What have we been doing?

It’s February 2nd already. We’ve been on the road 216 days since we left Houston at the end of June last summer. We’ve traveled from Texas to Ohio, Ohio to the Pacific north of Seattle, through Oregon to San Francisco and flown to Hawaii, to Utah and Colorado, back to Ohio for the holidays and finally from Ohio to the tip of Florida in Key West.

So what have we been doing? We get asked daily about our favorite place. About the one experience of the trip. What’s the one thing we’ll remember most. And we answer. Moab was magical because of the people. That evening watching sea lions eat salmon at the mouth of the Klamath river with the sun setting over the pacific was priceless. Spending the holidays with family and not being rushed was refreshing.

But you know what I’ve come to more recently as we start watching the clock run down on our 1 year journey? It’s not the one place we’ve been. It’s not the “single experience that we’ll never forget”. You know what it is? We’re living a life we love. We’re living our life everyday. We still take time to pay the bills. Gotta stop for gas. Need to run to the grocery store. All the normal stuff. But we’re not doing that before and after work robbing us of precious time together as a family. We’re living life everyday and we work regular stuff in as it needs to get done to keep this dream moving. And it’s amazing!

Take that into your own life in the way you best can. Maybe for you it means not putting in 10 hours of overtime so you can spend 10 extra hours together that week as a family. Could be hiring that help with the yard, the pool, the laundry, the stuff that needs to get done but takes time away from the ones you love. Maybe it’s taking a chance on a new opportunity that affords you more time freedom even if everyone else laughs at you because it’s not “normal”. Or heck, maybe it’s going all in and selling your house to travel full-time as a family to see all of the amazing people and places in this great country we live in today.

Whatever it is for you, start living a life you love a little more. You won’t regret it. I know we don’t.

And with that I’ll sign off and give you what you want, just a smidgen of the people, places, and things.