You're never too old for a new adventure
Once upon a time, I had a blog and wrote regularly. And then I made a little YouTube channel and also wrote regularly on that website. Now I am connecting them and continuing, hopefully, to write about (waves hands) something.
We’re not in the van full time. We have our home, and we are both working. So what does our empty nest look like? It looks like budget trips and home renovation and planning for retiring (early??). Follow along if you want.
I am still here. Haven’t had much desire to write. I still remember when I used to write so much or think of so much to write about. These days, I don’t think of writing. I think more of gardens. And projects. And walking. And travel. I didn’t travel much for at least a year as I prepared for this return to California. Jobs, a home, moving-it was a big project.
We traded in our travel for being in one place. I thought it would be good to be close to the kids in these challenging times. Their adult lives are so very different from mine. I don’t know if I have any wisdom for these parts of their lives, other than I am here if you need me. The economy looks grim for young people. There is a lot of worry about finding and keeping jobs. 2 of them have already experienced layoffs previously. So I think it weighs more on their mind. Thankfully, they each have one for now. I was quite lucky to raise them with so much job security. But now we are only a few hours away from them instead of two states, and somehow that feels better.
So I work on my garden and try to plan what to grow and how to optimize water and sun. We recently got solar, which I am very happy with despite the expense. Next, I want to plan other energy and water-saving strategies. Things like using the washer water for the front yard. Drying clothes on a line in the summer. Changing our stove to electric. Window treatments that reduce direct summer sun. These things help me imagine that I am in control of aspects of our lives. But I realize that the last 6 years have taught us that some things are really out of our control.
Back in 2020, we sold our house and moved to Washington State temporarily. We got rid of a lot of things in that move, including all of our debt. We bought a van and traveled around the west coast. We went to Europe for long adventures including walking the Camino de Santiago. And doing all that had a big impact on how I see life. It impacted my thoughts on work and relationships. But it also impacted how I view the buying of stuff.
I have always been a thrifty person, wanting to find deals and spend less to get whatever it is I want. This is the result of growing up poor. Another result of growing up poor was that I often thought I’d be happier once I got XYZ thing. The house, the car, the income, the thing that would finally make everything better. I’m not saying I was miserable, in fact I did have a happier adult life than my childhood. But when we got rid of the things and the debt, I realized it wasn’t the stuff that made my life happier. It was the people.
In this current version of my life, I still have stuff. We had things in storage while we travelled and we have them all back. But I don’t feel as attached to a lot of it. I’ve been buying my clothes from thrift stores. Getting things free sometimes from Buy nothing groups. But I’m still find myself wanting. Specifically wanting to have a house with a backyard. Wanting to grow things. Make things. A lot less of wanting to buy things (although, I’ll admit making things takes some buying).
I don’t shop on Amazon anymore and I have been to Target in months. And now with everything happening around us, I find myself less and less enamored with things and more critical of the idea of being a consumer. I find myself annoyed by advertising and irritated about being seen as someone to buy things. And things aren’t even good quality often. They break quickly and then you need more things. There have been times our government has told us to “go shopping” for the economy. But is there something different we could be doing for each other? What does an economy look like that doesn’t rely on us shopping all of the time?
Anyways, I spend my time often dreaming about a house with rain catchment and solar and a garden with gray water use and chickens and all kinds of ways to reuse resources. I think Will views it as an impossible feat to have a home like that. But to me it seems more and more like a necessity.
I’ve been practicing my Duolingo German and I am currently on a 23 day streak. I know most of the words in this level because of previous German lessons or because they are easy to figure out. Elefant is elephant. But one of the new words introduced this week was wandere. That’s how you say hike in German. Ich wandere. Du wanderst. I hike. You hike.
And I love that in German hiking sounds less like a specific action with boots and trails and gear and a map. Instead it looks like wander because of course, wander is probably originally a German word. And wander is such a better way to describe spending 2 hours on a trail in the mountains. Honestly, I’d like my hiking to be more wandering than hiking. Less going from point a to b and more, hey what’s over there? When I go hiking I tend to be much more of a stop and look at trees or plants kind of person. It is good exercise but exercise seems less the point. The point is to be outside but outside where there are no sounds of traffic or the smell of exhaust. To be outside with the dirt and the trees and the birds and squirrels.
Here in Western Washington, we’re leaving the freezing temps and headed back to rainy days. Which means that days of wandering on trails looking at mushrooms and ferns are not too far off. Moss covered trees and wet days ahead. Spring is a little over a month away. And then…. Ich wandere.
Thailand. 5 months in Thailand to be exact. It’s not a big secret to people who know me that I want to have an opportunity to live outside of the U.S. I’ve been wanting this. But it hasn’t ever seemed the right time. Lately, it has been the right time for travel. We’ve gone on quite a few adventures the last 2 years, including the Camino de Santiago, traveling around the west in a van, and 5 weeks hopping around Europe. But traveling doesn’t come without a cost. In the search for opportunities to travel without using up all of our savings, I began looking for net zero or net positive travel opportunities. Things like work exchange (working for accommodations and food) and credit card hacking to get flights. In fact, our European adventure was done with miles and points paying for all of the flights and hotels. We spent 5 weeks in 7 countries for about $6k. It’s still a good amount of money.
Moving completely to another country long-term just isn’t in the plan right now. The thing about living outside of the U.S., it’s often hard to do without a completely remote job, a huge amount of savings, retirement, or a job in another country. My work is remote but requires me to be on U.S. soil (medical records/privacy & stuff). My husband really enjoys his work as a nurse and isn’t looking to change careers. We’ve got 3 kids in the U.S. So financially our options for living abroad seem to be more of a retirement idea or looking for short-term travel opportunities. Additionally, my husband found himself a little worn from all of the travel. He wanted a home base, and a regular schedule (even if it wasn’t full-time). But he encouraged me to look for some travel ideas that I could do with little to no cost.
With a little research, I found a teaching program to teach English in Spain for one semester. It was 10 weeks with food and accommodations provided. No visa was needed because there was no salary. More of work exchange. But it was part-time, so I figured I could get spending money teaching online. I applied and was accepted, but the spots were all full and I wasn’t needed. They offered me their one-semester teaching in Thailand program. This was a little different because it did require a visa and it was 5 months. But I would also get paid.
But can I leave for 5 months? Ugh. I was on the fence. But my husband was very encouraging and said it’s a good time to go. You’ll be glad you tried it. We were already planning for me to be gone for that 10 weeks. So, after deliberating, I decided to go for it. He’s planning a 2 week trip to see me in Jan. But yeah, I am about to be all on my own for 5 whole months in Southeast Asia.
I haven’t written here for a while. I’ve been working on 12 thousand other creative projects, and I realize that it might be the reason none of them have gone very far. I really haven’t been able to focus on one thing consistently. But I have learned a lot from them. The biggest thing is that I am no longer willing to put off a creative life. This summer while we walked the Camino, I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to a nursing or edu job right now. We changed our entire lives by selling our house, building out the van, and planning some exciting adventures. And a bunch of it was really challenging. But while I was walking day after day, I really just knew I couldn’t go back to the way it had been.
But I have no idea what I am doing.
We’ve been back in Washington for the winter and here I am trying to figure it out. But 45 days later in this apartment, I am no closer. Some days I am like, fine I’ll just get a job as a nurse. And other days, I am like nooooooo. It’s been a real struggle to even imagine a job I want to do at all. The best I came up with was Barista or baker. 🙂
I recently came up with an idea for a way to spend the next 6 months. And it starts with Nanowrimo. Which starts in a few days. So, here I go.
I told one of my friends from grad school that I am ready for mediocre. Growing up I always felt like I wanted to do something important, something that made a difference. It’s probably why I chose nursing, although it wasn’t my first choice of careers. But I was good at science and wanted to make a difference. I also had a problem with wanting to be a people pleaser which meant I never did work without thinking most about how it would be received. That is, graded by teachers, received by patients, viewed by coworkers. Everyone else’s judgement of my work was always more important than my own. Because of that, I regularly felt crushed by feed back. I constantly thought I wasn’t good enough. A lot of ideas I had early in my adult life I would never attempt or quit because of fear of failure or criticism.
But as I got older, I started trying more doing more and trying to work past my work not being received well. I started believing I was good at some things and I worked very hard at them. But I still struggled with anxiety about failing or doing things poorly. But mostly I kept looking for ways to work hard to make a difference.
The pandemic has changed the way I think about work. Lately I’ve been thinking, I am tired of work. What’s the point of work? What’s the point of 40 hours? Who is my work for? And can my work be for me?
I think this is really an exploration of the idea that I, personally, can let go of working for others in a way that leaves very little for me. I have known this for a while. But practicing it regularly has been a challenge, because I constantly find myself jumping back into old ways of thinking. I think I should be working harder, proving my worth as an employee, looking for advancement, helping the organization be better, etc. But at the same time I feel compelled to do that, I think to myself why? Why should I? Why should I be a model employee? Why can’t I be mediocre and let things go instead.
So the other day, I told my friend I want to be mediocre. I want work to shrink in it’s importance and to let all of the other things grow. More books, more art, more hiking, more time with people I love. I am ok with not being significant and just being average.
We bought a van. We’ve been looking at vans and talking about this for like a year. We saved up the money over the last few months and bought a 2013 Ford Econoline 150 passenger van. We plan to rip out the bench seats, the carpet, etc and turn it into a camper van. I think it will be a fun project to keep us occupied in the remainder of the Pandemic and my husband has been wanting a camper van for years.
The next steps include cleaning it out and planning a floor plan for the campervan. We aren’t quite 100% on the same page with the van but we are working on it.
Things we definitely want in the van:
I’m excited about all of the possibilities for this van. So much of the things that have been hard in a pandemic in winter and that includes not being able to be out traveling and enjoying nature. Also, I have been telling my husband I want to have adventure. We all know tomorrow is not guaranteed. But we have competing priorities so we say, I can to do that later. When the kids grow up. When I retire. When I have more time. And now, the kids are grown up and later feels like now to me. So adventures, here we come!
And I don’t feel any different.
I find that the Pandemic gives me ups and downs.
Ups: my husband has now had 2 vaccine doses. We have no debt! We have a good savings. We both work. The kids are ok. One is moving to Canada! We could do lots of things with our future.
Downs: the country is a wreck. Half of the country voted for a wreck and I find those people unrelatable. Is there going to be more vaccine? Will we ever be able to travel? I am tired of being away from people. Are we stuck in this crappy present? How much longer do we have to do this.
I’ve been reading a ton. It’s been a good way to cut the bad. I’ve read a lot of books around WWII.
Last weekend we took a trip to a little cabin with no cell signal or wifi. It was a lot of fun. I read, hiked and wrote. I did nothing for a purpose, only for enjoyment. We had no news so it was like nothing bad was real for a weekend. Time was suspended. I decided to give myself a weekend of that every month. Maybe it will get me through the next few months while things possibly get better?
My husband has seemingly adapted to living here after 3 months. He loves it, he says. He’s buying a mountain bike. Me? I’ve gotten used to 40 degree weather, but 30s are hard. I’m still cold a lot. I try to get out and walk or hike. But I still feel like this is a place we are visiting. I’m not sure what happens after April.
I hope you had a good Christmas.
Recently, my husband told me that Death Cab for Cutie was formed right here in the city we moved too. If you don’t know, DCFC is one of my favorite bands. And Transatlanticism is the perfect album to play with the gray winter days. I am definitely going to be listening the New Year for the new year.
We got snow on the winter solstice, and it was pretty while it was falling. It didn’t feel so unbearably cold. I even went outside in it. But the next day it was cold and icy. Poor Teddy almost fell on the steps and in the street. I almost slipped on someone else’s driveway.
It rained the day after Christmas so the snow is gone now. And luckily so is the ice. But while it was here, mornings were 27° and we were wondering how long Teddy could be outside in it. I’ve seen lots of people take pictures or videos of their dog in snow, but now that we are here, I’ve been wondering how long his paws can be out in the snow.
When we were moving here, my friend Amber told me about what’s different in Washington from living in California. Like how some railroad tracks don’t have arms that come down when a train is coming. But she also said, she had to adjust to how the weather plays a big part in what you do. And honestly, in Southern California, traffic plays a bigger role than weather.
My husband was playing a video where a guy said there is no bad weather, just bad gear and bad attitudes. I am definitely in the needs better gear and a better attitude department.
The Empty Nest Projects 