Where I declare my main goal in life and explain the why behind it and this blog.

You all know the feeling.  Trapped, stuck, and stalled.  You most likely sit in a four walled prison with short walls that allows you to see the tops of heads of other people, perhaps hear them, but never really get to interact with these fellow inmates.  On and on it goes, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week,  until you can’t wait for the weekend to sleep, or drink, or party away that feeling of routine from the last five days.

The joke is on you however as you realize the weekend has become just another routine.  Nothing changes, everything runs as though it’s on a treadmill, take step, take another, then ten more. Get up, go to work, work hard, go home, sleep.  Same, same, same.

Then, once or twice a year, something different, something you look forward to for months at a time, appears on the horizon like a brave new dawn, the ultimate escape, the vacation!  Or as I like to call it, a holiday.

Used by my dear British friends across the pond, I feel like the word holiday makes sense. By the time your vacation comes around, it can begin to feel like Christmas or the 4^th of July.  It’s a great change-up, an adventure in your otherwise day-in-and-day-out humdrum life. A celebration of freedom, doled out in one to two-week portions.  But is this enough freedom?

Sure it takes you away from it all for a bit, and while you don’t want to come back to your real life, you do.  For a while you come back lighter, slightly happier, even less stressed as you fall back into the routine, all the while struggling to grasp those fond memories from your journeys elsewhere.

Inevitably, however, that trapped feeling comes back to rear its’ rather plain, boring head, causing those happy memories and thoughts to stray further from your mind.  You scramble to look at the pictures, the souvenirs, you talk with those that have been there before or are going again, and yet, even your memories get to the point that you would need another plane ticket to fully revisit those blissful visions in your mind.

This is our lives, where the biggest vacation we can expect is five to ten days paid leave, if you even get that.  These days are subject to approval and certain months, and always encouraged to not be taken all at once.  Let’s not even get started on what happens to those holiday hours if you get serious illness for more than your allotted sick time!

Most people in the United States, where I am writing from, squeeze in a three-day weekend here and there, perhaps a week-long family extravaganza annually, is all that we are allowed.  Once or twice in a lifetime we get that rare opportunity for a truly special getaway of two weeks, maybe even a MONTH!!!  Insert canned ooohs! and Ahhhs! here.  We should feel grateful, thankful that we even get this much time away from the chains that lock us to our aging CPU units in beige offices, lit by unflattering fluorescent tubes.

Do you know what I think of this situation?

I find it utterly INTOLERABLE! 

My name is Kim Kennedy and this is my journey to get out of the system!  Free myself to travel freely, work where I want, and most importantly make a living the way I want to make a living! By my pen!  It’s a simple formula really, writing+my quirky imagination=What I want to do more than anything else in the world.

What will the map for this journey look like? Oh it’s a long drawn out road with random plot twists and detours along the way but in the end I have a set date where I arrive at the X-marks-the-spot on the treasure map! What is this date, the set finish line to my goals?

May Day 2015!

This is a perfect date for my dreams to become reality.  May Day, which has roots in the Celtic celebration of Beltane, is celebrated on the 1^st of May every year to usher in the arrival of spring.  I choose this very special day as my own day of freedom because I will literally ‘spring’ from my cubicle cave to sail off into the sun set on a three-month holiday!

A quick note needs to be inserted here that I am self-confessed, self-improvement book junkie!  I read all those books with subjects ranging in everything from The Secret to manifestation techniques, increased productivity, self-confidence, secrets in business, you name it I’ve read it.  And all of these books say one thing; If you want something to happen you must state what you want and give yourself a deadline for when this is going to come into your life.

So here we go…

I want to be a full-time writer; free to travel and work from wherever and whenever I want, by May Day 2015.

Wow!  That’s harder to do than it looks, and I have a sneaking suspicion this goal is going to be even harder to accomplish as well.

So in conclusion, what is this blog for?  To help me on my journey, to perhaps inspire others to follow their dreams, maybe travel more, perhaps to chronicle not only my scramble to the top, but also my triumphs and tribulations along the way.  In the words of the great Mr. Rogers and in the spirit of a global community both online and in the real wide and vast world, Won’t you be my neighbor?

Cheers for now!

-Kim Kennedy

all photos from Pinterest.com