John Boyd Thacher State Park

I struggle a lot. My moldy, run down apartment is often cold, my pantry shelves are often bare. I often look at my bank account and it’s empty, my big jacked up truck is getting rusty and worn out. My clothes are old, it seems like more in my life is broken then is properly functioning. My apartment is cold, I don’t have internet at home. 

Then I look at what my friends and idols all have. Maybe not as much money as I have in the bank, the nice corner office in the skyscraper downtown, the $80,000 a year income and good health insurance and benefits. But they have their farms, their land, they’re good hunters and trappers. They own ATVs and snowmobiles, have the comfort of wood heat, are free to own whatever guns they want, have bonfires and burn barrels out back. Watching as they raise pigs and cattle and their families. 

And I’m stuck in the city in this little, run down apartment. Saving every dollar I can for that dream. To be sure, I’m watching my savings grow, and I know money some day can buy a lot I’ve forgone today. You know that off grid property up in the woods where I can do my own thing, hunt and produce more of my own food, electricity and managing my own waste. Worrying about every little dollar as I feel I’m stealing from my future. 

But I really shouldn’t go through life these ways. I should be more thankful and celebrate what I have and what I accomplished. While sometimes I am hungry because my refrigerator is bare or cold because they heat is turned down, so is my choice. I forgo buying things not because I’m poor but because I want a better tomorrow and less waste today. My bank account is often low not due to a lack of income but because I choose to invest my money in stocks, bonds, and higher interest accounts then my checking account. I ride the bus because my big jacked up truck won’t fit downtown and because I like saving money and not dealing with city traffic. 

My net worth is doing well but I often feel so many others have so much more than I do. I look at the homestead with the rundown trailer, but also with the deer hanging in the yard, the hogs and goats in the backyard pen, the smoldering burn barrel out back, the views of the wonderfully beautiful rural landscape. And I’m stuck in the suburbs in my apartment all alone.

Now, I get that the newspapers and the commercial media say these rural people are poor and deeply impoverished. Certainly if you compared my bank account or my job to them, they’d look much worse off financially. Indeed their struggles are real, while mine are mostly in my head – voluntary versus real poverty. But I also know that I lack the skills, the connections and the grit to get by the way they do with so much less money.

I really should be more thankful for all that I have…