World-schooling was an unheard of concept to me. It’s such an amazing idea but so new, foreign. The cultural philosophy that I’ve been submersed in encourages us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and provide our families a house to live in, a room for each kid, a beautiful partner, and a yard that you can sit by and watch the grass grow. I’m almost forty now and I kind of achieved that a couple years ago. It wasn’t fun and now I feel like I’m living a lie. I feel like this American Dream isn’t made for me, and there’s a horrible secret behind it. Once the dream is attained people defend it with words and choose not to experience much else because we don’t want that dream to change. Honestly, I didn’t even have the energy to experience much else. I was tired all the time. Working forty-five to fifty hours a week took most of what I was.

My kids only wanted me, but I spent the best parts of myself giving them things they didn’t care about. They wanted a present father and I gave them grass. I found myself remembering times when I had much less but I had so much more that was real. I remembered living in a ten by twelve cabin, drinking out of a hose and having an outhouse and sharing a bed with my kids, and our heat in the winter was from fires we made. We played in the fields, ate berries, went swimming and were surrounded by family and friends. The best times I’ve had with my partner were in the mountains with wildflowers and mountain goats, or in lakes or forests with our kids or quiet moments with just her and I. The location didn’t matter. Again, we had much less, but life had infinitely more worth.

Renting out our homes to strangers and jumping on a plane to the other side of the world for god knows how long might sounds like a midlife crisis to some people, but for me it feels like a last ditch effort to reclaim a part of my humanity that was lost. I’ll be able to spend my time with the woman I love, and see what heights she can reach with support. We’ll show our children the world together. We’ll teach them and be able to give them the best parts of ourselves. We’ll learn with them and grow with them and be able to show them enough of the world for them to know how they want to live, the way they can live. We won’t push them into the American dream that backfired on both of us.

My hope is we will develop our own culture, the lost one inside of us that makes us human. I’m not a brave man, I’m too afraid to become an old man without stories. I’m too afraid to miss the best parts of my kid’s lives, and my life. I’m tired of being tired. They grow so fast. I don’t want to miss more than I already have, and I don’t want their world to be as small as the one I’ve made for myself. I’m very ready to give life an honest shot and see how big the world really is with the ones I love. At this point it’s not just an easy choice, it’s my only choice.