What Could Go Wrong?

Here’s a little secret about me you may not know (or you totally may). I am a big planner and an even bigger worrier. Some of my friends even called me “Neur” in highschool, a reference to how my worrying sometimes seemed borderline neurotic. You would think that someone half crazy enough to sell their house and pull themselves out of the workforce at the peak of their career to travel full-time in a small RV with their family of four is carefree and without a worry in the world, but guess again. Don’t believe me?  I just checked the voltage in our Airstream for the 10th time tonight to make sure it is within tolerance for our air conditioner. Luckily, I married Jamie who provides a healthy dose of balance in the carefree camp.

So, it would only seem natural that someone who tends to both worry and plan would spend the time to go through the thought process of what worries them most about taking such a giant leap and do something like this. I thought it would be fun to capture this right as our trip got going to see how different the worries may be at the end of the trip. So, here we go with the top five worries I have had about taking this trip, however silly some of them, or all of them, may be.

• Homeschooling being an exercise in insanity. Hopefully we live up to that old adage of leaving something better than we found it – pretty important when you are talking about your kids’ brains.
• Not being able to find a job when we decide to stop travelling. How the heck will this look on a resume, anyway? We were relatively successful (depending on your definition of that) and financially stable before taking this trip – will we ever be able to again if we decide to return to that life?
• Getting out of shape. Yeah, we’ll be doing a lot of hiking, biking, skiing, hopefully some climbing, etc. But, for some reason I am worried to death that I won’t be able to run everyday or exercise. You runners out there, you know what I am talking about!
• We don’t like travelling full time. We kind of went all in with the assumption we would, so…
• Not enough time with just Jamie and I. We live full time in a 200 square foot home without doors, we don’t get to ship the kids somewhere during the day, and we don’t have a babysitter living next door anymore.

Those are the ones that seem to worry me the most for some reason. Now we do have real, legitimate worries about getting seriously sick or hurt when we are gone. We also worry about our family and friends we left behind getting sick or hurt. We worry about our loved ones that are already fighting serious illness like our sweet cousin, Rowan (you can learn more here). That should put those small worries above into perspective. Now that I think about it, those five things above are probably not worth worrying about at all. But, as the great philosopher and sailor Popeye said, I yam what I yam, and that’s what I yam.

So, what’s the point of this post? If you want to get out and try something like this or have another dream you have talked about for years, go for it. You don’t have to be the carefree type to pull something like this off. Just write down your worries and then ask yourself, is that even worth worrying about? Does that stuff even matter? If not, make the decision and like the sign on the taco place we stumbled on our last night in Richmond said, “Don’t look back!”

P.S. I asked Jamie and the kids what their biggest worries are about the trip. It will be interesting to see if these change by the end of the trip as well…

• Jamie (the carefree one) – She just said that if your dreams are bigger than your worries then there’s nothing to worry about
• Smith (12 yo boy) – Wifi (not being able to find it)
• Archer (10 yo girl) – Sharp turns on mountains

Now those seem legit.