On the Road Again

The short version is that Simone and I (and Cecil!) have put most of our belongings in storage, and have begun a grand sojourn around the country, with plans to stop at various destinations for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months at a time. Our first destination is Vermont, and we plan to be there for most of the fall (at least September and October, we’ll see beyond that). (Doesn’t mean the whole time will be Vermont – we’re definitely planning some day trips to other parts of New England, and a weekend in New York City to see a few friends. But it is where we plan to have our base of operations for the fall!)

The how is actually pretty straightforward: my job is very remote friendly, so barring the occasional travel day, I can do my job anywhere with a semi-decent internet connection. And Simone is in a remote-friendly graduate program, so again, nothing to hold us in one spot. So if you have that freedom, why not make use of it? I’m still working through all of this, which is also an interesting experiment, to see how I do keeping up with work while traveling. (And yes, they’re aware that I’m doing this and have my boss’s blessing.) Continuing to get paychecks certainly makes the traveling a lot easier!

The why is a bit more complex, but only a little. The simple part is: because we can. We’re in a position to do so, we both like to travel and we’ve found we travel well together, so why not go?

The more complex part is a whole pile of reasons. We’ve been wanting to experiment with traveling light (and with the dog) in such case that we decide to move out of the country (I see the authoritarian and theocratic trends happening around the country and it worries me. And, y’know, could be fun to live in another country regardless!). Also, Simone has always wanted to travel more, and I love being able to enable that. Also also, Portland has gotten too expensive to realistically buy the sort of property I’d like (house, a little land, privacy, no roommates), so this gives us an opportunity to scope out different parts of the country and see where might be both more affordable and have the right vibe for both of us.

And also, I’ve been feeling kind of stagnant where I was. That’s no diss on where I was living! It’s just that it was easy to fall into a sort of complacency where it was easy end up in a “default state” – the “default” was quite comfortable. I’m hoping (optimistically, I know) that the change of pace will help shift things up, and encourage more creative endeavors, like getting out with a camera more, writing more, and so on. Doing the “travel somewhere and then be there for a month or two” feels like a good balance point where all my free time isn’t eaten by the travel itself, but we’re still getting out and seeing new things regularly.

I don’t want to overpromise on regular updates, but I do imagine I’ll be sharing more bits as we wander on here, so if you want regular updates, subscribe to the newsletter (it just emails you the post when I add a new one – no spam) or add the RSS feed to your reader!