2023
I've heard it said that we overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.
We pretty much knew what 2022 would entail. I don't think we underestimated it when we set out on this year. But looking back on it after the fact, it's hard to believe it all actually happened.
We welcomed 2022 in a cold, windy night outside Barstow, CA. We had spent New Year's Eve driving up from Bakersfield via Tehachapi pass. It was a thick fog, and snow was on the ground in the truck stop at Tehachapi.
The wind that night was terrible. the slide toppers were luffing such that you could hardly think. In a desperate attempt to quiet them, I climbed up there to stuff a beach ball under the topper. It promptly shot out of the other side like a cannon. Oh well!
We played Ticket to Ride, watched the New York ball drop and turned in early. We were to spend 6 days there in the California desert before heading to the Xscapers Bash out in Lake Havasu. From there - the world? At least the country.
Moving back home felt so far away. Maybe we were in denial. 7 months isn't that long. But that meant at least 24 new places to stay, over 7000 miles of fresh scenery to enjoy, and we had the setup to enjoy every minute of it.
It felt like taking the field in the second half of a winning game.
By June we were starting to feel like the losers. The reality that these were our last weeks, our last 5 travel days, etc. cast a pall over our last month of travel, beautiful though it was. And I don't mean to complain, as ways to spend a pandemic go we basically won the lottery. But like most lottery winners it seemed like the money was getting tight awfully fast.
Summer feels like a blur from here. We moved into the house, sold our beloved rig, and dove into home improvement. Then I was laid off and spent most of the rest of the year recovering from burnout and looking for work. The kids went back to school. I found work, eventually - easier, but less pay.
We don't know how long we'll be in this house. Interest rates are double our current mortgage, I've had a pay cut, and everything's expensive. The kids like their school, and if we stay that's 3 more school years.
I am thankful that, if we had to leave the road, we did it at a pretty good time. We got great prices for our setup, and we don't have to try to buy a house. We're not struggling. But our spirits feel small. Probably it's not fair to compare these two ways of living. Maybe we're still carrying the dream of nomad life. I think the Buddhists call it viparinama-dukkha - "the frustration of disappearing happiness."
2023 is here, and making plans for it feels a little pointless. When we first moved back here, we said it'd be "at least a year." Framing it that way anchored our minds on a number small enough to feel safe, but big enough to encompass all that needed doing. The stuff-pruning, the fixing, the searching and planning. But job, extended family, and economics changes all happened so fast! How to plan in such an environment?
Looking back on it, we did something even more radical in an even worse environment during Summer 2020. So it's not out of the question. But what should the plan be? It was easier to shoot the moon when we know we could land safely on earth. But now the challenge is bigger and the landing zone unclear.
I don't know what this year will have for us. I know a few things:
I'm going to keep working on getting better. Lyme sucks. I have time and space (though less dollars!) to care for it now in a way I didn't last year. I don't want to waste them. The sooner I get better the sooner I can aim higher. It's said that healthy people have a thousand hopes and dreams, while sick people just have one. I'd like more than one, but it's still true that there's a big one.
We need to finish going through our stuff. Kristin finds this tremendously hard without knowing "what's next." What are we doing that we need or don't need this item? I get that, but it's also true that have to get rid of things enough that we can organize our house. "More stuff than we can organize" = "too much stuff." We know we can live with less, we've done it for two years. Let's keep it up.
We want to keep traveling. It's harder without an RV - costlier, less comfortable - but we need to try. We live in a beautiful part of the country, dense with beauty and opportunity. While it feels constricting not to get to explore it for weeks at a time, the only thing worse would be not going at all.
Connect with community more thoroughly. Road life made for "sparkler friendships," bright and short-lived. House life is a slow burn. Community can be deeper but is slower to form. I don't know what shape that will take, but it's worth trying. We had a lot of time together as a family on the road in lonely places, and we get along better than ever. That's an easy bargain when the surroundings are always fresh. But come January when the 40F rain won't stop for weeks, you need community more than adventure.
That's all I know today. I hope your 2023 is beginning well.
