Why Being Sensible Is Super-Risky

Do you ever get chinks of hope? Moments when cracks appear in the walls in your head, and through the chinks, you can see clear for miles in hundreds of different directions? Moments when you catch fleeting enticing glimpses of all the wonderful things that could be?

It's scary leaving a career that was secure for life (more or less). But then, a 'career for life' is a fixed path, with little room for deviation. That's scary too. Especially when it encompasses life choices that will lock you onto that path, even if/when it goes horribly wrong, and you want out. Sensible people strongly advise caution - get a good job, get a pension, buy a car, get a mortgage, furnish your house, provide for your family, and slog on slog on. "You've got to play it safe or you'll come a cropper," they say. They're right of course. So long as everything goes to plan. But I look at some of my friends and colleagues right now, they played it safe and did what you're supposed to do, and their lives are falling apart. They're in desperate debt, depressed and stressed, their future looks damned shaky despite 'sensible' decisions, they've either lost their jobs or they feel trapped by them rather than inspired. To me, that's not a good example of how the normal way is the best way.

It's a risk, but is it really? By taking that first step, that foolish reckless step off the well-trodden path of a sensible career, wild colourful possibilties open out. Things that wouldn't really have entered my mind one month ago, now sneak their way into my mind's eye... I'm free. Free to make choices as opportunities arise, free to do what I fancy, free to follow my bliss.

What makes me free where others aren't? Why are my colleagues saying "you're very brave/you've very lucky," instead of doing the same thing as me when they so clearly want to?

These are some of the things underpinning my big step:

• A certain mental attitude - a faith in freedom, a belief that there must be better ways of living life. A suspicion that just because most people do things one way, doesn't mean it must be the best way.
• A financial attitude - where both debt and affluence should be treated with caution, as they both entrap and limit choices. Focusing on 'enough' rather than 'more.'
• A financial safety net. I'm not talking big bucks here, I'm talking what many Brits would probably spend on a family holiday in the sun for 2 weeks. Not loads, but enough to tide me over if it all goes wrong. It goes without saying, that I try not to spend the safety net.
• No dependents - I recognise that it's much harder to throw caution to the wind when you've children and loved ones depending on your hard-earned monthly salary.
• A willingness to do without in order to do more. I know I'd rather live in a basic wee flat, if it means I can make big leaps of faith and quit work and go travelling/ take lower paid but more inspiring work. A lovely big house, beautifully furnished, with all the best stuff would be nice. But it just isn't compatible with that kind of freedom. If I have to choose, I want the freedom, not the matching suite, the dishwasher, and the curtains from the John Lewis department store.
• Blind hope.

So it might all go wrong. I can see troubling clouds on the horizon in some directions, and may well find myself blogging about disasters and bad choices in the months to come. But who expects life to be peachy right through? Better though, that life choices are based on the chinks of hope rather than dogged resignation.