We’ve been traveling around for far too long and the grass on the settled side of life is looking greener and greener. However, we’re not yet ready to commit to a specific place or a specific activity (like a job) because we have some more traveling/adventuring things left to do. However, explaining what we’re doing right now has been an exceedingly arduous task over the past 6 weeks because the plan is quite different from the norm. I’ll try today to provide a simple, lucid outline of our current plan (something I’ve been rather poor at doing lately).
What are we doing and why?
Simply, we’re working on various projects, and these projects all stemmed from the lists we put together in San Francisco during the bicycle trip. We each have different things we’re interested in experiencing or doing over the next 5 to 10 years and figured it’d be good to actually get started on them. We can’t necessarily do them all at once (we can’t live on a sailboat right now, while getting a PhD in Philosophy, while building our own home…or can we?), and some are projects we’re not quite ready to get started on yet (having kids is a big one here).
The projects we’re working on now are best described individually. Julie is working on getting herself into position to get into school this summer for accounting. She is also studying for the GRE in the event she may want to go to graduate school. She has really gotten into artistic expression in multiple ways. She is learning the guitar, working on her book and getting it available on Kindle and Amazon, and she is working on art projects and crafts. She is also enjoying getting back in the kitchen. She is baking bread from scratch, making pies and desserts, and even helping with some of the meal preparations.
She and I are both running a lot and building up our mileage almost every week. We’re both preparing for Marathon Madness this winter followed by our second attempt at the 100 mile run (something we both failed at last year). Along with running, we’ve both been doing core workouts, stretching, walking, and playing tennis to keep active and earn all the food we’ve been happily consuming.
I have become very regimented with my time, telling myself and those around that “I’m going back to work”. I’m not getting paid though, only taking the structure and productive features of my work experience and applying them to my current projects. I too am studying for the GRE, either for a potential application for graduate school in Philosophy or higher education in the medical field. I figure a good score could help in many ways and it’s been enjoyable getting my brain revved up again. I am also diligently working on developing my Spanish knowledge, putting in 60 to 90 minutes a day of drills, translations, and vocabulary in order to nail down one of the three languages on my list. I have also been spending time doing research on ways to get into the medical field, sailing, living in India, and other small steps towards the various projects on my list.
Where are we doing it?
We’re in Myrtle Beach, SC right now and are here for 3 weeks. We had one week in Ocean City, NJ and after a brief trip back to Ohio in December to visit family for the holidays, will be heading back South for another 6 weeks. We’ll be spending a month with my brother Jeff, on holiday break from grad school, and will primarily be spending time between Gulf Shores, AL and Orlando, FL for most of the time.
Some of the lodging is still up in the air because of how we’re getting our lodging taken care of. My parents are part of a travel network that often has deals on excess condo inventory in various locations. They want the places filled and charge $198 a week for a furnished one or two bedroom condo and we get the feeling of having a home without the commitment. It’s been really good so far and we hope to pick up the few remaining weeks we need for the month of January. After that, it’s off to Texas for a week where we’ll tackle the 100 miler.
What’s next?
I’ll tell more about that later but our main idea right now is to be working on our projects. So look at our lists and you could potentially guess what we’ll be doing next. In the meantime, if you’re interested in running any of the Marathon Madness races or visiting down South this winter, give us a call or an email and we can check schedules. We’re enjoying not traveling around quite as much right now but are always welcoming if people want to get together.