With my lease soon coming to an end, I need to decide if I want to remain in Urbana. I have various thoughts and desires about living elsewhere, but having ended my marriage and moved into an apartment only four months ago, I feel it is best that I remain in the apartment until next July. Part of the reason is because in just a few days I will be returning to the 40 hour work week. This depresses the hell out of me, as I have enjoyed working 20 hours a week for the past four years. In January I began working 30 hours a week, which isn't too bad because I work from 6:00am-noon, or 7:00-1:00, depending on when I wake up in the morning. My eight hour schedule will be 6:00-2:30 (a 30 minute lunch is required by law), which is as good as it gets for an eight hour day. The thing that will drag me down is working in the same place eight hours a day, day after day after day. I know I will get the old feelings of restlessness, fatigue, and the nauseous thought of "anyplace but here".
The positive side is I will be making enough money to save $500 a month, so that by the time my lease is up I should have an extra $6000-7000 in the bank (barring an unexpected medical emergency). That thought alone should give me the energy to wake up in the mornings and slog another dreary day in the office. With my current savings at $10,000, and with Rachel owing me $9700 for my portion of the house, that puts me at $26,000. When I quit my job I will have $7000-8000 being added to my savings, which puts me around $33,000. To be safe I can round down and expect to have $30,000 in my savings by next July. Living in the midwest USA I can survive comfortably (with no car) for $1000 per month, giving me 2 1/2 years of freedom from having to work for others.
Considering that the USA is a relatively expensive place to live, what if I could find a place somewhere in the world where I could live comfortably for $500 a month? I would then have unlimited freedom and solitude for 5 years. By the end of the 5 years I will be 50 years old, and most likely old enough to no longer care about jobs and careers, etc, or maybe I will no longer be alive, thus cheating a future employer of cheap labor.
I am reminded of the Hermann Hesse story Klein and Wagner, where Klein, a civil servant, aged 40, robs his employer and rides a train south to Italy. He falls in love with a young woman, has a few adventures, and then drowns himself. Another story, whose name and author escape me, is of a man who quits his job and moves to a cheap foreign land which is pleasing and artful. A few years later the man's savings are depleted and he goes insane and dies. These stories give me pause in my desire to move out of the country and live off of my savings...
