or “How to Procrastinate Yourself into an Awesome Future”

When Taylor and I started talking about our future, about doing things like going to live in, say Costa Rica in five years, I was excited about the possibilities of travel, immersion in another culture, learning a new language and living near the ocean. I had no idea how procrastination and perspective would shape the things to come.

One part of the plan was to refinance the house to lower our payments and save some money.  In the haze of the daily grind, a year or two went by and one day we woke up and were like,  “Oh! We forgot to refinance the house!”  We realized if we wanted to get out from under the house in less than 5 years, the cost of refinancing didn’t make sense anymore. Unfortunately we weren’t quite ready to move to Costa Rica;  our Spanish was still weak and we didn’t have a way to pay the bills there.

Why not see our own country first?  It made sense to see more of this amazing place before we left to go somewhere else, right?  We had both traveled to numerous cities within the US, but neither of us had ever been to the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone National Park, or Mount Rushmore, or even just diving in the keys.  So, we decided we would try to sell the house, buy an RV and See America.

We didn’t know exactly how it would all work, but we figured we would live in the RV, save money, travel around, learn to do what we do remotely, and at least be taking a first step towards making our lives what we want.  Maybe we will find some other places we want to live either instead of, or before or after Costa Rica, who knows?  All of these new ideas for how we were going to live were awesome and I was very excited about them.

I’ve recently realized that my perspective has changed completely.  I had always thought of people who do awesome and unconventional things as in a special category that I didn’t belong to: Other People.  Now, we are those people, despite all the reasons I used to think we couldn’t be.  I’ve changed my mind into a place where we are allowed to make our life what we want.

Looking back, it’s funny; Taylor and I are each convinced that this was our own idea and we are both happy that the other was up for it.  I guess you can’t ask for a better plan than that.