The Bum and The Baron
The Field Review: TFR-059
There are two types of people who are never bothered by worry or doubt.
They’re never late. Never rushed. Never wondering if they’re doing enough. Both live without a clock. Without debt to the day. Without the fear of being needed in two places at once.
One is the bum. The other, the baron.
One might think they’re opposites. But in a strange way, they actually live parallel lives. And they share something many of us might never taste.
Guilt-free freedom.
The baron doesn’t glance at his watch. The bum doesn’t own one.
They come and go as they please. They go when they feel like going. They follow birds as they migrate. They disappear into the woods when the elk start to bugle. They fish long days with no thought of what time it is, or whether they’re supposed to be somewhere else.
“Home” is fluid. Sometimes a cabin, sometimes a cot, sometimes the bed of a truck. Often, home might just be anywhere but home.
Money is of no concern to either one not because they both have it, but because it holds no power over them.
They aren’t burdened by inboxes or invoices. They live present, unbothered, and detached from the constant need to prove their worth to society.
Neither asks permission. Neither apologizes for the way they spend their time.
It’s easy to admire the baron, but there’s something equally tempting about the bum who wakes up with no inbox, no meetings, and no reputation to uphold.
The freedom they share is what makes their lives so envious.
Because somewhere between the bum and the baron is where most of us live. Trying to make enough to feel secure, without getting so tangled in the pursuit that we forget what we were working toward in the first place.
We carry reminders they don’t. Deadlines. Expectations. PTO. We take what we can get and pretend it’s plenty.
We chase freedom but will only accept it once we’ve “earned it.” Only after we feel the work is done.
But as it usually does, the work grows. The responsibilities add up. And we realize that the bum and the baron will only ever be ghosts in our lives.
They will show up when the inbox is full but the air outside smells like September. They will haunt us in group texts about fishing trips we can’t make, the mornings we can’t hunt and the tee times we won’t be able to join. We don’t know what exactly what we will be doing, we just know it isn’t that.
It’s not that we want to be the bum or the baron. But we want what they have.
To move freely. To chase birds or fish or deer or maybe nothing at all. To selfishly accept that the world isn’t owed a single explanation for how you choose to spend your time.
Many of us may never arrive there. But for those of us that eventually find it, we’ll have a different perspective than the bum and the baron. Our freedom won’t just be something we inherited or stumbled into.
It’ll be something we earned.
We’ll know the cost. We’ll know what it’s like to count PTO days and owe responsibility to our friends and family. We’ll know what it means to juggle deadlines and put off what we want for what others need.
And because of that, the freedom will feel different. It won’t be a given. It’ll be a reward. The bum and the baron will never understand the middle ground or the alternative to freedom.
But we will.
From The Field Review Archives:
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Venture Onward,
Jack