另类美国梦

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：那时我和玛丽在考虑买一所我们挺喜欢的房子。大概一年前吧，我们为此苦恼不堪。因为那要多花很大一笔钱，所以我们在考虑额外贷款，你瞧，还得再还30年才能还清。我们不禁在想，如果不花在买房上，我们能用这笔钱做些什么呢？其中一个想法就是花一点钱装修房子，把它弄得合乎我们的心意，然后我们就可以把剩下的钱花在……比如去欧洲生活一年之类。

当我向别人讲述这件事的时候，我想这听起来有点像是中年危机吧。我对自己在公司打拼的工作早有怨言，这样的打工生涯已经持续了很多年很多年，又总是出于各种原因无法放下，辞职不干。然后，终于遇上了这件事——这是一个跳出困境的好机会。因此，不工作，到欧洲生活一年就像一道鸿沟，将我这个职场小人物埋头苦干的18年与接下来朝其他方向发展的18年分隔开来。

这确实是一种完全不一样的生活。还在上班的时候，我老是在每天夜里某一刻猛然惊醒，又或是在白天的某个时刻突然惊慌起来，担心工作的进展情况，担心自己有没好好工作，担心别人是否认为我在好好工作，担忧明天会发生什么情况，后天又会怎樣，大后天呢……而现在我们已经没有这些烦恼了。我的意思是，你还会为生活烦恼，为你的整个人生烦恼，但你不必担心别人的情况、别人的动机、别人的目标。你只需为自己考虑。

约瑟芬（女儿）：因为爸爸老是在工作，我很少见到他。我……我觉得他公司里的人……他的同事见到他的机会通常比我还多。但是在今年，我见到他的次数比以往都要多呢。

彼得：上班的时候，我并不知道……我根本没有意识到自己老是不在家人身边。我还以为自己一直都陪伴他们左右。我并不认为他们会觉得这是一种忽视，但现在我们来到这里，一切都不一样了，我们总是在一起。

如果你想想一天当中有多少时间能够真正地和孩子们呆在一起，如果你在办公室里工作，就会发现这样的时间其实并不多——假如你将睡觉时间、通勤时间，以及工作时间都排除在外的话。

我并不后悔，因为多亏了我之前的工作，我们现在才可以做到这一切，所以你得考虑清楚整件事的因果关系。不过，这确实也让我思考，我们回家后该回归哪种生活，我并不认为自己会回归到以前的生活，过去的我不知道自己的状况有多么糟糕。“公司”这一整个体系会将你吞没。那里面有很多讲究，如果你做到了这几点，做好自己的简历，好好地找工作，你总会得到一个饭碗——这个饭碗要你从早上九点忙到下午五点。而它从来就不仅是朝九晚五的事。这份工作实际上会占去更多时间，因为你必须投入更多精力才能出人头地；然后你就身不由己，被卷入其中了。

约瑟芬给我构思了各种很棒的职业，她总是不断地想出些新点子。比如说在家门口卖柠檬汽水；又或者养几只鸡孵鸡蛋，再把它们卖掉；我们今天又有新想法了——当个养蜂人。一名养蜂人、一个谷仓修建工、一个养鸡场主。

所以，尝试去做些自己感兴趣的东西，看看事情会有什么样的发展，我觉得这也挺有意思的。事情的结果总不会太坏，因为人生实在太短暂了，不足以让事情发展到不可收拾的地步。