Five-Year Plan
A New Life in 5 Days
Yes, I am terrified.
Five years ago, we made a plan to be a nomad family and travel the world. I’ve written about how I’ve been getting ready for this, and now we will be leaving our house in 5 days.
It was hard getting ready to sell the house and figure out what to put in storage and what to give away. In order to have a new life, you have to let go of the old one first.
I didn’t realize it when we started on this path, but it involves figuring (or maybe it’s finding out) who you thought you were and who you are. I thought we’d be hot tub people, but it turns out that we are not.
Now that this five-year plan has five days left, I’ve realized that I have an attachment to the idea of home. This is not to say that I am attached to this house. I do love this house in the woods. I love waking up and drinking tea in the sun room, and I adore watching the animals and birds. The seasons changing outside the window are spectacular. Still, I am ready for a change.
I am attached to knowing that I have a place. Not a physical location, but a place inside me in which I can be centered. The last month has been a whirlwind of rearranging, moving, losing and finding objects. It has also been a month of rearranging, loving, losing, and finding myself.
I have been curled up crying and telling my partners that I can’t leave this place, that I just cannot do without a home-base. Then, a few hours later, I am looking at house sit in the UK trying to find places to stay in the Spring of 2023. It’s a mad swirl of holding on to the present while looking toward the future.
Between the last of the sorting and packing and the “last times” (Last time doing things for a while like going to that restaurant, seeing those friends, going to the farmer’s market, etc.), I feel rushed, terrified, and completely unprepared to go off into the world.
In the same moments, I feel giddy and excited to know that I will travel a bit in the states and then go off to Portugal for three months. I can even relish the idea that we have no firm plans after three months in Portugal, and we can literally go anywhere.
Sitting at my desk, I wonder what from these drawers need to come on the road with me. I am firmly in the pen and paper camp when it comes to paying bills. I love writing out checks and checking off the bills which I have written out by month on loose-leaf. While I am resigned to paying my bills online, the loose-leaf checklist is definitely coming.
I have a pencil case which is coming as well as some stamps, envelopes, and the checkbooks. I haven’t decided yet abut my tiny electronic Simon game, but the fidget spinner has already made the first cut.
There are five different recorders in my drawer: sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. I want to bring them all, but I have no idea if I have the space. OK, really, I know I have the space for the first part of the trip while we are still in the States. I’m just not sure if I want to pack for the next 3 and a half months and pare down again later, or try to pare down now.
For now, I am content to spend the next five days looking at the daisies and echinacea and watching the birds eat at the feeder while I pack up the last things that are in the house. I will miss “Bird TV” which is what we call our feeder. The feeder itself is going to a friend’s house. It is the same friend at whose house we will stay right before we leave the country, so I will have another chance to watch before we depart.
Before we leave the country, I have 9 more work trips. I’ll be in Connecticut, Louisiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Kansas, Colorado, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and New Jersey as well as all the states I need to drive through to get to those states. Hopefully, I’ll have time to make a side trip from Texas to Oklahoma, thereby marking off another state in my quest to see all 50. (I’ll still need Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.)
So the day is ending, and I have more work tomorrow. I know I will cry again as I say more goodbyes, but I in a few days, I will be house-free and once I drive away, (Yes, that will cause tears, too.) I will be able to turn my full attention to the wonder of travel, and that will make all the difference.
