We’re coming to the end of our first week as new residents of Washington State. We rolled in via I-90 on Monday, tired, a bit frazzeled, and barely ready to unload our lifetime of goods and chattel from the big yellow Penske and into a temporary storage unit. For the next couple weeks we will live in even less space than the 26 foot box truck we pulled through several mountain passes (not counting the extra 12 feet of trailer that held our Toyota RAV4 with its resident cats). Truth be told, this is a fun part of the Great Adventure as well.
Several months ago I produced a news feature on Tiny Houses which I referenced in several posts here. Among the reasons for caring so much about the story was that my wife and I were seriously considering buying or building a tiny house for ourselves once we got to Washington. There are several great reasons to consider living in one, but ultimately your decision about tiny houses may be dictated by severe limits on where you can put one and how long you can live in it. Given the state of the housing market here and the chance to buy an old fixer we could afford, we decided to buy a small home instead. We should close on it and move in with the next two to three weeks.
In the mean time, we are living in a 25 foot RV owned by my in-laws and sitting on a friend’s idealic farm in Snohomish County, north of Seattle. It’s wonderful! I could definitely learn to live this way long term if the situation called for and allowed it.
Perhaps in a future post I’ll talk more about about the relative strengths and weaknesses of RV’s versus the newer tiny house designs, but for now I can say that a well designed interior with efficient and sustainable appliances are the essentials. After that, it’s all about flexibility and attitude as well as a willingness to live without so much of your stuff. Among the “stuff” with us, however are two dogs and four cats, three of whom were previously outside kitties, but who have made the transition into this small space remarkably well. I believe that life is about relationships and that includes the pets. When family is close, the other stuff diminishes in importance.
That’s as good a transition as any to launch into the “successful career” part of this post. It fits with the previous paragraphs since this blog is in part based on my knowledge of what it takes to produce stories (primarily audio) and how to make a living doing it. For a long time now I have made a living helping others tell their story and to the degree that I can help someone a few steps back of me do it better I enjoy sharing that knowledge. However, at this point in The Great Adventure my best advice is one I am trying to live by myself: If you enjoy what you are doing and can make a living doing it, you have achieved success in your career. Period.
Why does that matter now? Because as much experience as I have in audio production, on-air announcing, voice-over, news gathering, promotions, relationship building, etc. etc., none of it may matter when it comes to finding the same kind of work in this market. I’m qualified, no doubt about it, but plenty of very skilled people in this field are out of work and not because they are sitting around being lazy. I’ve been extremely fortunate to make a good living with audio production and story telling, but there are no guarantees in this business and in the mean time I will not wait for opportunities that may not exist when I know I can be successful – by my own definition of success – doing something else.
Here’s my hope: I would love to find work that allows me to keep doing audio production and story telling fulltime, but realistically I figure this is going to be like working in theater or some other artistic field. You’ve got to wait tables, bag groceries, or clean floors until you get steady work – if that ever happens. You do whatever it takes.
In my case, if in the process of selling shoes, or loading wood, or helping hotel guests with their travel plans I find that I am really enjoying myself while getting paid for it, I will have once again achieved success in my career. If opportunities for production work are part of the mix, all the better, but I won’t lay down and die if it isn’t.
Helping people tell their story is what I enjoy, but like life itself, it is really about relationships, not about how much I get paid for it – if I get paid for it. I’ll keep doing it, but part of The Great Adventure is finding creative ways to do so.