by Michele | Aug 2, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Dan’s mom, Shelly, and Carter at the pumpkin farm last year.
Step 1: Put a big sign in front of your house that says it is for sale.
Step 2: Wait for your family to freak out.
Okay, this is exactly what we didn’t do and hopefully anyone reading this blog will try to avoid this approach as well. We were not looking forward to telling Grandma and Grandpa that their adorable grandson would soon be living on a boat out of easy cuddle range, however we decided that it would be very unfair to put our house up for sale without letting them know first.
Let me just insert a little history here to help everyone understand why we were hesitant to tell our parents. First of all, we have a very good relationship with Dan’s parents. They live only a few blocks from us, which means that we see them a lot. It will be a major change for us (and them) to not see each other basically every day. Secondly, sailing off on a boat is not the first time that we have told our families that we are moving somewhere else, but it will be the first time that we actually do it. We wanted to make sure that we were far enough along in the planning and preparation that we would be taken seriously, as well as have as many answers to their questions as possible. Finally, over the last year we have been trying to prepare them for the idea of cruising by talking a lot about sailing and other people that we have met who are currently cruising.
To be honest, I think our general preparation worked to make the idea sound feasible, but I’m not sure that we overcame the obstacle of being taken seriously. We told Dan’s parents at dinner at Cracker Barrel (his mom’s favorite restaurant, mine less so) that we were putting our house up for sale in August and that we planned to move to Florida as soon as possible to find a boat to live on. And then…nothing happened. It was extremely anticlimactic. Eventually they did ask some of the basic questions like “What about pirates?” and “How do you make sure Carter doesn’t fall in?”, but the overall mood was so subdued I almost wished someone would cry or yell or something. It felt like being a kid again…
“Hey mom! I’m going to be an astronaut when I grow up!”
“That’s great, honey, now wash your hands for dinner.”
Since that day, a week and a half ago, there still hasn’t been much reaction. Things have been mentioned in an off-hand kind of way, but no more questions or concerns have been voiced. I have a feeling that may change once we are actually leaving, but for now I just don’t think that it is real to them yet.
Note: some of you may have noticed the lack of information on my family’s reaction to the news. That’s because we would like to tell them in person, but we haven’t been able to get up to Chicago to talk to them about it yet.
by Michele | Jul 21, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Playing horse is just one of many great ways to spend some time!
If you listen closely enough throughout the course of your day, you will probably hear a mention of “spending time” more than once. “I spent some time going through that report…” or “I’m going to spend some time with my kids this weekend…”, you know what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, I think that too many of us don’t actually realize the consequences of what spending our time actually means.
Americans, in general, are not well known for our ability to save money. We like to spend it as it comes. (Not exactly the most prudent choice, but we’re not talking about what’s advisable, just what is true.) However, it seems that the opposite mindset is true of our time. For some reason our society has decided that if we work like maniacs now, we will be able to retire when we are at some unknown “older” age… at which point we will have “earned” enough time to relax and enjoy life. We have, unfortunately, picked the wrong commodity to try and hold on to.
In a program called The Truth Project, a recurring question that is asked is this: “Do I really believe that what I believe is really real?” That question has plagued me ever since I first heard it. People say that time is our most precious asset, it’s the only thing that we can never have more of. But do we really believe that’s true? Because if we really believed that, wouldn’t we do everything that we could to cherish every second and be a little more judicious with them?
My son was born almost 20 months ago. They have truly been the fastest 20 months of my life, and I’m sure that the months are not going to start rolling by any slower in the future. It’s about time for us to start spending them a little more wisely. Dan and I are in the process of finding out what it really means to live what we believe. I hope you will find out for yourself.
Follow your Dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Michele | Jul 11, 2012 | Preparation Stage
“Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity” -Henry Hartman
And so begins the next step of our journey. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dan and I have officially changed our mindset (and actions) from what we like to call the Planning Stage to the Preparation Stage. As I said in my last post, we are preparing now to be ready to cruise by the end of next year’s hurricane season. We’ll be (hopefully) saying Happy New Year 2014 from an anchorage in the Bahamas. That being said, there is a LOT to do in a year if we really want to be prepared to get out there.
First and foremost among items on our To-Do list is getting our house sold. We are frantically fixing up all the little loose ends around our house that have been left undone in the almost 4 years that we have lived here. Prime example: the family that lived in our house prior to us moving in apparently decided they like their mantle piece on the basement fireplace too much to leave it behind, (totally bizarre I know) so we had to put a new one in. Luckily, we’re hoping to have the vast majority of those things completed within the next 2-3 weeks, as we would like to have our house on the market by the beginning of August. Speaking of getting our house on the market, anyone know a good realtor in Peoria?
Secondly, we have instituted a policy of no spending that is not beneficial to live on a boat. While that may seem somewhat broad, the biggest part of controlling our spending is based on the mindset of looking at every dollar going out of our bank account. Every dollar we spend on land is another dollar we won’t have when we’re living on a very fixed income on the boat. Going out to eat? No way. Visible home improvements? Sure. New swimsuit? Maybe. There are still quite a few large purchases/financial obligations that we will need to deal with before we can leave, but hopefully many of those will help us make money (like Dan’s scuba instructor certification) or save money (like getting LASIK surgery) in the future.
So what’s next, quitting our jobs? buying a boat? telling our family? duhn duhn duhn. Coming soon to a blog near you!
Follow your Dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Michele | Jul 5, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Maybe we’ll set a few of these off when we leave
Today, people all over the United States will be celebrating Independence Day aka the 4th of July. We all get together for picnics and fireworks, and then tomorrow we’ll all go back to work. It leads me to reflect on how close Dan and I are to our own “Independence Day” when we can cast off the lines and really start our cruising life. Almost a year ago now, we took a hard look at what we would need to do to accomplish that goal, and we estimated it would take us around 4 years of saving and planning to have a comfortable cruising kitty.
That was a year ago. Now we’re sitting in office chairs wondering “what the heck are we doing here?!” We’ve come to find that doing the work-a-day life is significantly harder to stomach once you’ve realized there is another option. Judging by some of the other blogs that I have read by cruisers who have already left, we aren’t the only ones who have experienced the over-anticipation that occurs once you start planning to cruise. Frankly, 4 years is just waaay too long to tolerate under our current mindset.
Therefore, we have decided to speed up the process a little. By a little, I mean our goal is now to have our butts in the Caribbean by the end of next year. There are a lot of steps that we are currently evaluating, but let’s just say that things are going to start moving at a quicker pace in our house very shortly.
Independence Day, here we come!
by Michele | Jun 27, 2012 | Preparation Stage
I have to admit, as much as I like documentaries, I can only watch one every couple months. I just don’t think I can handle the shock to my system more often than that. If you’ve ever watched movies like Supersize Me or Sicko, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Dan and I recently watched the documentary Bag It on Netflix and it was another shocker, though I would recommend it especially for those of us who have to worry about the state of the ocean in the near future.
Bag It begins with the basic premise that disposable plastic items (such as the typical grocery bag) are wasteful and harmful to the environment. Why spend so much energy to produce something that is going to be instantly thrown away? The movie goes on to address the impact of plastic garbage in the oceans and the toxicity of plastic in our bodies. It is amazing how many chemicals are getting into our systems from the plastic products that we use everyday.
Watching this movie definitely gave me some additional confidence about our choice to move onto a sailboat in the near future. I’ve known for a while that our physical environment is toxic to us and I hope that removing ourselves from the “plastic” lifestyle will help to decrease the impact on our health and especially Carter’s health as he grows up. I understand that there will always be risks to our health anywhere we go, but why impose them on ourselves?
Bag It also drove home the responsibility that we have as consumers, and especially as future cruisers, to protect our oceans. If we intend to enjoy beautiful beaches and bountiful reefs, we should take care to preserve them. I don’t know what kind of life my son will choose to pursue, but if someday he has a boat of his own, I sure hope there is a beautiful anchorage for him to watch a sunset from. It’s our job to make sure that’s possible.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.