vacation is inherently temporary. It is a break from your normal, proper routine. It is an attempt to recharge your batteries so that you can again hunker down and do what you “must” do.
Living a creative family lifestyle is nothing like this at all.
First, a creative family lifestyle is permanent. Or at least the attitude is. You might change the character of your daily activities, but the attitude and thus approach to daily living is permanent.
Second, your creative family lifestyle is your normal life. It’s not just another temporary jolt to get you back into the ring. It is the “ring.” You just may not be living your life in the way those around you might have expected you to when they knew you “before” you made the transition.
What living a creative family lifestyle does have in common with vacation is the relaxed approach folks take to life, which I suspect is a more natural living stance than the one most people take day-to-day. Smiles are also a typically common element. Time has less relevance to us (I haven’t worn a watch for years and have difficulty remembering the day or date most of the time).
The types of daily activities that you engage in while living your creative family lifestyle may be similar to those most folks might reserve for vacation time, as they are often not directly connected to making money. Yet those of us who adopt a creative family lifestyle often do quite well financially. We have simply chosen to develop sources of income that do not require constant baby-sitting or personally solving other people’s problem.
And we never sell hours out of our day. Sell your knowledge, for example, and you can resell it forever. Hours from your day are the stuff that life is made of, and are thus far too precious to sell to anyone.
Vacations can have a “ten countries in five days” sort of character that values quantity over quality. When you live a creative family lifestyle, your time is truly yours and it is infinite, so there is no reason to hurry anywhere.
Life is not a basket into which experiences are quickly thrown for later examination, like photographs. Life is here. Now. And we live and experience it for all that it is, now. Not all that it was or might someday be.
So remember, do not imagine a creative family lifestyle as one long vacation. It is not. It is something much more exciting and fulfilling.
Talk to you again soon,
Hugh
