Greetings!
For someone who calls herself a writer, I sure do suck at keeping a blog active. But again, here we are, starting a new one.
Why, you ask?
Because once again, my family (who I will be referring to as the J-Team in my entries) and I will be embarking on yet another crazy journey. A journey that I would like to chronicle a lot more diligently if only to serve as a guide of sorts for those who wish to follow our ways and chosen (nomadic) lifestyle. I would like my kids to read all this someday as adults and help them remember our fun exploits together. I also would like to keep my brain running (and not with the usual panic-and-anxiety-induced thoughts that come with being a mom and wife in this day and age) and my writing/typing hands working.
So what’s this upcoming crazy journey?
NEW ADVENTURE ALERT!
🎇
NEW ADVENTURE ALERT! 🎇
The name of this specific blog says it all. We are hitting the road again! This time, it won’t be just me and the J-Man and the open road. We’ll have two super-active young kids and an anxious lovable dog tagging along. For the past two years, we’ve stayed in place here in Seattle, after a crazy move from Singapore that’s an epic story in and of itself. It’s been great. We’ve made new friends and hung out with old ones. We’ve enjoyed the outdoors on the rare occasions we’ve been granted good enough weather. For the most part, we’ve just been vegging out at home. Our older son, firmly ensconced in online kindergarten and thriving. Our younger son, just enjoying being a whirling dervish within the confines of our living room. Our sweet dog, always napping and burrowing into blankets. And me and the J-Man? We’re lucky enough that we can both afford to be flexibly and remotely semi-employed and also have time to focus more on our health and fitness goals. Lucky to have all this time to bond with our kids and occasionally hang with extended family and friends at their homes.
However, as much as we’ve enjoyed our stay in Washington, lately, we’ve been feeling a bit antsy. This sort of thing is normal for us. Every two years, like clockwork, the J-Man and I both feel the itch to be somewhere new, someplace else to explore and live in, to figure out if it is the place to plant our roots and settle down in. We moved to Seattle in 2020 not knowing what to expect, firmly believing that this was gonna be it, the place for us. We were going to buy a home in a diverse community, make lots of friends, send our kids to school where they will make lots of friends, find hobbies and people to share them with, go out and explore the city.
Then of course, the global coronavirus pandemic took all our plans, put it in a hermetically sealed jar (because you know, germs), vigorously shook it, and dumped it all out, leaving us a cocktail of helplessness and uncertainty, with a dash of anxiety and fatigue. We made new friends, but couldn’t really hang out with them out of caution for our unvaccinated kids, one of them high-risk. We couldn’t really go out to new restaurants or bring our kids outdoors because of COVID-19 restrictions (or in some cases, lack thereof) and the finicky and often-dreary Seattle weather. We thought it would normalize after a few months, but after two years, it’s gotten pretty unbearable, especially for a family of people with itchy feet. Lots of edibles have been consumed to help deal with the never-ending anxiety over the potential of catching the virus and the overall depression the thought of being in prolonged stasis brings.
In the beginning of 2020, we rented a house for a year with the plan of eventually buying a home in the area. However, with the end of our second lease fast approaching, we have decided that now is not the time to buy, not with everything in a state of what-if. Instead, in a complete 180-degree move, we’ve decided to take this show (that’s been on a long enough hiatus) on the road. (It’s the title of my blog! Get it? 🤪) After our lease ends in June, we will be staying in an Airbnb in town because we’ve signed up for running races and bought outdoor concert tickets in the area. Once our prior commitments are done here, we’re off to the Pacific Coast for some much needed beach time. The next destinations after that are to be determined at a later time.
The plan is to stay in a new town for around a month, so that J and I can get some work done (he’s going back to full-time, I’m staying part-time freelance), we can continue our fitness training with a little more regularity, and we don’t have to drag our restless kids in a van for hours on end. We’re selling what possessions we can, putting essentials in a trailer we plan to buy, and placing everything else in storage. By October, we intend to arrive in a town just outside of Las Vegas, the next place we want to try and make our own for at least a year. However, we don’t intend to sign a lease to a new rental property until 2023. We might as well maximize our travels till the end of 2022.
If, after a year, we decide that we love Vegas and we can see ourselves staying put for the next 5 years or so (still counting on that 2-year itch, after all), then we may buy a home there. If not, we can always return to Washington or anywhere else we liked and start from square one. Maybe by then things will be a lot different.
For now, that’s it. We still have two and a half months to go on our current living space, so we’re taking our time selling some big-ticket items online (Facebook Marketplace is a revelation, y’all). We haven’t really told anyone about our plans, except our families and some friends, so consider this our announcement of sorts. Watch this space for my attempts at immortalizing our adventure into words and some pictures.
See ya later! 🤟🏼