Just The Four of Us
Here is what I know to be true after spending every day together as a family for the past three months without a full time job while living on the road in an RV.
One...my need for work in my life is very important. When I first envisioned retirement twenty years ago, it was a fairytale picture of never having to work another day and lounging on a beach somewhere tropical with Erica (kids weren't in our picture then). Having enough money to do this was my focus and driving factor for working as hard as I have. I believe, in total naivety, that I missed the point of both working toward a goal and what retirement means. I now understand that I need to stop putting so much pressure on myself to achieve a retirement goal and just enjoy working while spending time with my family and also doing things I enjoy. Retiring at 40 afterall, when as a young couple we were starting from negative financial territory, is very hard to accomplish.
I spent many years pouring time and energy into my work and at times struggled to maintain a healthy work and life balance. I did this for the pursuit of more money over all else most of the time. I wouldn't trade the lessons learned for anything, but it has become clear that I could have been healthier. My work now consists of RV maintenance man, RV driver, tour planner, travel agent, teacher and money manager to name a few. I keep myself very busy. Not working is something I confidently know I will not do well at long term. I need some form of work in my life to feel my purpose is met not to mention continuing to earn my family a comfortable living. Now I just need to figure out what my purpose will be when this year on the road is complete.
Two...no matter how much you enjoy your spouse and kids, being together every waking hour is really good and fun until it's not. All four of us have had our moments of yelling, venting frustration at the others on the squad. When the kids get frustrated at Erica and I we feel their pain as well. None of us are exempt from getting tired of another's complaining. I know Erica has grown very tired of me at times and vice versa. The kids grow very tired of all the change and constantly need to be entertained which leads to them feeling frustrated on both travel days and days when other kids are not present to play with. We are trying very hard to live our family value of staying kind to each other but that doesn't always play out in between these four walls. We have all found ourselves apologizing to each other many times more than we ever did prior to this adventure. It makes you appreciate your space to do things you like individually whenever you can make it happen. So far this trip has had very few moments to actually get that sacred alone time.
Three...one of my goals was to learn how to become more present or "live in the moment". As I find myself believing more Buddhist principles for living, I want to practice them more too. Being "present" is an ideal state, something that is so hard when others depend on you. The constant strain from a changing environment prohibits my ability to stay present. I am rarely relaxed. This has surprised me and in hindsight was a big pipedream. My goals for this year of traveling extensively conflict directly with my goal of bringing myself inner peace through relaxation and staying present. We have been in motion virtually every single day. I wanted to see the world and we are doing it at the expense of low stress and relaxation. Erica and the kids have voiced their dissatisfaction with our constant travel as well. We are slowing down now by staying longer in locations to hopefully help all of us relax more. We are also spending more non-sightseeing days at the RV park and this is helping. Most full-time RV'ers do this and while we are slightly different then most full timers (most full-timers have employment to achor them for long stints) we now get why this is so important to balance into the equation. It helps with our relaxation, a day to not think or plan our next step, a day to let our kids roam and socialize with other kids.
We are a family that has made it a priority to stay closely connected. We have many reasons for this and the most important of which is to become closely connected in new and meaningful ways. We are not perfect, but Erica and I try hard to always put our kids and each other first. We work through our problems together. We have far more successes than failures in this. This is why we are on this journey together now and didn't wait until our kids left the roost like most families do. It is comforting to have a strong family unit as our foundation to stretch out from. We aren't stopping yet. We are learning and growing by stretching ourselves to push through our fears and the pains of this adventure because the rewards are so much more memorable and valuable to us all.
After all we have learned, we just made our next big plan to go international without the RV on January 8th, 2019 to live for a month in a seaside community in Costa Rica!
Peace and Love