I need a disruption.
Why? Well let's see:
The Rut
For the past five years, I've done the same thing week after week after week. Don't get me wrong. I have it pretty good. I live in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, with a nice yard and nice neighbors (and by "nice" I mean "they don't have noisy kids"). I have a good job that isn't likely to go away anytime soon and I'm reasonably well respected and well treated by the people I work with. But this is the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my life and it's the longest I've ever been working on the same project at any job I've ever had. The bottom line is that I'm restless as hell. I don't think I'm willing to disrupt that safe, good paying job at the moment, so that leaves the living arrangements. I'll get back to that below...
The Finances
I certainly don't live month to month, but that nice house I mentioned earlier has been a little more expensive than I anticipated. Mortgage, insurance, cleaning, furniture, security, pest control, decorations, etc. It all adds up to a bit more than I though it would when I jumped into this thing. I love living in a beautiful, comfortable home but I'm just not building my savings at an acceptable rate. In fact, 2009 is the first year I've really been able to build much savings (beyond my base retirement) at all. That's just not going to cut it. I have dreams and ambitions that may require me to have some fallback funds as a safety net. Right now, the safety net isn't there.
The Gut
Well, let just say that I have one and it needs to go away. This particular "disruption" is a long time coming and it's going to happen regardless of any other disruptions I throw into the mix, but shaking things up on a bigger scale and digging out of the rut may also be helpful with the "lose the gut" undertaking.
The Opportunity
I am in a pretty special situation. I have no wife or kids and my job does not require me to be in any specific place. It isn't always going to be this way and I should take advantage of it while I can.
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So where does this all leave me? I guess it leaves me in just about any place I'd like, and what I think I'd like to do is sell my current house and hit the road for a while in an RV.
The "selling the house thing" falls under the finance category and is something I want to do even without the "hitting the road" aspect. I love my house but it's almost ridiculous how little I use it. Despite the fact that house like this has been my goal for as long as I've been an adult, I now know that I would be happy with something smaller. Maybe someday, if I ever have a big family, I will revisit the big house idea, but for now, I need to simplify things a bit.
So.....traveling and working in an RV. That seemed a bit extreme when I first thought about it, but the more I research and discover, the more reasonable the idea becomes. Who knows, maybe it will turn out to be something I do for 5-7 months during the hottest part of the year, or perhaps I'll hate it and settle back down after a few months. I really don't know, but I do think I want to give it a try.
I'm making this blog post on December 31, 2009. That seems appropriate. The rollover of the year is just symbolic of course, but hey, symbolism can be useful. I've actually been thinking about this for a little over month and who knows, perhaps six months from now I will look back on this idea as a fleeting whim, but I don't think so.
The reason I've decided to blog about this process is two-fold. First, during the last month of research I've stumbled onto a absolute wealth of knowledge from forums, books, web sites. This blog will hopefully be my little contribution back to the knowledge base and a way for me to solicit help from those in the RV community when I have questions. Second, while some of the folks I've told about this potential twist in my life are, shall we say, dubious, there are others who have been genuinely excited about it and this blog will give me a way to keep that latter group informed about the things I've learned and paths I might take.
So here's to 2010. May it be never be dull!
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