Living My One Life
Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you really only have one life to live? Have you thought about what you are doing now, and how that compares to what you really want to do? I have. I started to think more seriously about it just over a year ago, prompting me to start making some changes. If I only have one life to live, what do I want to spend that life doing?
I had a plan - maybe just a "big dream". It was something I had thought about for years, but always dismissed as unrealistic, a fantasy. The more I did anything else, however, the more I could not stop thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the more it began to become more real, more "possible". I only needed a little bit of preparation.
That little bit of preparation took over a year.
Not that I have anything to complain about... it was an amazing year. I spent four months of training with Outward Bound Wilderness and Outward Bound Japan. I made many bicycle and hiking trips around Japan, visiting and researching small farming villages andorganic farmers. I took my current outdoor guiding job to gain experience and insights into the industry. I made the leap from big-city and job-security to small country and life on the edge. I fought (many times) with Tomoe about how realistic it was. I feel like I won, but I still live with the irrational fear that somehow I, we, have made a big mistake.
I know we have not.
Now, after much talk and (what feels like to me) a year of inaction, I am finally ready to unveil the big dream. I am finally ready to live my One Life.
I have spent the last year training myself, researching markets, and researching locations for One Life Japan, a new company based our of Nagano that offers fun, intellectually stimulating, physically satisfying, and environmentally sound educational bike tours in Japan.
The minor details of the plan have changed much over the past year, yet when I look at the web-site I created last May, I see that the basic concept has remained the same.
For a year the web-site has simply been a tool I use to keep myself focused. Whenever I had negative, self-defeating thoughts that it was a stupid idea, and that I was wasting my One Life, I would read the site and be inspired. It kept me going, and gradually, as people began to find the site, despite my lack of advertising, I found that other people found it interesting and somewhat inspiring as well. This was clue #1 that I am on the right track.

It is only now that Now that we have found a great little traditional rural Japanese community to base our operation out of, and after spending a year making connections with farmers and other country folk that share our values and the values of our new company, we are finally ready to enter the One Life Japan web-site officially in the public domain, just waiting for you to forward it to your friends and business associates who will be visiting Japan this autumn, winter, or next spring.

