At what point do you say “Enough is enough! We work to live and we ‘live’ to work. This is not living, this is existing.”
We have both felt this way for years. We will start to feel like we are getting ahead then get stuck with an illness that expends our savings. Just since we have been married we have experienced unemployment; deaths of friends and family from old age, suicide and cancer; and many other setbacks and tragedies.
Above all, the most traumatic experience of our lives occurred with the full-term stillbirth of our son a week after his due date in August of 2014 that shook us both to our core. Having this loss after years of trying and turning to fertility treatments pushed us to the edge of our being, not to mention the continued infertility. I’m happy to say that in the end, this has brought us closer than I had ever imagined, even though the path to get to this point brought us both to our breaking point on multiple occasions.
The idea of living life differently than the norm didn’t come over night. I had been fascinated by tiny homes and the idea of functional minimalism for a few years. I can pin point the moment that was a stepping stone to this idea to live outside of our comfort zone and try something new. It was in the fall of 2016 when we were in a deep rut and decided we should do something spontaneous and irresponsible. To us, that was going to Chicago for a long weekend by ourselves having a night out downtown then going to an NHL hockey game the following evening. I had been to Chicago many times, but being there by ourselves and navigating via public transportation was an experience that made the city new and exciting. To me, this was the turning point in “We have to do something different with our lives”.
Our dreams are not of becoming rich and famous, but rather to get to a place where we can live modestly without fear of financial or emotional ruin around every corner. They consist of finding a place where we can breathe and relax after a day of work without being drained to the point of not being able to function. Until we find this place, we have our van. Our 2004 Ford E350, which we have given the name “Seymour Buttes” (see-more, get it?), will be our home for over the winter while we travel and look for a place to continue our dreams together. We have some idea of areas we want to check out, but for a short time we plan to travel and keep our eyes open.
We plan to document our trip with this blog as well as with videos in order to keep our family and friends up to date with our adventures.
It’s hard leaving the place we’ve called home for the majority of our lives; we may even end up back here in the future. Sometimes you can’t enjoy a place to its full potential until you’ve experienced living somewhere else.
I know it won’t always be fun, but it will be new and it will ours.
This is a story of hope.
-Jon
Shaking the Cage 