另類美國夢

Peter： Mary and I were thinking about buying a house that we really like. We were anguishing over it about a year ago. It was a lot more money and we were thinking about the additional mortgage, and, you know, 30 more years of paying that off. We were just speculating about what we could do with that money if we didnt spend it, and one of our ideas was, well, we could spend a little bit of money making our house the way we wanted it, and then we could spend the rest on, for example, a year in Europe.

When I described it to people, it mostly sounds like a mid-life crisis, I guess. Ive been complaining about the corporate career that Ive had for years, for years and years and years, and I just couldnt quite draw the line and stop doing it for different reasons, and then, finally, it just, this thing came up, and it was a good opportunity to step out of that. So, a year of not working and living in Europe is, is sort of like the big barrier between 18 years of working in that, as a corporate weenie and, and then 18 years going forward doing something else.

Its definitely a different, different life, but when I was working, I used to wake up every night at some point, or at some point during the day, just really panicky and worried about what was going on at work and whether I was doing a good job, whether people thought I was doing a good job, you know, worrying about what was going to happen the next day and the next day and the next day, and we dont have those worries anymore. I mean, we still worry about your life, your whole life, but youre not worrying about someone elses motivations, someone elses goals. Youre worrying about your own. Josephine （Daughter）： Because hes always at work and I barely see him. I…I think of the people at…at work that work with him see him more than I do, usually. But this year I see him the most I ever, I ever have.

Peter： When I was working, I didnt know, I didnt even realize that I wasnt around. I thought I was around all the time. I dont think they felt like they were neglected, but, now that weve come here, its different and were all together.

If you think about the amount of time in the day that youre real…really with your kids, if you work in an office, its not very much. If you, you know, you take out sleeping and you take out commuting and you take out working…

Im not regretful, because the thing I was doing before allowed for what were doing now, and so you have to think about the causation of the whole thing. But it does make me wonder what wed go back to when we go home, and I dont think I could go back to that situation that I didnt know was so upside down. The whole corporate thing, you get kind of sucked into it. Theres rules for that, that say, you know, if you do…if you do this, you do your résumé, and, you know, you do this proper search, youll get a job, and that job involves something in the area of 9 to 5. Its never 9 to 5. Its always actually more because you have to put more into it in order to get anywhere, and then they have you, and then you get sucked in.

Josephine has all these fantastic careers for me, that she keeps coming up with. Selling lemonade in front of the house was one. Having chickens and raising eggs, and selling that, and then today we came up with being a beekeeper. A beekeeper, a barn builder and a chicken farmer.

And so I think it would be interesting to have an experiment of just doing what youre interested in, seeing what happens. It cant work out badly, cause life isnt long enough to have it really work out badly.

彼得：那時我和瑪麗在考慮買一所我們挺喜歡的房子。大概一年前吧，我們?yōu)榇丝鄲啦豢?。因為那要多花很大一筆錢，所以我們在考慮額外貸款，你瞧，還得再還30年才能還清。我們不禁在想，如果不花在買房上，我們能用這筆錢做些什么呢？其中一個想法就是花一點錢裝修房子，把它弄得合乎我們的心意，然后我們就可以把剩下的錢花在……比如去歐洲生活一年之類。

當我向別人講述這件事的時候，我想這聽起來有點像是中年危機吧。我對自己在公司打拼的工作早有怨言，這樣的打工生涯已經(jīng)持續(xù)了很多年很多年，又總是出于各種原因無法放下，辭職不干。然后，終于遇上了這件事——這是一個跳出困境的好機會。因此，不工作，到歐洲生活一年就像一道鴻溝，將我這個職場小人物埋頭苦干的18年與接下來朝其他方向發(fā)展的18年分隔開來。

這確實是一種完全不一樣的生活。還在上班的時候，我老是在每天夜里某一刻猛然驚醒，又或是在白天的某個時刻突然驚慌起來，擔心工作的進展情況，擔心自己有沒好好工作，擔心別人是否認為我在好好工作，擔憂明天會發(fā)生什么情況，后天又會怎樣，大后天呢……而現(xiàn)在我們已經(jīng)沒有這些煩惱了。我的意思是，你還會為生活煩惱，為你的整個人生煩惱，但你不必擔心別人的情況、別人的動機、別人的目標。你只需為自己考慮。

約瑟芬（女兒）：因為爸爸老是在工作，我很少見到他。我……我覺得他公司里的人……他的同事見到他的機會通常比我還多。但是在今年，我見到他的次數(shù)比以往都要多呢。

彼得：上班的時候，我并不知道……我根本沒有意識到自己老是不在家人身邊。我還以為自己一直都陪伴他們左右。我并不認為他們會覺得這是一種忽視，但現(xiàn)在我們來到這里，一切都不一樣了，我們總是在一起。

如果你想想一天當中有多少時間能夠真正地和孩子們呆在一起，如果你在辦公室里工作，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)這樣的時間其實并不多——假如你將睡覺時間、通勤時間，以及工作時間都排除在外的話。

我并不后悔，因為多虧了我之前的工作，我們現(xiàn)在才可以做到這一切，所以你得考慮清楚整件事的因果關系。不過，這確實也讓我思考，我們回家后該回歸哪種生活，我并不認為自己會回歸到以前的生活，過去的我不知道自己的狀況有多么糟糕?！肮尽边@一整個體系會將你吞沒。那里面有很多講究，如果你做到了這幾點，做好自己的簡歷，好好地找工作，你總會得到一個飯碗——這個飯碗要你從早上九點忙到下午五點。而它從來就不僅是朝九晚五的事。這份工作實際上會占去更多時間，因為你必須投入更多精力才能出人頭地；然后你就身不由己，被卷入其中了。

約瑟芬給我構思了各種很棒的職業(yè)，她總是不斷地想出些新點子。比如說在家門口賣檸檬汽水；又或者養(yǎng)幾只雞孵雞蛋，再把它們賣掉；我們今天又有新想法了——當個養(yǎng)蜂人。一名養(yǎng)蜂人、一個谷倉修建工、一個養(yǎng)雞場主。

所以，嘗試去做些自己感興趣的東西，看看事情會有什么樣的發(fā)展，我覺得這也挺有意思的。事情的結果總不會太壞，因為人生實在太短暫了，不足以讓事情發(fā)展到不可收拾的地步。