Eight Months On….
When we embarked upon this adventure, Robyn and I undertook to not change our plans for at least six months so that we could give ourselves a chance to settle into this new life style. The six months is up, actually it fell due the day we entered into Mexico, so that at least tells you that we are both very happy to continue the journey and we think that we will continue for at least two years. After that who knows, but two years is probably as far out as anyone needs to plan.
It’s now about eight months since we left New Zealand, and about 10 months since we sold our family home and moved away from our business activities, so how do we feel about all these life changes?
We can report that we are more relaxed, more contented, more cheerful and that our relationship with each other has never been better.
We are laughing a lot more, we are fitter and slimmer than we’ve been in years and we feel so much more free with each other and our time. We’ve also both noticed things like our memory has improved so we can recall pin numbers, phone numbers, passwords and the like more readily than before.
The sense of freedom is almost overwhelming. We wake up in the morning in our own time, without any alarm clock, after a long deep restful sleep and thank our lucky stars that we are priviledged enough to be able to enjoy another day together, free of any expectation of what is required of us and our time.
We then look out the window and remember where we are; maybe beside a lake, perhaps in a desert or we could be in a Wal*Mart carpark. But where ever we are, it’s all an adventure.
We then decide what, if anything, we’ll do that day; maybe go for a hike or a bike ride, maybe visit an interesting muesum,
maybe quietly await a sunset
or spend two hours getting just the right Humming Bird photo, but whatever it is we are free to choose and are not driven by necessity.
Whatever we do, it is always new and interesting. And that’s something we could not say about our lives at ‘home’. It had all become too predictable. And strangely enough, we never seemed to have the time to do anything about that. There was always more gardening to do, or another meeting to attend. Never enough time for ourselves and the things we really wanted to do no matter how big or small those desires were.
Of course there are some frustrations with this life style; navigation is one because no matter where we go we’ve never been there before so that means constantly having to read the map, not knowing where to get a simple yet specialisted thing done, like repairs to the awning or the like. But these are minor concerns in the bigger picture.
We are both doing a huge amount of reading and what a joy this is. All sorts of reading from deep and meaningful tombs to light and airy magazines. We swap our volumes with other RV’ers doing the same thing. That way you only need one good book, just keep swapping it for another good one.
We are also listening to a lot of our music, both in the truck when travelling and in the rig on our stereo sound system. It’s great to go back over all our music and be reminded of so much that has happened in our lives together. We are also expanding our musical tastes and it’s so good to have the time to do this.
My computer skills have improved too, especially around the photography and the editing abilities of the software and once again, it’s having time to explore this that I so appreciate. It’s fun to then transpose that skill onto this web site.
Something else we’ve noticed is that we take delight in the simple things again. Like having the time to prepare and serve a delicious meal. We always sit at our dinning table to eat, we have some nice music playing and we usually have a couple of candles throwing a warm glow over our surroundings (we don’t have electricity most nights either so the candles conserve our batteries too). But it’s the simple delights in taking the time to care for ourselves that we value so much and were often rushed in our previous life.
It’s as if we are enjoying the journey more than the arrival.
What we are not doing is watching T.V. or trying to keep up with the so called news. We buy Time magazine and the English published Economist every other week and that gives us all the relevant news we need.
One of the best ways to describe our lifestyle is to recall a holiday where the weather was ideal, where you had just the right amount of exercise and rest days to feel good, where you were stimulated most days and did just what you wanted most of the time, where the phone didn’t ring endlessly but you did hear from the most important people in your life. And when you got home you asked yourself “Why can’t life be like this?”
