You know, just in case any of you are staring down the road at your own re-entry in the not-too-distant future. We like to help. You’re so very welcome.
Stuff we did right? That’s easy…
1. We got into a small rental unit. Once you know you can live happily within the confines of 360 square feet and with very little stuff, why allow yourself to go back to a huge house with too much? We kept it small and I am glad.
2. We immediately got into a regular groove of hanging out with friends. We chose Wednesday nights to have dinner at home with our friends, alternating houses each week. We keep it very simple and focus on allowing the kids time to play and the adults time for conversation. AND we keep it almost sacred, not allowing much to get in the way of it.
3. We got unpacked fast. It was difficult, but important. The faster I unboxed items the more likely I was to go, “Why did I bother keeping this?” and send it right back out of the house. It was like a bonus purge.
4. We kept up with other full-timers. It would have been pretty easy to avoid all social media and contact with those who are still on the road, but I didn’t want to give root to bitterness, envy or anything that would detract from our own experience. Besides, keeping up with you peeps who are still living the dream means I have gained a few new friends (holler, Herd of Turtles!).
5. We took a vacation. Yeah, I know we just had a really long one so we didn’t exactly need it, but there was this bucket list item hanging out there and we needed to check it off before we end up on the other side of the country (I blogged about it here). Camping in persistent rains with no showers for three days and lots of bugs in our tents reminded us we have not lost our wilderness mojo. It’s stronger than ever, and that was encouraging.
Where did we fail? Oh my…
1. I stopped taking photos of random life everyday. My world happens in photos. I see everything framed in a certain aspect ratio through a polarized filter. I take pictures because I can’t NOT take pictures. But when we got home I got too busy with the mundane and forgot that it is still worth capturing. I’m trying to do better.
2. I allowed school to fall back into a dumb textbook routine. UGH. This one really annoys me. Because on the one hand, there are just some subjects you can’t learn through unschooling (I'm talking to you, long division), and sometimes we just roll better with a book, seated at the table, pushing the pencils and checking off lessons. I go back and forth on this one and I probably will until I die.
3. We too quickly lost our sense of daily adventure. I should clarify. We didn’t lose it so much as lose the motivation to go seeking it everyday. We quit exploring, probably because we were back in the familiar and it became harder to see where there might be some new perspective we had missed.
In our own defense, I will say that it is mighty difficult to keep pursuing the new and exciting when you are surrounded by responsibilities. No, we don’t have a mortgage to maintain or any of the old shackles we purposely shed at the close of 2012. What we do have is a new purpose, an entirely new pursuit on our radar, and it requires a certain degree of careful planning and goal-setting. An outline, some lists, some intentional embracing of the mundane is necessary if we will ever get there.
We are not bailing out of blogging, but this is about to take on a somewhat different tone. We get to reveal VERY soon what our next adventure is - soon, as in Friday. Stay tuned.
-Jenni