Pristine

“Qual·i·ty of life — the degree of enjoyment and satisfaction felt in everyday life.” 

Celebrating the Moment
How to make healthy, wealthy and wise choices for living, loving, working, playing, investing and retiring in vacation communities.

An excerpt from Book Three in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find the place of your dreams.

Follow your passions.

Why not?

Nobody can follow your passions for you.

Don’t stop there.

Choose to live anywhere you want.

Preserving the World

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  Henry David Thoreau.

The great thing about living where others spend their vacation is the year round quality-of-life.

In case you forgot just what that is …

“Qual·i·ty of life — the degree of enjoyment and satisfaction felt in everyday life.”  

The West.

Live, love, work, play, invest and retire anywhere you want.

From the Desert to the Mountains to the Sea and all the Pristine Rivers, Lakes and Islands in Between.

Western Skies and Island Currents!

Winter in the mountains and summer at the beach.

Snowboarder Performing Jump Silverton, Colorado, USA

The story of the Wild West celebrated a spirit of adventure.

Starting over with new beginnings full of promise.

Fueled by dreams of striking it rich.

We have a rich history of mining and panning for gold nuggets in the West.

Making a life based on ingenuity, resourcefulness and self-reliance.

Back then, whenever travelers met each other on the road, they swapped info about the places they came from and asked questions about places they were going.

But for us, every day we follow the rules.

Go to work.

Keep our nose to the grindstone.

Marry our sweet hearts.

Raise our children.

Save for their college education.

And, finally retire sometime off into the distant future to a glorious second half of our life.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but one day everything changed.

Employers shipped our jobs overseas.

We worked longer and longer in jobs we couldn’t stand.

But, at least we had a job.

But, the stress piled on.

And on.

Because of that we had to escape.

If only for a vacation.

There’s nothing quite as all-American as a road trip…

especially in the West, where a wealth of culture, natural beauty and excitement unfolds before you. 

What is it about traveling back to nature?

Where you feel most inspired?

Where the yellow aspen do that shimmering dance beside the deep green of the lodgepole pines.

But, there’s a dark side to vacations.

We notice our predicament when we return to work.

Are we who we really, really are when we keep our head down with our noses to the grindstone?

What about those expansive western skies?

The majestic mountain peaks?

The rushing babbling creeks and brooks?

The taste of salt in the air along the coast?

We keep those nagging questions at bay.

Maybe bubbling up only occasionally in dreamland.

Until finally we wake up and realize we don’t live in our bubble any longer.

We make a commitment to ourselves.

We can make healthy, wealthy and wise choices for living, loving, working, playing, investing and retiring in vacation communities.

Where we feel the most alive.

Steps:

(21) Spend the time to find the best places to live and invest. It will be worth your while. The great thing about living where others spend their vacation is the year round quality-of-life.

 

 

 

Persistence

“I was an aspiring filmmaker,” he said. But I started to see how aspiring to be something was a way to not really try.”

Aspiring Independent Filmmakers
When do we realize it really is time to move on? Time to smell the coffee?

An excerpt from Book One in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find more meaning and happiness in your life.

You know what they say about anything creative – it’s  1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Giving It One More Shot

“I was an aspiring filmmaker,” he said. 

But I started to see how aspiring to be something was a way to not really try. 

If you did that and you failed, well, you didn’t really fail. 

I needed to start making things, even if they weren’t great, just making things.”

The grind takes it toll in different ways.

The Show Must Go On

The actor’s wife, still living in their home town, wanted to fly to Los Angeles for the play but wasn’t sure she could make it.

He needed to see her.

He was beginning to realize that daily phone conversations were hardly a substitute for a real marriage.

Not one of his coffee buddies attended his closing night.

But, most importantly his wife wasn’t there either.

Closing Curtains

Maybe she sent flowers?

No such luck.

“I want our life back,” he said after the play was done.

Not long afterward, over the phone, his wife said that she would always hope for his acting dreams, but she wanted a divorce.

He feared that his single-minded pursuit of acting had torn them apart.This quest for an acting career....

My God, it has led me down the road to ruin.

Persist or Pivot? How Do You Know?

And yet …

When do we realize it really is time to move on?

Time to smell the coffee?

Steps:

(4) Nurture your passions and express your uniqueness — no one else can or will, for that matter

(6) Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

(3) Pick options designed to attract better opportunities.  You don’t want to miss out on lucrative jobs or entrepreneurial ventures that will fuel  a real change in your lifestyle.

(7) Choose the ‘Preneur’ business model that brings out the best in you – freelancing, consulting, franchising, Internet marketing or establishing a Knowledge ATM.

 

Dreamers

Your father long ago told you to grow up and quit pursuing acting as a career.”

Piecing Together Your Dreams
Pursuing their dreams: actors, writers and directors; stragglers, success stories and hard-luck cases.

An excerpt from Book One in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find more meaning and passion in your life.

It’s an old story.

Wanna be actors land in Hollywood chasing an elusive dream.

More recently, during the winter of 2012 – 2013, Kurt Streeter, writing for the Los Angeles Times, hung out at an unpretentious cafe in Atwater Village.

Coffee Shop Communities

He profiled one of the neighborhood residents who moved there three years.

Like many others chasing his dream he had been acting since the age of three, but was still waiting for his big break.  

The regulars, a group of a dozen or so, eased his loneliness and shared his Hollywood ambition:

Hollywood Land of Dreams

Amy, the animator who had worked on “South Park,” Nicholas, whose latest film was well received at the Sundance Film Festival, and a rising African American actor who worried about being typecast in criminal roles.

They stayed for hours, talking, typing, hunched hard over laptops, nursing lattes.

They were actors, writers and directors; stragglers, success stories and hard-luck cases.

Mobile Writers and Freelancers

A woman reads over her dissertation; a freelance reporter plans his next story; two producers discuss financing for an independent movie.

Observing the scene, the servers and baristas say, look this is their place so you don’t bother them.

But over time you begin to notice.

“After a while you just see them sort of losing hope. And then, just like that, we don’t see them anymore.”

Privately, after so many failed attempts, the internal dialog goes something like this —

Is it time to give up on your dream of making it in Hollywood? 

Your father long ago told you to grow up and quit pursuing acting as a career.

“It’s so easy to say that. 

Easy to criticize, doubt, say ‘give up’ and  ‘I told you so.’ … I’ve never been one for easy.”

Steps:

(4) Nurture your passions and express your uniqueness — no one else can or will, for that matter.