My Mission Statement

I'm writing a mission statement. For me. Describing my life. Well, more acturately, what I want it to be.
There are things I believe, want to do and want to be, but I'm not. The more I think about it, the more I realize it's because I don't have a clear vision of what my life should look like. I have a dream of what I want it to be, but it's one that is so distant that I don't take it seriously.
I believe that I should enjoy life. Why am I eating and drinking things that bring me little to no pleasure and don't add to my life? Why am I doing things that don't bring me pleasure or add to my (or my daughter's) life? Why am I hanging onto people who drain me?

What do I want my life to look like?
Who do I want to be?

I don't want to be rushed. I don't want to come home to a messy house. I don't want to be overwhelmed with "stuff." I don't to be stressed about money. I don't want to rush by people. I want to help those in need. I want to matter. I want to make a difference. I want to teach my daughter what matters. I want to see and experience the world. I want to live intentionally. I want to enjoy life. Every moment of it-the good and the bad.

Life is what we make it. I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck. Living to work.
I want to work to live to enjoy life, my daughter, my friends.

I want to strive to learn new things. I want to embrace and appreciate the life I have today and not be thinking of how it can be different.

I want to be me. I won't apologize for living life the way I ought to be. I won't be brought down by the "I wishes" people give me when I share how I'm taking life by the bull horns and making it mine.

I won't say, "I wish I could do that." I'll either do it or I won't and I won't begrudge you for having that.

Now, I need to take all of that and make a sicinct mission statement.

My Big Dream

My big dream is to travel the world telling the stories of those I meet along the way through the written word and photos. This is the same dream I had when I graduated from college, but I found my way out to California and quickly got a job and got embedded in the community, got married, had a child, got divorced and now I'm ready to head back out into the world - this time not solo, but with my daughter.
To reach my goal of traveling, I need to save a good chunk as startup capital to fund my travels until I can turn it into income.
My first big trip with my daughter (who is nearly 3) is next week when we hit the road for Phoenix. Without a child, it would be a 10- to 12-hour car trip. I'm hoping that I can make it in that time-frame with the little one. I've already started planning our stops, activities, and my sanity.
The longest we've traveled by car so far is 6 hours when we drove to Las Vegas last January. I had passengers, so it wasn't the worst trip, but it could have been better.
I'm actually looking forward to this trip and hope that it turns out well. If it does, that means we'll be taking more trips in the future, and will have more stories to share with you.
This blog, to start with, will share my journey to my dream. Once I embark on the trip, or trips as they likely will be, will have a different focus. By that time I expect to be World Schooling my daughter and will devote a blog to our experiences in that.