January 28, 2017 La Paz, Mexico - Lynette Jenne 

Dreaming, what is that? Of course it is what I do while I am asleep, those pictures that run through my sleeping visual screen in my mind. My dreams in the night are sometimes profound, but most often they are just my brain defragmenting like a computer hard drive. When we ask someone what are your dreams? What we really mean is what do you want to do that’s bigger and better than you might be able to do on your own at the moment, or something that takes resources? We talk of the dream vacation; dream house; dream job; and on we can go with this list of dreams. Most of these are connected to resources, or simply cold hard cash.

As a child I played with paper dolls and Raggedy Ann Colorforms. The picture that I have in my mind at this point in my life is that I have again had my plastic Colorforms outfit stripped off of my cardboard Raggedy Ann Colorforms character. I’m waiting to see what will come next. The plastic outfit represents what I was living in, the dream I was pursuing. When I talk about my pursuit, it involves years and a lot of resources that were moved towards that dream. Just as I pulled off the outfit from my Colorforms Raggedy Ann as a child, my outfits for the most part, have been removed by the actions of someone else, not by my choice. I’m waiting to find my new outfit so I can start the dream process over AGAIN.

A cliche that keeps circling in my Facebook feeds, conversations and emails is: “Just dream big! Now is your chance! Just dream!” Right now this cliche is not serving a fruitful purpose in my life, full disclosure here, I am done with this cliche! Are you shocked? Maybe not. 

I’m coining a new term: Dream Fatigue: verb: to be exhausted in or by the pursuit of dreams. I have a colorful wardrobe full of dreams that are outdated, dead, or laid aside. The cure for dream fatigue is to rest from dreaming and the pursuit of a dream. Finding peace in being myself and living in each moment are key to my recovery. How long will it take me to recover? I don’t know. It may be time to take inventory of this Colorforms wardrobe to see what messages I have come to believe, good or bad, in the last 20 years of actively pursuing dreams. This process will help ensure I am not sabotaging my dreams, or settling for less than I am, this is a practice where growth and healing can happen.

My last blog post ended with my biggest challenge: Letting go of my thoughts so I can discover new thoughts. Dreams come from thoughts that have been nourished, visited, and shared. As we share our thoughts with others, and we revisit them through sharing them again and again, our thoughts grow. Soon the stage of: “what if…” arrives, followed by the process of asking questions, doing research and finding others who can help or answer our questions. At last it forms, a full color dream to live or achieve. If we are serious, we take action and the pursuit is on. Some dreams can grow very fast in a few months and others take years to develop. Dreams also can start small and blossom into ever increasing thoughts which cause the dream to become larger and larger over time.

This is my 50th year, I want to celebrate the rest of my life with my next dream. I want to pursue it, enter it and live it until the day I die or no longer can. The next dream will form when the time is right and it will encompass the majority of whom I have become from my past pursuits. Until then, I will be pursuing the colorful moment I have right now and savor it to its fullest while residing in deep peace. I am choosing to enjoy my days until the dream fatigue has lifted. 

Tell us about your dreams. Have you experienced dream fatigue?

January 24, 2017 La Paz, Mexico

For years if you asked me about seashores, my response is one of great joy. Seashores are one of my most favorite places to be. While growing up it was the place of glee and great adventure. We camped there, visited tide pools, and enjoyed special sites along the Pacific Coast. The smells are lovely. The sounds are amazing. There are all sorts of treasures on the shore from the sea, some living and some not. A seashore is so diverse in what might be observed or questions to be asked. What is the tide doing? What is the sand like? How big or small is the surf? How far can you wade out and still be knee deep in the water? Is the water warm or cold? On and on for endless hours of curiosity! These questions and more still circle in my mind on the shores I am walking now. 

While pondering the shore this week, the seashore becomes an interesting metaphor about life. Think of all the different ways a shore is described: life is a beach; like grains of sand; shipwrecked; the water is fine; the tides of life; waves of life; and on you may go. For so long my perspective has been of me on the shore looking out at the sea. It seems while I stand on the shore and look out, that my perspective is full of questions that beg me to discover something great or new. It causes me to wonder and imagine. It feels so alive! So full of positive potential, comfort, peace, rest and refreshment.

Since Tim and I have set sail upon the sea, the shore is different now. We see the shore and what lies beyond, inland. The view is different. The questions feel different. From the sea, a shore can be a place of danger. Coming too close can mean shipwreck or peril. Many questions have to be clearly answered before going ashore. What is the water depth? Is it high or low tide? Are we anchored well? What is the wind doing or forecasted to do? The shore beckons and calls for discovery and daylight plays a part. Life is a little more complicated upon the sea near the shore.

When you leave the shore and venture out into the sea you enter an arena of the unknown in the sense that you have little to no idea what you might discover, see or encounter. Nearly all the information you have when leaving are maybes. The winds may be 10-15 knots from the northwest, the seas may be 2-4 feet building to 6 feet, etc. You simply adjust to whatever comes along the best you can. We have equipment, plans and/or training for most situations we may encounter. There is cause to wonder, but I don’t like to think about the negative what-ifs. There is plenty of potential for good or bad. It feels so powerful and intense!

You may have heard that life is safe on the shore. It’s a place of security and safety. Maybe even a sense of control in what you do on the shore. If you don’t like what’s on the shore you make decisions freely to remedy the situation. Does that seashore grow you and stretch you? Being at sea means staying away from the shore, abandoning control in many ways (you can control your responses but not the sea), and tuning in to the moment, the right now. There may be peril and great adventure ahead.

I still long for the security of the shore, that regular paycheck and my life routines. To drive my car instead of a dinghy. Dreaming about what if and working in my gardens still calls to me like a siren’s song. Obligations from the shore still come due. Oh, that we might become completely free just to live on the sea! 

In pondering the shores of life this last week I was thinking about how the shore can be a bit like a trash can for the sea. Dead and seemingly useless things are expelled and left to nature to recycle. Living things wait on the shore for the tide to return and wash over them again. As I look at my shore of life, I wonder what is dead and what is alive? There are so many questions that have stolen my rest. Some cannot be answered, others will be answered at the change of the tide, and some will not have an answer until I lose sight of the shore. 

My biggest challenge is to let go of my thoughts so I can discover new thoughts; let go of who I’ve been and all I have accomplished to embrace the new me with new accomplishments waiting for me. I can’t cling to what’s been, I have to embrace the new in the current moment of my life. To enter the picture frame of my view from the shore looking out into the sea leaving the shore behind to fully enter the sea of life.

What is your biggest challenge between your shore and the sea of life?

​Lynette Jenne 

Many of you may be thinking, "I'd like to do that someday." Whether it's actually sailing off into the sunset like us or getting a hunting lodge in the mountains or the equivalent dream, things like this don't just happen. Opportunity + preparation = luck.

Preparation looks like changing our mindsets, living differently than others and swimming upstream. For starters, we decided many years ago to not go into debt for anything but a house. Thanks to some great resources on financial freedom by my friend Stephen DeSilva called Prosperous Soul. Then we started to downsize our life. We moved from a 3,500 sq ft rental house to a 1,750 sq ft rental. Two of our four children moved away to college, so we did not need the room. We bought our cars cash, used. The last one we purchased new was a company car in 2005. Which means you are always in a car that is not amazing, but a tool for getting from one place to another. No bluetooth, nav screens or other bells and whistles. We started to reduce our footprint in a lot of ways. We would save up to buy a side of grass-fed beef for $4.58 lb for any cut; so hamburger was $2-3 less per pound when you buy weekly, a fillet minion was 1/3 the price. You get the picture.

If you've ever played the game Cash-flow, the object of the game is to get your passive income to exceed your monthly expenses, then you can leave the rat-race and pursue your dreams.

Sailing is a very green way to live and travel. I know I can hear you saying, "boat stands for: Break Out Another Thousand!" Well, they don't have to. We looked for boats that were older, well built and were below the magical 40' length. Every single cost on a boat is directly related to the length. In fact, most marinas, boat yards or services base their sliding scale from 0-39' is $X per foot, 40-50' is $X+25% per foot and if you own a 50+ foot boat, you're paying more than double of what I am per foot. There is a 55' motor yacht on the end of our dock in La Paz, it's paying for an 80' end-tie at a much higher cost per foot than us. The parts, paint, varnish, engine, mast, sails etc. are all exponentially more expensive the bigger you go. A winch on our boat is pretty big, but the next size up is twice the cost. So, like our cars, we are not turning heads when we pull into ports, but we can anchor alongside boats worth a ten thousand times more than us while enjoying the same view; actually ours would be nicer since we're looking at their yacht and they're looking at ours.

​Sailing, using only the wind is very economical too. You just need enough food and water to live through the crossing of any ocean in the world. 30-45 days is a typical long crossing. If you have patience and moderate skill, you can go anywhere you want to in the sea. 

Someday...when is that? It's not a day of the week, it's kinda like tomorrow. Opportunity was before us, we had both lost our jobs at the same time. We could have freaked out and hunkered down. Instead we saw the hand of Providence orchestrating our lives, knowing that He is good and has only good things for us, so we asked the question, "Why not now?" I started looking at boats that would be solid, blue-water boats (Capable of crossing an ocean without breaking or sinking) not coastal cruisers with fin keels bolted on and spade rudders. Keels do fall off and rudders break when subject to the constant gyrations of a large sea. When I found the one we have now, it was more than I budgeted for, so I sold my car and cashed in some gold to make up the difference. It's about balancing assets and liabilities. We had some assets that we could part with for this season.

A lot of our blog entries, Instagram and Facebook posts are about freedom. So many people sacrifice freedom for security. Security provided from a job is worth the lack of freedom on a day-to-day basis, right? I described my life as 'living on rails' or "I feel like a slot-car" no deviation, just faster than the previous lap. Days turn into months and years go by, all the while you are serving, working and building something. Maybe it's yours, maybe it's the company's. One of the previous owners of our boat could not break free to do what we're doing, they owned a business that they could not offload due to the financial crisis. Maybe you lost that job that seemed so secure, the big company with your pension was bought-out or collapsed. So security is not so secure. Freedom is such a big deal, people bleed for it, risk their lives getting to freedom or become refugees in order to get out from under oppressive governments. People will always desire to be free. It's no coincidence that we spent two months of our 30th anniversary on a boat called Living Free and ours is called New Adventures. 

The dream remains a dream until you wake up. 

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