Do What YOU Want to Do

Catherine Price doesn’t like bucket lists, at least not travel bucket lists.  She dislikes the spate of books on the market telling people where they should visit before they die. 

In an interview with CNN, 31-year old Price explained her disdain for the “100 Places You Must See Before You Die” vain of books:

“It doesn’t leave much room for creativity.  I think they’re fun to browse through, but I think the trend has gotten a little bit out of hand.”

So Price wrote her own book called 101 Places Not To See Before You Die.  Price admits that the title and the book are tongue in cheek, but she is serious about encouraging people to find their own path when they travel, rather than follow the checklists in the guidebooks. (You can follow Catherine Price at 101 Worst Places.)

“It (the book) was just to liberate people from the feeling there are all these things they have to do.  I’m guilty of this myself, but if you’re just going through things checking off lists then you’re really not experiencing them.  You’re just doing it like an assignment.”

I understand what Catherine Price is saying.  Too often when we travel, we see and do the things that someone else thinks we should see and do.  The whole point of traveling is to see and do things that are important to you, not to the author of a travel guide.

This same mentality carries over into the world of lifestyle design.  For whatever reason, many of the biggest names in lifestyle design are also people who are interested in expatriation and/or extensive world travel.  They’ve arranged their lives so they can live in exotic locales and they often move from place to place.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But as I’ve written before, it’s just one option.

Two friends (who I have never met in person) recently moved back fto the U.S. from their exotic lives overseas.  Sean Ogle from Location 180 moved back to Portland and Adam Baker of Man vs. Debt moved back to Indiana.  When both Sean and Adam announced they were moving back to the States, they did so with a certain amount of regret and maybe even a little embarrassment.  At least that’s how I perceived it.

I reached out to both Sean and Adam via their blogs to assure them that they weren’t doing anything wrong.  As I tried to get across to both guys, lifestyle design is all about arranging your life to do what you want to do, not simply to live overseas.  Both Sean and Adam could have stayed out of the Country if that had been their wish.  But both guys felt the strong draw of home. 

Neither Sean nor Adam owe anyone an apology for doing what they want to do.  They’ve worked hard to be able to live life on their own terms.  The only thing that matters is that they are happy.  Where they are living is a secondary concern.

I love the fact that I have set up my life so I can live just about anywhere.  Yet, I stay pretty much in one place.  Someday, that may change.  For now, my kids are happy living here and that is my main concern.  Traveling all around was never the goal.  Instead, being in a position where I can travel around if I choose to was what I was shooting for.

Never lose sight of the fact that lifestyle design ultimately is about living a life of your own choosing.  It’s not strictly about travel.  It’s about choices and options; the kind of choices and options that most people surrender in exchange for a pay check.  Whether you exercise the choices and options is completely up to you.  The most important thing is simply having them.