We spent the month of April with my brother, sister in law, and nephew in Atlanta, GA. We were already pretty close, but we don’t get to see each other often, so Mike and I were really excited to see them. Of course, it was an extra treat to get to hang out with my baby nephew. It’s really hard to bond with a kid when you only see them a couple of days a year, so that felt really special.

Our goals, on top of our normal goals (work, bond, spend as much time with people as possible), included helping with baby-care and helping around the house, bonding with baby as much as possible, and trying to let his mom sleep sometimes. The problem is, we still have to work.

So imagine, day one of the visit, sitting at the desk downstairs working, and hearing the clop, clop, clop of a toy rolling down the stairs towards you. Then another. Then another. And then the delightful giggle of a little boy who is apparently trying to entice you up the stairs by rolling toys down to the Galia-and-Mike maker. (Insert toy: out comes a Galia or a Mike! Like magic.)

Likewise, this was sometimes the view out of the window by my desk:

Needless to say, it is very difficult to keep working. So the choice is either: keep working and feel like you should be hanging out, or hang out and feel like you should be working. Every moment, every day, you have to choose. Work, people, sightsee, life stuff, bond. Work, people, sightsee, life stuff, bond. No matter what you choose, you feel like you’re never doing any of them enough. Work: my employees need me, my clients are waiting for things, I need to spend time building my business. People: the whole point of the trip is to spend time with our friends and family, this should be a priority. Sightsee: we’ve never been here before, I don’t want to go through it and not actually see anything. Life stuff: still gotta go grocery shopping, pay the bills, sleep, eat, and shower; not to mention just be alone sometime to stay sane (but how can I justify being alone when we’re supposed to be spending time with people?!). Bond: our relationship is the most important thing, and even great relationships require time and intention.

Every day is filled with balancing those priorities. If I spend time hanging out, I won’t have time to do that work project, so I won’t be able to get to sleep at a normal hour. If I work, I won’t be able to go to the farmer’s market and spend time together. If I stay inside reading, I might regret not maximizing time with people, and how can I justify that when the point of the trip is to spend time? If we maximize time in X location, then we’ll only have a day to get to Y location, and we won’t be able to sightsee; but the point is to spend time with people, so shouldn’t we include that extra day? But we can’t leave on a Monday, because I’d have to take a day off of work for traveling; but if we leave Sunday, that’s a full weekend day of hanging out we’re missing.

I see now, more than ever, that life is truly made up of what you decide is worth your time. You cannot do everything, and you cannot ever give anything as much time as you want to. The best we can do is decide what’s important, and try to maximize time doing that thing (while balancing the others the best you can). A lot of the rest of it comes down to communicating and also just forgiving yourself when you feel like you’re not quite hitting the mark.

Atlanta was a blast. We had so much fun, and felt so comfortable there. We fell into a great routine by the end, where we mostly worked during the day, with bursts of hanging out and playing. At night we’d figure out family dinner, and my sister in law would come back out after putting the baby to bed, and we’d stay up talking until late. And weekends, we’d go adventuring. But, as always, the month flew by way too quickly. With people working, the hangout time gets distilled to nights and weekends, and your actual adventure days are surprisingly few when you look at it that way. So even our month was way too short, and we had to drive off too soon, with tears in our eyes, always wishing we could have spent more time.

Pretty good office

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.

Atlanta: The Struggle With Time Continues

Thoughts from Halfway