Everything is achieved, and what’s next?

At about the age of 50, we made a radical life decision, and since we know that many other people have similar thoughts, we decided to share our experiences. Maybe our sharing will help someone to experience less tension than we did or not to be so afraid of new unknown things. At age 43, I achieved all of my medium-term goals. 22 years in marriage still with the same woman, two clever children, a large house with a garden, a good car, a regular annual income of around one million CZK, the owner of his own company, work experience as a senior consultant in a major consulting agency in Prague, as a trainer, as an MEP advisor, as the secretary of a major professional association. I regularly met with directors of the largest domestic companies, ministers, and their deputies. I have prepared and managed the projects for tens and hundreds of millions of CZK. Over the course of five years, I have been able to obtain approximately CZK 1 billion from various subsidy sources for various entities. Unfortunately, I did not charge a 10% success fee.

Besides all this, I lived a rich spiritual life. I was involved in the local Protestant church and also in several international Christian organizations. Every year we had several multi-day meetings in different cities of Europe, where we visited important places, met local Christians, Christian politicians, had the opportunity to talk to them and pray with them. I visited Israel several times and got to know everyday life in Jewish settlements. However, not as a tourist with a travel agency and a predetermined program.

Study at the age of 40

I highly recommend studying at university at the age of forty! It was one of the most beautiful times of my life. One seems to be getting younger because most of the surrounding students are much younger. It is necessary to start using parts of the brain that are already beginning to shrink, and most importantly, the horizons will widen. However, it is not ideal for a family. Instead of going on a trip with your wife and children, you go to school or study. But if you have an understanding partner and a quiet place to learn, then it’s worth it.

Regardless of whether you really need it to work. I didn’t need it. On the contrary. Due to my studies, I lost a number of orders and revenues. Also, it’s an unforgettable feeling when instead of writing over the weekend a business analysis for tens of thousands of Czech crowns, you write a seminar paper for free. And after that, you get at school the criticisms of absolutely marginal shortcomings from your point of view. However, as I later realized, these comments were very important and gradually led me to express myself much more precisely. How well I know now if someone just slapped something or if one has a really good argument.

In addition, the study of sociology and public policy opened up a whole new area for me. It was crucial for further development. For me, as a technically oriented forest engineer, it was interesting to dive into the study of different philosophical directions, methodologies, and results of various sociological research, the functioning of political principles, the links between public administration, the commercial and non-profit sector, etc. The right-wing neoliberal became a man who understood that not everyone who does not earn a lot of money, does not have quality luxury housing and dream work, is a lazy person.

A certain point behind this stage of life was obtaining a Ph.D., which was such a bold goal that I set myself in my closing forties and it took me five years to achieve it. As a so-called “side-product” on the way to this title was the acquirement of PhDr. Something that is not much recognized abroad, but it is something more than the classical master’s degree. To make a long story short, I’ve achieved the highest possible education available in middle-aged.

Social view

Otherwise, the very useful principle of a market economy has one negative effect. And that it generates certain groups of people who do not manage the free labor market, whether for social, educational, or health reasons. Many of these people also want a job that will satisfy them and they want to make money for which they will buy nice things. It is true that there are groups of people who are satisfied with generous social benefits and do not really want to work properly, but they are really a minority. However, many neoliberals still think that all the unemployed are lazy people without the desire to properly work. I’ve realized, this paradigm is not true. This awareness and subsequent steps eventually led me here. To a completely new way of life.

Social business

At a time when I had an offer to continue my academic career, to have a stable regular income significantly exceeding the average salary, I preferred to enthusiastically embark on social entrepreneurship. I no longer wanted to associate with top managers and senior politicians, but I wondered if there would really be a few people who, for objective health reasons, had worse job opportunities and longed for long-term fulfilling well-founded work. One, that will entertain and feed them well. And that it can be a good job not only for them but also for me. From the very beginning, I anticipated that my income as a social entrepreneur would not be as high as if I were engaged in self-employment and academic work. But life isn’t just about money, is it?

Total burnout

After four years of social entrepreneurship, when I founded and gradually directly managed two completely different social enterprises and created places for more than 10 people in them, just before my 50th birthday, I burned down mentally. Something happened to me that I knew a lot about, but I thought it could never happen to me. I knew that the protection of the burn-out is correctly set life priorities, well-used time management, consistent leisure planning, and participating in activities that “recharge” a person. I believed it’s all correct with me in these principles. But I didn’t realize that because of the huge amount of different responsibilities I cut piece by piece from these basic principles in the last two years…

Constant stress, running from one to the other, where the shoe burned the most, constant extinguishing fires. In the end, my stress spread to the employees, who were suddenly not so satisfied that they had a job that complied with their health restrictions. Apparently, long-term stress took its toll and the body practically stopped working overnight. A working meeting on Friday afternoon and on the weekend I was suddenly unable to get out of bed and on Monday I was not even able to pick up the phone. It’s a strange feeling when you’re lying in bed, watching your cell phone ring from someone who definitely needs something important and you don’t have the “power” to press the answer button. At the same time, a week before that, you had handled 20 or more such calls a day. This period of apathy lasted for me almost 2 months.

And then another month, when after an hour of work I needed a few hours of rest to be able to do something else. In such a state, one does not understand how one could previously do two or more things almost in parallel, to “switch” between completely different tasks in a matter of seconds, countless times a day.

However, half a year of incapacity, when you can afford to go for a walk in the woods in the morning and not rush to any meeting back, not having 10 phone calls along the way and the nerves of having several tasks on your desk that you still have to finish today, makes wonders. This situation and the very well-aimed questions of my psychiatrist made me think about a lot of fundamental things. But I will share these considerations, which have shown me that the problem is really in me and not in the others, some other time.

Fulfilling a “forgotten” dream
Now I will end up with the fact that during this period my long-lived unfulfilled and the still postponed dream came to life. It was about living somewhere in the “wilderness” alone. As I began to form the realistic shape of this dream and considered that I wanted to realize it with my wife, not all by myself, the youthful desire to stay in the vast forests of British Columbia took hold. In the end, sunny Crete won. A place that is far enough away from the everyday hustle and bustle, where the population density is not so high, and moreover there is warm weather and you can swim in the sea almost all year round, which is essential for my wife.

So so much to explain why we are moving to Crete. It is not a short-lived omission of the mind, but the next stage of our lives. Together with my wife Lucy and perhaps an eighty-year-old father and a 23-year-old daughter. Were it not for my burnout, we would not have had the courage to take this step at this time. Once I stopped working, it turned out that some things I really didn’t have to do. We managed to solve a major personnel crisis in both companies and I was able to resign from the day-to-day operational management. I also managed to fundamentally limit my functioning in the leadership of several organizations. (Until now, I have been sitting in 15 different chairs for the last few years.) This allows me to continue rehabilitation and a new way of life in this peaceful and positive energy-filled place.

In the individual contributions, I will share with you what it means to “permanently” move to another state in our fifties. And how we build an off-grid house there. A house that will not be connected to the public network. In our case, it will be its own source of electricity using the sun and possibly wind and partial use of rainwater. We will see if the rain rains can completely cover our annual consumption.

This kind of living is more and more popular, especially among young couples. Composting toilets are often used, only some common appliances and usually more cramped spaces – tiny houses. However, we do not want to deny the “luxury” of classic living with a large refrigerator, electric stove with oven, flush toilet, air conditioning, etc. So it will be all more interesting. Will be electricity and water enough? How much it will cost? I will share answers to these questions with you later.

And when there is strength, I will animate some specific procedures, instructions, and demonstrations with video. For example how to buy land and houses in Crete, what it means to open a bank account in Greece, how to prepare a caravan for long-term residence in a place where there is no permanent source of water or electricity, how to put together the necessary solar system, how to buy special “trifles” on Crete. (Imagine you need one T-piece 1 ½ inch with a third outlet ¾ inch to bring water and you can’t go to the Bauhaus or Obi to choose it. There are no such hypermarkets here.)

What health insurance for a long stay abroad, how to find craftsmen, etc. There is a lot that needs to be addressed and what will discourage most people from taking such a step. I (at a time when I was mostly lying in bed and unable to do my usual work) was going through the internet, watching hundreds of videos, websites, and recharging my energy by learning new things, which I then put into practice. It wasn’t always so much fun. But I believe that some stories, frightening at first glance, will entertain you and show that embarking on something like this is not as unrealistic as it seems at first glance. All you need is courage, the equally attuned partner and family, and knowledge of at least one world language on a communication level. Surprisingly, you don’t even need a lot of money to relocate to another country!

That’s all for today! Thanks for listening to the end!