We’ve decided to fulltime RV

We’ve thought about it for 5 years. OK, I thought about it for 5 years. Probably because I was tired of life whizzing by and just being repetitive and empty. Maybe that’s why we look at life sometimes as a hamster wheel. We keep moving, or rather, we stay in motion, but we don’t seem to go anywhere.

As a kid, you’d have boring days, but there was variety and a lot more play time. Plus, you had breaks and summer, and fun things to do. But, as an adult, well, there weren’t many breaks, there was no summer. The best you could hope for is a day off here and there in the first few months, and a 3 day weekend to celebrate the beginning and end of summer, a summer where you’d probably be working. Sure, you can accrue a week or two here and there to stay around the house and fix it up, or maybe take a vacation and build memories.

I’ve never been good at that. I wish I had been, but ultimately, I chose saving the vacay days for payout so we could put money away or fix up the house, or get out of debt. But, other than some occasional fun, we didn’t seem to get out of the rut. We’d had Disney passes for awhile (forget $1k a person now!), we’d go to the county fair several times each year, my kids would enter the fair and win lots of ribbons, the pinewood derby – yes my daughters are reigning 2 year champs in AHG and beat all the boy scouts! But a trip to the Discovery center, the zoo, the aquarium, and Sea World, while fun most of the time, just reminded us how little time we had to play and explore with the kids now that we are adults and supposed to work 40 hours weeks – yuk. I know – get over it – that’s life. Try to have more balance, yada, yada. I get it. But I don’t like it.

Life is expensive, especially Southern California – internet, utilities, rent/mortgage, car insurance, health insurance!!, food, gasoline, clothes for growing kids, and books/games/toys/fast food and of course admission anywhere fun.

Last year (or so) my frustration boiled. I enjoyed what I did for a living (manage web development teams), but the company, while making money, wanted to pursue every idea it had without regard to customer feedback, timelines, realistic chances of success. It was a march to a graveyard, not a march to victory. While I still hope they adjust and get focused, I realized I was stressed. So much so, that my doctor told me my blood pressure was high. And it’s never been high in my life – EVER!

So, I took that cue and decided to leave to try to do my own thing. Not always the best plan, but I’ve spent the last year testing a lot of things – and spending a LOT more time with the family – including a real vacation. I’ve taken time and worked thru some things and have even tried to find new employment. But it just hasn’t come thru – lots of offers for things that would put me right back where I was, but nothing that would feel like I wasn’t on someone else’s death march.

After these years of sharing the idea with the rest of the family and sharing blogs, one-by-one the family began to say yes. My wife finally was frustrated with every day being a repeat of the previous. We began to realize we didn’t even have a lot of friends due to our schedules and so we began to focus on rebuilding family friendships.

My youngest is home schooled still and was ok with the idea of the trip, but would miss her friends, but my oldest who just started high school a year ago after being home schooled didn’t want to leave. Then this summer, her favorite friend from school moved away to Washington and the idea of traveling began to be OK. She did want to finish this semester, which was going well so far.