Where I’m at, and where I’d like to be.

Lower Rock Creek

(A “Looking back down the Trail” side-route)

So I wanted to share some things with you that maybe aren’t exactly about the forests and campgrounds and trails of Missouri, directly. I wanted to take a few moments to explain myself and where I am in my life. Why is this important? Why would I blog about this? Well, most of my motivation for writing this post is because I don’t have the answers I’m looking for, and I am searching for some insight. I also know that a portion of the motivation is fueled by the thought that if I was following a blog by a guy who was camping and hiking all the time, I would eventually ask “What the heck does this guy do for a living?!?”

What do I do for a living?

At the moment…nothing, but not for a lack of trying.

In about 8 hours from this moment, I would severely sprain my left ankle. 4 months later it still isn’t back to normal.

I have been a member of the Carpenters Union here in St. Louis since September of 2002. It has been a rewarding career…at least in the beginning before everything screeched to a halt. Back in December of 2008 I was laid off by a company that I had been working for very steadily for five good, plentiful years. Since that point, just around four and a half years ago, I have probably been on the job for only around 24-30 months. I have been employed half the time. Imagine what a 50% cut to your funds would do to your economic situation…

Now, I AM a good carpenter and I do enjoy the work. I show up on time, and I am a smart guy that has the ability to grasp and pull off whatever product the plans call for. I know what I’m doing and I work hard. But the downturn in the economy with its snail’s-pace recovery, and some badly timed opportunities, have made it difficult to find steady employment. This continual happening of “Nobody’s Hiring”, combined with working for only a few of weeks or months at a time (and then having to find a company with work again, who needs guys and isn’t just putting their own people back on) is a process that I am past becoming fatigued from, more emotionally than anything. Those aspects, coupled with too many moments where I have felt an unearthly and serendipitous manipulation from a higher power to spend my time writing and being surrounded by nature, has lead me to a line of thinking that maybe building houses isn’t what I want to do with my life.

So maybe I don’t want to be a carpenter anymore.

It is a frustrating realization to think that this career that I have invested time and walked through occasional embers to pursue is the wrong path. I have enjoyed my work, when it was happening, and all the benefits that came from it. The pay is good. My family had health insurance. Turns out that I am surprisingly mechanically inclined. And it kept me in shape and allowed me to sleep peacefully at night. I love all those aspects of it. But as of late, I have not had any chance to prove myself and my abilities so that I can gain steady, full time, reliable employment (which is what I truly need). And that has been wearing me down, among a few other aspects of the construction industry that I feel are more negativity than I want to have to tolerate.

At the suggestion of a friend, and the thoughtful support of some of the people in my life, I started this blog at the end of March this year. I needed to feel like I was being productive somehow, against all the similarly ended phone calls of “No, sorry…we’re just not hiring right now”.

And it has helped to distract me. It has also given me an exterior motivation to head to the woods and spend time in nature with God and this beautiful environment. Additionally it has brought me back to my love of writing (boy, if I could just learn to type!!!). Through the ability to be creative these past four months, it has helped me to see that there are things beyond what I have been trying to be in my life. That there are things that I love spending my time doing, that take no struggle for motivation whatsoever.

So do what you love, right? I would love to have a job spending time in the forest. A career where I can be involved in conservation and the outdoors. Something that is connected to these places I love to be in. I have been saying lately that what I want to do for a living is just hike through the woods with my dog and write about it. As nobody pays anybody to do that, I do know that being in the forest and writing are two very internally satisfying pursuits for me, and regardless of income I will continue to do them both.

So how do I do something along those lines for a living? I believe I would enjoy working for the Conservation Department or the Department of Natural Resources. But to have any type of career with either of them where you can provide for your family and not have to relocate takes an educational background that I do not possess, and opportunities that rarely exist. I do not have a degree, and at the moment I do not have the economic capabilities and freedom to pursue that. I have kids that need food and clothes, and utilities to be paid. But if I could just see the path that would take me to where I could make a decent living doing these things I love, I would run down it.

I don’t really know for sure what the next step is…but I have obviously discovered something that I love to do, and I believe in my heart that the universe keeps pushing me away from what I used to do. But I have to be a provider, so what I WANT right now doesn’t seem like the thing that I NEED right now. What I need is a job and a paycheck. And I am continuing to spend a good portion of most of my mornings in the search of those two things, no matter the lack of positions or amount of rejection. Because it isn’t something that I can just stop doing.

So I don’t know what you will get from this, but I just felt the need to explain myself. To confess. To let you in on the secret of what a guy who hikes all the time and blogs about it does for a living. To throw it out there to the universe and the internet and other people what I want to be when I grow up, to see where it lands. And if you have any insight on finding the trail that I WANT to be on…or know of anyone who is hiring carpenters…don’t hesitate to share.

Please know that I am also not telling you all this for pity or handouts. Sure, things are very tough financially right now and the horizon doesn’t look that bright at the moment, but the silver lining is that I get to spend a lot more time with my kids and a lot more time in the woods. I don’t have an awful life right now, and there are people out there who have it much worse. I am very thankful for the blessings in my life and for the opportunity to wake up every single new day.

And I am thankful for you and for your following this exercise of mine that is this blog. I get a lot out of it and I hope you do too. I know that a lot of blogs on the internet are out there to provide income, but I can’t imagine that it’s a lot of money, and I can’t imagine that advertisements throughout THIS blog could improve things for you or I (do you see ads on here when you check out a post? I would imagine that WordPress adds a couple, but I can’t ever see them). I don’t ever want someone following my blog here to get that sense that I am trying to sell you something, because that isn’t me. If I am selling anything, it’s the Missouri outdoors, and nature in general…and I don’t impose any fees. I know that this is along the lines of how I would like to spend my days, and if I could find the path to make it a career I would…but…I’ve already made that very clear.

And until that door-to-open presents itself, I will continue to look for work every chance I get, as I have been.

Thank you for your time and attention, and have a great day. Get out in the woods, please. It is good for you in ways you won’t even recognize.

(See where this trail began, here)