Becoming Full-Time RVers

If everything goes according to plan, by this time next year we'll be trekking the Colorado Trail,  our preamble, literally, to a new life as full-time RVers. 

Kristy has begun winding down her mental health therapy practice. And, in another week, I'll begin my last school year working as a high school librarian. All our worldly possessions streamed out of our house and into the homes of other people via gifting, garage sales, Craigslist, and ARC Thrift donations. A FOR SALE sign standing in the front yard marks our final phase of switching from conventional to out there.

How did we get here? A couple of years ago, after several meetings with a financial planner, we realized we were ready to bail on the American dream of maintaining a big budget lifestyle in perpetuity (perpetuity is a word one never uses until one goes to a financial planner). Maybe we didn't need all of this stuff to be happy.  After those financial meetings, we plunged into our "What if" phase: What if we sell the house? What if we want to travel for long periods of time? What if we stop living the conventional consumer life--what then? What if we could spend most of our time roaming the earth and being outside? Once we said "spend our time outside" aloud, we both knew we had hit on an idea that would work for us. In that moment, we went from being women who had never even considered having an RV and who knew absolutely nothing about RVs, to women embracing the idea of a full-time RV life.

House under contract

Don't get me wrong. We love our lives. Both of us enjoy our careers and feel good about the work we do. We take wonderful trips, share great friendships, and live in a town and a state that offer us opportunities to do the cultural and outdoor activities we love.  Neither of us feels like we are running away from our lives, but instead, that we are pushing forward into a new version of our lives where we spend less time having and more time doing.

New lives do not just pop into being. Weirdly, the act of de-possessing takes more energy than the act of possessing. Giving up careers feels disorienting. Moving from the known into the unknown is not without its discomfort and things like pianos and LazyBoy recliners are sorely missed. And yet, there's a current of excitement bubbling along in both of us that feels thrilling. We are stepping out of our comfortable life into the unknown and it feels good.