Its our 10-Year anniversary. In Asheville North Carolina
We’ve been traveling full-time for 2 months and we’ve driven 3801 miles since the day we left although we’re only 999 miles door to door from our first stop, go figure.
We’re Living Smaller and Its’ Totally OK.
We’ve been living day in day out in 230(ish) square feet with a single bathroom. That’s less than 10% of the size of the place we moved out of with 1/3 of the bathrooms… never mind the basement, the playroom, the 2 car garage, the barn and the 2 acres.
I don’t miss all that, some of it, but not all of it.
I definitely miss having some separate space at certain times. Mostly its about work. I have to be a lot more deliberate about when, where and how I work.
I’ve Escaped Endless Work Syndrome (I Think).
When we lived in a house I could escape any time to my office and work for a bit or for the day…. or for a week… hardly coming out except to eat with the wife and kids and walk the dog.
That wasn’t good. I don’t do that any more. I can’t.
I have to plan when and where I’m going to work. If I have to record audio or video I need to be at the co-working space for sure otherwise I’ll go to a coffee shop. No matter what I’m working on I can’t be at ‘home’ with the kids, there’s too much insanity in too few feet.
What I’m not doing now is defaulting to “work mode” and that was definitely my default mode before this trip.
When you’ve got your own business and a home office its easy to work all the time. There’s always something more to do if you’re looking to grow and improve and even when there’s nothing pressing you can zone out if front of a machine and while away the days.
Fuck that.
Lately I’ve been reading Perry Marhsall’s “80/20 Sales and Marketing“. Don’t let the name fool you its not really for sales and marketing. If you’re familiar with the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule, this book offers practical application of the principle in business generally.
Long story short I’m not doing anything that I don’t have to do myself.
I had started down this road but reading this book has reminded me to ask myself whenever I’m working whether or not what I’m doing is something that only I can do.
The truth is that the answer “yes, only I can do this” has become pretty rare.
As soon as I find myself doing something that I realize doesn’t qualify I stop, document what I’m doing, think about what parts of I can automate or outsource and then assign those parts to my assistant (or program them) and then I move on.
I run an online business and I didn’t even look at my email for 4 days.
If there’s something so urgent in my email that it can’t wait 4 days then I better be hearing about it in another medium.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve re-evaluated my priorities.
I’m not letting business go, quite the contrary, I’m making it more of a business and less of a job and this is allowing me more and more time to actually fully experience all these fabulous places we’re visiting.
But if We Could Just Pull Two Airstreams…
This space becomes really, really small when someone gets sick.
You miss things like a bathtub. How do you put your kid with a stomach virus in the tub and how do you keep her away from the rest of you living in a space like this?
Turns out you rent a hotel room.
At least that’s what we did.
We’re a pretty healthy bunch for the most part but as it turns out, even without the kids in school its not possible to avoid some illness… mostly because its impossible to keep them from putting things in their mouths.
Its infuriating.
But it would be regardless of whether or not we were living this small its just accentuated because we see it every single time it happens.
As I write this there are 3 of us with some stage of a stomach bug.
Yep.
Gross.
I know you didn’t ask for that but there you have it anyway.
When we were first gearing up to do this I remember saying to Becky “oh man, what will we do when people get sick…?”.
Well, turns out you just get through it. I’m not going to try to tell you that its not frustrating or difficult, it is, but the trade off of being able to travel like this and fully experience new places is totally worth it and I think Becky will agree.
We Dine Like Food Critics
We’ve have been enjoying the best restaurants every location has to offer. We try as many of the best places as we can. We’ve got a big focus on local and organic of course but we’re also chasing down food trucks and “best cheap eats”.
I’m riding new trails practically every week (That’s like a dream dude, seriously).
We’re trying new things
My kids have huge stones. They’ll talk to anybody and try it all.
I’m happy to have found this in drafts. I knew I was doing something right with work.
Asheville, as it turned out in the end, was number 2 on our list. Perhaps one day it will be number one? We’ll see.
