Thoughts from Halfway

There are a few things we’ve learned and noticed along the way, and a few things that have changed.

1) We might have been better served by a trailer + a car instead of an RV.

We looooove our RV. It’s comfortable, it’s convenient, it feels like home. But it’s really big. It’s hard to drive around a town, and it’s hard to park. That means that we basically don’t have a car. If we’re in travel mode, that makes it really difficult to sightsee and get around, so we end up having to find a place to park the RV (which can be tough) and then take Lyft everywhere (which can be expensive). When we’re in settle-down mode at someone’s house, it means we have to borrow their car all the time whenever we want to run errands, which is a burden for everybody involved.

We don’t regret having the RV, especially on travel days. It’s very, very convenient to have access to a kitchen and a bathroom while Mike is driving. But in retrospect, the convenience of having a car might outweigh the convenience of having the cab attached to the living space, especially since we’re doing mostly parking instead of mostly driving.

2) We’re not newbs anymore.

At one point in Atlanta, there was what appeared to be a water leak in the RV. Mike diagnosed and fixed it in about five minutes. If that had happened at the beginning of the trip, we would have freaked out and spent hours on YouTube trying to figure it out.

3) The things we find difficult are different than what we thought they’d be.

For me, I think the biggest challenge is the feeling that I’m never fully in control of my space or daily life. We’ve tried to make it a point to fit into everyone else’s lives and adapt to their own routines and habits, which we’re definitely happy to do. But meanwhile, whether we’re staying with people or not, it just means that we never know where anything is, grocery shopping takes twice as long because you’re never familiar with the layout, nothing ever looks familiar, and there’s never enough space for your stuff. Again -- no resentment or expectation that people should give us more space or should adapt to us instead of us adapting to them. It’s a feeling that’s permanent even on stretches where we’re on our own. Nothing is ever familiar. And while this can be fun and interesting, it also feels draining after a while. I’m learning that it’s important to me to nest a little to feel at home.

For Mike, his challenge comes from not being in any one place for very long. Unlike my need to nest to feel at home, he feels at home when he’s somewhere for longer. Even when we’re somewhere for four or six weeks and we feel comfortable, it’s still not long enough for him to feel like he can relax into Home. He just wants to stay put somewhere a while. So the constant moving is what’s getting to him, because he’s yearning for someplace familiar to relax into.

Another surprising challenge is how active and intentional we have to be about staying bonded and continuing to talk with each other. Most of our time is usually either working or with other people (which is the point of the trip), so even though we’re next to each other constantly, the quality time we spend with just each other is less than you’d think. We have to remember to say “How was your day?” even if we were sitting next to each other all day long.

4) Time is still the biggest challenge.

More on this in our upcoming Atlanta post!

5) We are more adaptable than we expected.

And when I say “we,” I think I mean “humans.” It’s hard to say whether Mike and I happen to be a little more adaptable than others might be, but I’m coming to believe that any of us can adapt to any new situation much more quickly than we think we can. I find this encouraging and inspiring.

But I can only speak for us for now. Every time we show up in a new place, it feels like it’s going to be overwhelming. Within a few days, we’re accustomed. Within two weeks, it feels comfortable. Within four weeks, it feels like home.

6) Ways we’ve changed.

I am the person who likes to plan an entire trip months before we leave. Flights booked, cars rented, hotels reserved, so nothing can possibly go wrong. Now, we’re so busy and moving around so much that we’ll often be halfway to a place before we remember we haven’t booked a place to stay. We’ve even been changing some plans last minute to adapt to new places we want to see more or less of. I can’t tell if this one is just circumstantial and I’ll go back to the planner I was pre-trip, but there’s definitely something freeing about not always being obsessed with maximizing efficiency, time, and logistics.

Mike’s also changed a bit without himself noticing. He used to consider himself fairly quiet in certain social situations, and now he takes charge and fully participates in conversations without a second thought, no matter where we are or whom we're with. It's cool to see the difference from the outside. He doesn't consider himself quiet anymore.

The both of us have gotten better at just asking questions, clarifying things when we don’t fully understand, and making sure communication is clear.

7) It’s still working.

Every time we leave a place, we remember why we’re doing this, and we’re reminded that it’s working. Even the places we only stop for a day or two are working. Some of the shorter visits have even been some of the highlights of our trip. And when else would we have had a reason to swing by Baltimore MD, or Rockaway NJ, or Hamden CT, to visit family we hadn’t seen in way too long but that we ended up having such a blast with and learning so much from? It feels like a blessing. And now, we’ll have these memories with all of these people for a lifetime, and we’ll know that it’s always okay to call just to say hi. It makes me feel full of love.

So we may be a little exhausted. And we may get a little annoyed sometimes at not knowing where to find a cutting board. And we may need to keep juggling all of the balls in the air (work, spend time with people, spend time with each other, sightsee, plan a wedding, sometimes sleep). But it’s still rewarding, and it’s still fun, and we’re still on our way.

A year of warm hellos; a year of sad goodbyes.

After six weeks at my parents' house in Oceanside, we packed up the RV and hit the road again.

In some ways, it feels like a new beginning to the trip. We were very, very comfortable there in every way. Physically comfortable, because they were incredibly kind and made space for us to settle in. But also emotionally comfortable. We all bonded so much that we could really, truly be ourselves and just relax and enjoy each other's company. We were just a little family, living our lives together. I enjoyed it more than I think I could describe here, and it was really nourishing and rewarding. It was also really nice to see Mike bond with my parents so much, to the point that, when I was in Orlando and he was there without me, I'd call to say hi and he'd pick up, "Hi! I'm at the Cheesecake Factory with your parents!" Makes me happy. 

We were all surprised, I think, by how hard it was to say goodbye. Dad said it felt similar to taking your kid to college for the first time -- like you're releasing them out into the world on their own. I'd grown so accustomed to having them in my day to day life that it made me tear up thinking about being apart again. 

Lessons learned from the first leg:

1. It's working. The point of this trip was to integrate into people's lives seamlessly enough to create the intimacy that can only come from longer lengths of time together. Things like having a common TV show you watch every week, cooking dinner together, going grocery shopping together, doing the dishes, and saying, "I'm bored! Wanna do something?" We felt completely at home at my parents' house, and they tell us that it felt just as comfortable on their end, too. I'm closer with my parents than I've ever been, and Mike feels fully a part of the family. I don't think this could have been possible in a shorter period of time, without perhaps just living in the same town as someone. This solidly reaffirms for us what we're doing here -- creating intimacy in our lives with the people we love, and we're doing it successfully. This trip is already worth it. It also makes us incredibly excited for our future stops, knowing that it's totally possible to recreate with everyone else along the way.
2. For every hello, there's a goodbye. This one we didn't realize until we were pulling away from my parents' house with tears in our eyes. The closer you get with people, the harder it is to say goodbye. So the more we succeed in creating unbreakable bonds with people, the more it'll hurt to move on. It wasn't purely sad, of course -- our sadness was tempered by excitement to keep going and do it all over again -- but the difficulty was unanticipated. But, in the wise words of Winnie the Pooh, how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard! 
3. It'll never feel like enough time. We originally planned four weeks in San Diego, and ended up extending to six because of all the side trips and busy-ness. I don't think we could have achieved what we achieved in less than four weeks, and even six didn't feel like enough time. Planning travel days is also tough, because we constantly have to juggle the equally pressing priorities of a) maximizing time with our loved ones (which would imply rushing from place to place where we know people), b) sight seeing so we don't fee like we're missing seeing the country as we go (which would mean removing potential hangout time with our friends and family), and c) making sure there's time to work and do Responsible Adult Stuff. Mostly, we just constantly feel like we're doing none of the three as much as we want to. We're almost two months into our trip, and we can already tell that a year won't feel like enough, and each stop will feel too short.
4. We want to keep going. Part of the reason we're doing this trip now is because we're approaching Settle Down age. We wanted to have our adventure so if we choose to settle down somewhere, we'll get it out of our system and feel ready, or at least feel like we're not missing out on other things we hadn't done yet. This might change by the end of the year, but so far, all it's doing is make us want to do this even more. We spend driving time daydreaming about our possible future lives. Maybe we can spend three months a year in SF, three months in Findlay, three months in Orlando, and three months in NOLA every year! Maybe we can spend six months a year with your family and six months a year with my family! Maybe we should rent an RV in Europe and do the next year doing a trip over there! Maybe we can live in a different country every three months! The things we do know for sure are: 1) being near family is becoming increasingly important to us, especially if we do end up having kids; 2) for now, we want to keep adventuring, and want some sort of mobility built into our lives; and 3) how incredibly grateful and lucky we both are to have found a partner who is willing (and excited) to keep our minds open about all of the future possibilities in life, and being okay with not planning for now, and knowing that we might change as we go and to be okay with that change. It's a thrilling life adventure together.
5. We're learning more about each other, but not in the ways we expected. You'd think that the reason you'd get to know someone better is just by being with them 24/7, but the truth we're discovering is, closeness comes from experiences, not from time. (Obviously, you need enough time together to have shared experiences, but time itself doesn't necessarily do it.) If we were spending all of our time together but not meeting new people or doing new things, we'd end up just saying the things we usually say and doing the things we usually do. You frankly just don't think to ask certain questions otherwise, not because you don't care, but because it's just never come up. And this is from a couple who spends most of our time just talking to each other. When you spend time with other people, they think to ask the questions you haven't, or conversations come up that wouldn't have otherwise. Our lives are also changing on a daily basis, so we're often finding ourselves in situations we wouldn't have experienced otherwise, which also lets you learn more about the other person. So not only are we creating intimacy with the people we're visiting, but we're getting to know each other on levels I don't know if we ever would have otherwise (or at least, not this quickly). Lucky for me, I'm on this trip with my favorite person in the world!

Musings from the Early Days

It's been about a week, and so far there haven't been any overarching themes or ground-shaking revelations. Just some percolations. But in an effort to give a real representation of the trip as we go, here's a few of the bigger ones:

It's really nice to live near family.

I've only ever lived near family when I was living with my parents as a kid, and then the occasional bits here or there when visiting from school. I've never really had the experience of just being able to go over to my aunt's house for dinner, or get breakfast with my cousin, or visit someone at work. Now, we can do that, and it's really meaningful to be able to have those moments. Those real-life moments, instead of just the annual holiday party where you talk for seven minutes and ask "so how have you been?" Being able to sit around the Thanksgiving table and share what we're grateful for... that was a moment that I was grateful for.

The whole point of this trip was to be closer to family, but it's already becoming clear that living near family would be something that would mean a lot to both of us.

It's really nice to be able to be helpful.

In the same vein, it feels so rewarding to be able to BE there for our families. It's one thing to be there over the phone, but it feels so much nicer to be able to dog sit for someone, or run an errand, or cook a dinner so they can take the night off. This makes me especially look forward to visiting our siblings with kids, so we can help as much as we can. When you're in person, there are just more ways to show love, and that part makes us happy.

It's probably going to be hard for me to carve out personal time.

I'm used to working at home alone all day long, and for most of the next year, it'll probably be a rare occurrence to be home alone. Those who don't yet know me well won't know that I'm actually a pretty extreme introvert -- I love being around people, but I also need a lot of time alone and a lot of recuperation time post-socializing. This will mostly be on me to communicate with people that a) I need some alone time (and then actually take it), and b) that if I'm ever off by myself, that doesn't mean I don't want to socialize or aren't happy, it just means I need to decompress a little. I, historically, have never been good at either of those things, and end up just being around people until I am completely depleted and can't function. I'll need to make a conscious effort not only to communicate well about this, but also to specifically carve out time for myself, even if it's just running errands on my own or going to bed a little earlier so I can read in my room.

Quantity of Time is not the same thing as Quality Time

While having more quantity of time together is really nice, it's very easy not to make actual Quality Time a priority. I could easily see Mike and I spending days solid together without actually doing much bonding, like talking or playing or going for walks or doing activities together. Same goes for the people we'll be staying with. Actual quality time requires an active choice and a prioritization of time, and we will make sure to stay aware of this so we don't just fall into the habit of quantity over quality. 

Not knowing where anything is is frustrating.

Cooking in someone else's kitchen. Shopping in an unfamiliar grocery store. Things you usually can do without thinking about now take much longer and require lots of searching. This will be a good practice in patience, because for the next year, I won't know where anything is.

There's still not enough time.

The ironic lesson of them all. We're traveling for a year, and always feel like we don't have enough time. We'll be working on the itinerary, and we'll end up in a situation where we just have to rush through the in-between places instead of being able to savor and explore them. And even as we're here in Oceanside, our entire calendar is already full with weekend trips and birthday stuff and family visits and everything else, and it feels like we have very little time here that's just to hang out and live life. We tried to change the itinerary a bit to give us a little bit of extra time here, but circle back to the first problem of rushing through the in-between places, and we could only add three days. (Additional side lesson: the United States is really big and it takes a long time to drive across it.) There are so many places we'd like to go, things we'd like to do, and people we'd like to see. And meanwhile, it'd also be nice to just do nothing sometimes, too! I suspect that no matter what we do, a part of us will wish we could have done even more. Maybe this is just life, amplified.