Personal

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Settling Down, Or Not

This morning’s post is a response to one written by Tioga George yesterday. The post explores the question that those in fixed residences ask of nomads: when are you going to settle down. George’s response was well structured, displaying the pros and cons of both lifestyles, especially in this paragraph:

Everybody on the TiogaRV Team agrees that stick home people are certainly living with less anxiety than us RVing vagabonds. Knowing all about the place where you are living is very calming. The routines that are established for stick home people can be wonderful. Tending a garden, for example.

For me, the hardest part of RVing is the uncertainty of what comes next. And the hardest part of living in a fixed home was the certainty of what comes next. I have discovered that I am a more fulfilled person when I don’t know what comes next because it forces me to be engaged in my life.

As my RVing days march on, I am finding a centred routine to my life that I can slip into the context of where I stop. Unlike George, I can pause somewhere for a few months and be content to discover the community, finding plenty of ‘excitement’ in that, but, like him, I need to move on at some point.

Why? The best answer I can give to that is that I am my best self when I am moving about and forced to go through life with my eyes wide open. I don’t full-time RV because it is an easy life choice, but rather because it makes me feel alive.

I think there are two categories of wanderers. There are those who are displeased with their life and take to wandering in search of that missing piece of themselves. These wanderers are further sub-divided into those who do find what they are missing and those that do not. I used to fit into the former sub-category.

But now I fit in to the category of wanderer that is displeased with her life and takes to wandering because wandering itself is that missing piece.

Can you wander forever?

George concludes his post with the scenario that wanderers fear: having to stop and stay put at some point:

Now comes the question that every RVing vagabond must face, sooner or late! When should vagabonding stop and staying put start? We do not know the answer to that question. However, we suspect that when the time to stop searching for adventure arrives for us, it will be abundantly apparent.

There will almost certainly come a time when I need to hang up my keys. I may not have to give up travel then. But if I have to, for whatever reason, I think I will be able to do so without bitterness. I will be looking back on a life richly lived and be satisfied to rest for a while, savouring the knowledge that I did what I wanted with my life and that I have no regrets.

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Response to an Email

The following email just landed in my inbox:

Hi – I subscribe to your blog. I wish you could please write more about travels and less about the personal woes. Thanks!

I’d like to remind my readers that full-time RVing pre-retirement is not a perpetual vacation. It’s real life. And this blog serves as a chronicle of my full-timing life. I wish it could all be about travel, but I can’t ‘travel’ all the time. Those who want me to write more about ‘travel’ are welcome to contribute to this part of my budget by buying my ebooks and hiring me for contracts.

In retrospect, I realise that the name of my blog doesn’t reflect the daily reality of my life, but, really, how much travel does one person need to do to qualify as having a ‘traveling’ lifestyle? In the last twelve months I’ve gone from Vancouver Island to the Arctic Circle, the Okanagan to Quebec, the Vancouver area to Washington state. All while addressing the same mundane issues of real life that I had while stuck in a fixed residence.

I practise a policy of honesty when writing the blog. I got up this morning and realised that I hadn’t updated in a while. Why? Nothing’s been going on. Why? I got screwed over by a client. But it’s not all bad; I have exciting plans coming up! I’m heading into Oregon! I have some major changes ahead! Yeah, I’m paused right now, but things are going to pick up. And my teasing tone showed, I thought, that I’m in really good spirits and enjoying my down time.

A few days ago I wrote about health issues I’m having. I guess this could be considered sharing ‘personal woes.’ It’s relevant to this blog because it’s going to affect the choices I’m going to be making over the next few months. It’s also relevant to my readers because it offered evidence of the problems with the Canadian health care system, an issue pertinent to Canadian full-time RVers.

Obviously my blog can’t be to everyone what they wish it could be. It certainly isn’t to me because I really do wish I was independently wealthy and could treat full-time RVing pre-retirement as a perpetual vacation.

But this email has made me decide to explicitly state something I decided on about a month ago: I’ve given up on using this blog as a way to generate some income to finance my life. So, I’m going to stop worrying about how often I post.

That said, there are thousands of resources for RVing around North America, but this is the only one about full-time RVing in Canada pre-retirement. My readers only get a glimpse into a very tiny part of my life, but I feel that what I share is relevant to the purpose of my blog. So, I’m not going to stop including contextual information when I do post.

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Paused

Nothing much to report at my end. The week or so of cold weather we had was conducive to finally getting some real downtime at home and my days have pretty much been filled with cat cuddles, movies, and embroidery.

Without going into too much detail, a large payment from a client is very long over due so I’m having some cash flow issues. Resolution is in sight, but I don’t expect to get much more done here in Blaine except for perhaps a day trip.

It feels like I just got here, but incredibly enough, I’ll be pulling out mid-day on Tuesday! And I’m heading south, into Oregon! And it will be in Oregon that my RVing life will change forever. Da da da dum.

(I won’t be offended by the eye rolls that result from that last bit. 😀 )

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Expediency

For about five years now I’ve suspected that I have certain medical condition. Attempts to get tested for it in Quebec were dismal failures. After waiting for hours at walk in clinics, I’d get the usual harried GP who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the patients who would call me a hypochondriac to my face and only send me for blood work to get me out of his hair. I’d then wait several weeks to get an appointment at the blood clinic, wait hours for the test, wait weeks for the results from the doctor’s office because I’d been told ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’, and then try to follow up to be told ‘if we haven’t called you we either lost the results or you’re fine.’ It just boggled me to be treated that way when I had a plastic surgeon on speed dial with whom consults were fully covered by Quebec medical insurance!

My last attempt to get tested was the summer of ’08, before I hit the road. Since then, I’ve essentially been without health care coverage and I’ve also been daunted by the thought of breaking into another province’s medical system.

Long story short, I’ve been feeling poorly for a very long time and this month it’s come to a head. I’ve been eating well, resting, getting exercise, managing my stress levels, etc., but I just keep feeling worse.

So, this morning I got online and Googled testing in Bellingham for the condition I think I have. I found a website where I could pay for the test online, print out a confirmation, and go to a lab in Bellingham immediately and get the test done. This sounded too good to be true, so I made sure the place is legit (yes) and even found a 10% off coupon. So, I PayPaled the company $43. By 11:15 I’d printed out my confirmation and by 11:30 I was in the car on the way to the clinic.

I got there at exactly noon, prepared to wait for hours or even be told to come back another day. Instead, I was checked in and brought into a cubicle immediately. I was out of there in ten minutes flat!!!

The results should land in my inbox in the next couple of days. Regardless of what they say, the next step will be to find a doctor. If they are positive, then I’ll need some drugs and if they are negative I’ll need further testing. At least, I have one step out of the way and I’m feeling very proactive!

The lady at the lab said I was the fifth Canadian patient that morning and that Canadians come down so they can get their blood work out of the way more quickly. So, it sounds like the BC health care system is just as efficient as the one in Quebec!

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A Stitch in Time

One of the hobbies I gave up when I hit the road was cross-stitching (a type of embroidery). I have really missed doing it, but I couldn’t find any reason to continue with it. You only need so much artwork on the walls, or embroidered pillows and hand towels!

Well, I’ve been looking for a piece of artwork to fill up one spot in the kitchen/library; something that would tie in all my colours, including the orange of The Chair I’m Working On, without having too much yellow, and which would clearly reflect me. Tall order! After combing through some antique shops, I had an epiphany and decided to combine this search with my growing desire to get my hands on some Aida cloth: why not embroider the ‘perfect’ artwork?

So, I shifted my search to cross-stitching kits and came across the most perfect thing on eBay. So, this is what I’m working this month while on ‘vacation’, although I expect it’ll take a year or two to complete it:

all my colours AND my china pattern!

This is what I’ve done since the kit arrived on Saturday and represents about nine hours worth of stitching, not counting the time spent separating the floss:

Once I get the bulk of the white done, the rest of the stitching will take a lot less time since most of the counting will have already been done. Undoing a large section of cross stitching is very demoralizing, so you definitely want to start slow and get it right the first time!

It’s nice to be able to spend a couple of hours a day on a craft project and not look up periodically to see a bunch of more pressing things to deal with. I’ll say it again, I’m glad the renos are done!