Profile
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| User: | fearsclave (517602)  Notes From The Streamside...
(The journal of a ex-yuppie finding happiness in the country) |
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| Name: | Fearsclave | |
| Bio: | I am a very lucky man. I used to be a yuppie. When I started this journal back in 2002, I lived in an upscale part of Montreal, and was working crazy hours as an associate at one of Canada’s largest law firms. By 2004, I'd developed an interesting practice in regulatory law, and was going to have to make the partnership decision fairly soon. Then, that October, a few days after I turned thirty-eight, my now ex-girlfriend (Suzanne) pulled the plug on a seventeen-year relationship and moved out. I didn’t deal with that very well. But it did force me to take stock of my life. I was almost forty, and at least as many pounds overweight. I’d already had one heart attack. I was in the worst physical condition of my life. I was completely miserable. My stress levels were appalling. I’d been out fishing five times that summer, and made it up to my cabin only twice. And I’d worked very, very hard for well over a decade to get to this? And the future held only more of the same? Through a combination of sheer blind luck, people looking out for me, and a couple of fairly obvious decisions, as of this writing (March 2008) I’ve somehow managed to fix most of those issues. In January 2005 my sister-in-law tried (very transparently) to set me up with a close friend of hers named Carolyn, who was also suddenly single again. We hit it off immediately. In April 2005 I left the firm for a position at a client's, and now I negotiate technology contracts in the telco space instead of dealing with civil servants. That July I bought a house in rural Ontario, right next door to my dad's. And Carolyn and I were married on April 29, 2006. Marrying Carolyn was the best thing I have ever done. She is far closer to being my ideal woman than I had any right to expect. So now I live in the middle of a cornfield, as a friend put it. I work from home most days, and I wear a tie to work maybe once a month at best. And I don’t have to worry about timesheets and billable hour targets anymore. I’m actually making more than I was at the firm, although my salary curve is going to be a lot flatter than if I'd gone the partnership route. On the other hand, I think I'm going to live longer, and I've realized that there is no way they could have paid me enough for the sacrifice needed to make partner. The couple of hours per work day that I can now devote to the rest of my life are worth far more to me than a partner’s draw at a big firm. Once you’re making enough money doing something you really enjoy, making more of it stops being very important. Or so I’ve found, anyhow. If you feel otherwise, I’d politely suggest that your priorities need re-evaluation. Since I moved out here, I've discovered a fascination with the joys of living closer to nature, and acquiring self-sufficency skills. I tie my own flies, and fish every chance I get; fly fishing by preference, but I'll resort to worms and spinning tackle without a qualm. I love to hunt, and I love to shoot, and I get a great deal of satisfaction from target practice and working on my guns. And cooking what I've caught or shot (after bringing it home and waving it at Carolyn) has led me to an unexpected interest in cooking. To my surprise, I've discovered that vegetable gardening is great fun. So is making my own bread. I'm learning about edible wild plants. I've taken up snowshoeing; there's little in life more fun than wandering around the winter woods on a Saturday morning, tracking hares. I love camping, both summer and winter. I'm also interested in survival, both of the bushcraft/woodland survival sort and the emergency preparedness sort. And I love zombie movies, and frequently joke about being an anti-zombie self-defence community activism activist. While I'm joking about the zombie defence activism, I do take firearms rights activism very seriously. Like many Canadians, I used to be very much in favour of Canada's gun control laws, while being largely ignorant on the subject. Then, when I got my gun license and started hunting, and started actually learning about firearms and firearms-related issues, I realized that our gun laws were in fact sadly misguided. So now I frequently write letters, both to the media and to our elected officials, explaining why they need to be repealed, and trying to dispel the fear, ignorance, prejudice, lies, and misinformation that's being so viciously spread by Canada's anti-gun lobby. So my life has changed enormously in many ways over the past few years, and entirely for the better. I don’t plan on watching very much in the way of TV from here on out, and I plan to barbeque on hardwood charcoal, not propane. If I ever get an SUV, it won’t get used for trips to the mall. I intend to continue voting Green every chance I get. I won’t re-read books unless I love them. I will not buy disposable, formulaic fiction or music. I will not keep up with the Joneses, because poor Mr. Jones is up to his eyeballs in debt to pay for a whole bunch of stuff that I have no use for. I have one life, and I owe it to myself and my family and friends and humanity to live it as well as I can; to see and do and learn and love as much as I can. And I plan on documenting all this, because I enjoy my life, and hope to fill it with as many interesting things and experiences as I can. Hence this journal. | |
| Memories:: | 638 entries | |
| Pictures: | over 1000 public | |
| Interests: | 86: 10/22s, alpinism, astronomy, barbeque, bass, beck weathers, beer, black powder, boats, books, bowie knives, camouflage, canoes, cats, china, chinese food, deer, dry flies, epee, fencing, fish stalking, fishing, flashlights, flies, flintlocks, float tubes, fly fishing, fly patterns, fly tying, flyfishing, historical novels, hunting, knives, lakes, law, ljmaps, love, m-14s, martial arts, megatokyo, military history, model railroading, mount everest, movies, music, muzzleloaders, paintball, philosophy, rammstein, reading, remington 870, rifles, sailing, salmon, scotch, shotguns, single malt, single malts, sks, sleeping, soviet armor, soviet history, space, steelhead, survival, swords, tacops, tactics, tai chi, tanks, telescopes, the clash, tomahawk throwing, tomahawks, trout, turkey, turkey hunting, walleye, wargames, webcomics, wet flies, whiskey, whitetail deer, whitetail hunting, wild turkey, writing | |
| Schools: | Hudson High School - Hudson, QC, Canada (1982 - 1985) John Abbott College - Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada (1986 - 1988) McGill University - Montréal, QC, Canada (1988 - 1997) | |
| Friends: | ||
| Account type: | Paid Account | |
