Wait! What Have We Done?
We are in our 50s. Neither of us has retired from working. We prefer to call this transitional phase our sabbatical. While we search for a life less burdened by debt, one of the main reasons we left Vancouver Island, and we travel free of many of our possessions, we often find ourselves looking back at everything that happened in the first six months of 2018.
The decision to sell most of our furniture, to give away clothes, to list our home on the market, everything happened quickly when we realized we had a small window over the summer to travel with an RV in Canada.
Many times I felt overwhelmed. Did we really need to travel across Canada? Couldn’t we keep our house but take some time to figure out different ways of making money? Instead of staying on the traditional path and sitting at a desk and working in an office, couldn't we be location independent? What if we sold the house and kept everything in storage? It took many months for me to realize that these decisions we were making led to less burden and more freedom.
Leaving the security of a paycheque every two weeks, and leaving client work that was building and providing a comfortable cushion, also leaving family and friends, my birthplace, none of it made any sense. At this stage, Jamie was looking for ways to change our life and I was grieving the life I thought I would always have. I made it very clear that I was not going to talk to anyone about our decision until I had properly grieved the life and the home I was losing, and I could see the value in making the sacrifices I would have to make.
Until the timeline felt more in my control, and my fears lessened about where we would end up, Jamie had to figure out logistics on his own. He started thinking about a date to leave work, about where we might find a new homebase. He priced out tiny homes, shipping containers to house any possessions we needed to keep, and he looked at RV trailers that might interest me.
Together we made the decision to sell our house. We might have a chance to get a great offer. Buying an RV in the spring might be good timing. Prices were marked down. My fears didn’t totally go away, but the excitement was building between us both.
When we accepted the offer that came through on our home, we felt like a huge burden was lifted. When we had sold our other homes, we had to find the next house. This time, we had our RV on order, we had dates when we would stop working, and we were purging our possessions. Exciting, right? Not exactly.
A quick offer that exceeded our expectations was something to celebrate, but we didn’t. Instead, we sort of coasted and tried not to think about everything that was ahead.