Don’t Be Like Everyone Else: Change Your Life

Why Work All Year? Take Time Off.

7-years ago I quit my full time, government job as a Wildfire Training Specialist. It was a good job with benefits, pension, lots of overtime and a great salary. This job was the logical next step in my wildfire career. I did it for 9 years. It was time to change my life.

It was a far cry from the reasons I originally got into this line of work. Even though I got to fight fires in the summer, my winters were spent in an office at a desk and in the spring there was way too much time teaching in the classroom. It was sucking my soul away.

So when the opportunity to lead the 20-person Wild Mountain unit crew came up, I took it.

The Plan: Living a Good Life

• Work seasonally leading a crew (4 or 5 months) and save for the rest of the year
• Live off less – AKA cabin life
• Take winters off to travel, train and develop interesting hobbies
• Get super fit, go on hard trips
• Improve health and tackle any issues that had gradually been creeping up over time
• Bike tour, ski tour, climb, run, enjoy being outside in the mountains

An extension of what I was already trying to do but more so….

There were some obstacles….

• My wage dropped by $14/hour when I decided to go back into the seasonal ranks. I also lost my benefits and pension. Financially it was a terrible decision!

• I wasn’t always treated very well by full time staff and managers because of my decision. Why did anyone care?

• Leading a 20-person crew requires a person to be able to do hard physical labour and remain injury free. This is a challenge for people in their 20’s. I was over 40 when starting back.

There were also solutions….

1. Save money during the summer and live a very un-extravagent lifestyle. Also over the 8 years leading up to my departure from full time work I had purchased several rental properties
2. Take time to laugh at the negative comments. I had no regrets.
3. Strive to make the new crew the fittest in the country by establishing hard standards above and beyond our National fitness test, then personally always pass all the standards. Crew Fitness Standards.

Set Up a Successful Plan to Change Your Life

Having large amounts of time off isn’t necessarily a good thing. Many people who have worked their whole life and have retired can attest to the negative aspects of this situation. Staying useful and planning interesting activities that are meaningful is essential.

For me, a variety of sports was going to make up a large part of my goals and become incorporated into different travel plans with friends. When at home, training and recovery would be important.

I come from an athletic family and sports and training have always been a part of our lives. My Mom was a competitive swimmer and marathon runner. My Dad did a variety of sports but ultimately was an ultra marathoner (100 mile races!) and my brother played university football. I grew up competing in gymnastics and running track and cross-country.

Moving to the mountains opened up a whole world of cool activities. Long distance trail running, ski touring, mountain biking and bike touring along with climbing (rock, ice and alpine) are all great activities. See climbing video. They have been incorporated into trips to different places in the world. See African Bike Tour here. The ultimate goal would be to have these trips and activities sustain me through the off-season of work and provide direction in my life and possibly some monetary benefit through blogging and videos.

Financially, I was lucky enough to have had a grandma who stressed the importance of saving starting at a young age. Along with the four rental properties, having a greatly reduced pension became not such a big deal. I would like to point out here that I hate being a landlord. There are people that walk among us that don’t pay their rent and wreck things. It’s true.

Cabin life is a bit extra work in the winter. I try to pick up the slack. Dishes and cleaning involve hauling water. There is always wood to chop, fires to make and snow to move. When it gets really cold everything stops working right.

I’m a bit of a loner naturally. It would be easy to become a total recluse and cut off ties with the outside world. It’s important to maintain and build friendships and family connections. Even though it’s easy to gravitate towards doing things alone or with my boyfriend, it is always a great time traveling and doing trips with friends!

Pesky Health Challenges

These are the health issues I wish to eradicate from my life: 

I have poly-cystic kidney disease (PKD). This disease causes me no problems in my day to day life EXCEPT it raises my blood pressure. This also doesn’t cause me problems in my day to day life EXCEPT for all the doom and gloom associated with living with hypertension. Medication for high blood pressure is poison. (My Dad proofread this and said I should change the word poison. I can’t think of a word that means poison but is nice. Don’t go off your bp meds without consulting your doctor!) I’ve been on enough to know they all suck. The side effects are life altering in a negative way. So it’s a constant battle to ward off the drug pushers by keeping my blood pressure low enough to send them and their meds packing.

I am now in the midst of trying a low carbohydrate diet. See low carb blog here. I haven’t had added sugar in 6 months. I eat no refined carbohydrates including bread, pasta, rice or other processed foods. The only exception occurs on long, hard trips requiring a zillion calories to avoid bonking. This way of eating is probably a separate blog for later.

I’m starting to monitor my heart rate while running. Following a training regiment developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone, I keep my heart rate low while trying to run faster and faster at this low heart rate. Hopefully this will add longevity to my running ‘career’. We’ll see how this goes.

I’ve recently visited a physiotherapist to get some exercises to fix body imbalance problems that have been haunting me for a long time. This includes the under utilization of my butt muscles in everything I do in life – the quads and hamstrings bare the brunt of my lazy ass.

My Team

My boyfriend is a victim in all this blogging. He is the true talent on the team. Although this whole performance is a hassle for him, he does humour me and assist in filming and occasionally stars in a video. We do a lot of trips together – climbing, canoeing, hiking, biking, skiing and working around the land. It’s all great stuff to write about and the pictures are interesting.

Twig is an Australian Shepherd cross that we picked up at the SPCA about 3 years ago now. She was 1 at the time. She’s always been a character. Lots of weird noises come out of her. She bonded with my boyfriend immediately. She is an excellent hiker and a good bush dog. This means she notifies you when a bear shows up. She is comfortable on the snowmobile, quad, jeep and anywhere you pack her. She sleeps in the tent cuddled up like a giant stuffed animal.

A bunch of friends, most of whom are made up of current and ex-firefighters are dragged into my blogging and videoing. I steal their pictures, force them to set up my website, get ideas from them, drag them on trips and only pay them back in beer and a chance to star in a video. I’m pretty lucky to have them around.

Our cat Harley and I have a love/hate relationship. I’m a bit allergic and he can sense this weakness. He’s very friendly for a cat. Although he’s getting a bit tubby in his old age, there are times he can impress us with his athletic prowess.

Hobbies

It’s become apparent that the majority of my life is centered around left brain, non creative endeavors. In an attempt to fix this, here are some activities I’m trying out:

• Knitting (Mom taught me when I was young, she’s a knitting wizard)
• Sewing – mainly curtains and ripped clothes
• Fleece blankets (Mom showed me a cool technique)
• House renovations – crucial for a landlord, Dad’s time to shine
• Baking bread (short lived since I quit the carbs)
• Paint by number, Van Gogh (more tedious than difficult)
• Lots of learning through reading, podcasts and blogs (good ol Joe Rogan still my favourite podcast but some of the endurance ones are up there too)

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Blog

The final piece of the puzzle is this blog. This is what’s been done so far:

• Domain name, host and website provider set up and working.
• GoPro videoing and getting over the stigma of being a GoPro person
• Using a fancy camera
• Videos. Everybody hates all the constant videoing! (I hate myself sometimes too)
• A Fiverr logo. Those IT folks from Pakistan have it dialed!

Here’s what’s next:

• Get a YouTube site
• Link everything
• Try some affiliate marketing
• Research keywords
• Learn to fly a drone
• Become a better writer

Conclusions:

So here we go. It’s been 7 years of seasonal wildfire fighting and 8 years in the cabin. All is well so far. There are a bunch of skills and activities to work on and improve. I’m going on many trips that involve creative planning and that are pushing the limits of my athletic ability.  My poor brain is being overloaded with computer and general electronic learning. We’ll see how this all goes.

Any suggestions for improvement?