One Year on the Road: Carrie

I first realized we were coming up on our one year anniversary of being nomads when it occurred to me that I have absolutely no idea how long we plan to be nomadic. It’s not really something we ever talked about. Well, we did in the sense that we said we would do it as long as it's fun and we're enjoying it. But we never put a number of years to it. So as we celebrate our one year nomad anniversary, I thought it might be a good time to reflect over the last year.

Lesson 1: I don’t need nearly as many clothes as I thought I did.

I used to have a walk-in closet the size of some bedrooms. Certainly bigger than the second bedroom in our current Airbnb. And I made Jim use the closet in his office for his clothes. I also had 2 dressers full of clothes. Once, I counted how many pairs of shoes I had (they had their own closet). I won’t tell you how many pairs I had; let’s just say it was far more than the four pairs I travel with now. Today, I have my running shoes, hiking shoes, converse, and flip flops. That’s it. No high heels, no cute sandals, no extra converse in cute colors. And you know what? I don’t miss them. At all. Of course, I don’t have the work meetings I used to have and I see far fewer people otherwise. I now spend most of my time in athleisure wear and have little interest in doing much that would require I wear anything else.

Clothes were something I worried about when we decided to become nomads. I feared I would get bored with my clothes. After a year of travel, I’ve realized I can buy clothes anywhere I go if I’m bored with what I have.

This was just the move from Colorado to Florida in 2017 when we downsized from 3300 sq ft to 2000 sq ft. And that was just round one of many purges during that move!

My current closet in our Airbnb. I feel like I have way too much stuff right now. One pair of jeans, two pairs of capris, hiking pants, and a plethora of athleisure wear.

Lesson 2: Most People have no idea what our life is like day-to-day, but there are way more nomads than I realized.

Two other nomad couples we know from Colorado.

Even though most people have no idea what a nomad life looks like and will openly admit it, there has been no shortage of advice given from well-meaning friends and family on how we should travel and where we should go. I have found the best place to get information on nomad travel is from other nomad travelers. There's no shortage of nomad blogs and nomad Facebook groups out there. Many nomads actually run their blogs as a business. (We have no plans to monetizing this blog. We write to share our adventures with friends and family and for me, as a place to keep the memories of our adventures.)

I learned that if I've thought of the question, someone has answered it on one of the many nomad blogs or Facebook groups out there. We aren't the first ones to take this journey. And everyone has their way of doing it - from #vanlife to #digitalnomad to simply a home-free, financially independent life!

Our amazing private balcony in Barcelona that kept us from becoming insane.

Lesson 3: If you are going to end up in the midst of a pandemic causing a lockdown, do it somewhere you are allowed to go outside for exercise.

Seems obvious, right? When we started planning this adventure in July of last year, we absolutely did not consider that travel as we know it would almost completely shut down. Or shut down for months and months. Ahhh, hindsight is 20/20. If we had known the lockdown would last as long as it did in Spain and that we wouldn’t be allowed to leave the apartment, even for a walk, would we have stayed? Looking back, probably not. To be fair, at the time, the options were the US or Spain, and it was March, and neither of us were excited to go back to the US, especially in March. But thinking about it now, being locked in our (really really) really small apartment was HARD. Actually, what was really hard was watching people in the US complain about the lockdown since they could still drive around, walk around, go running, go for walks, get Amazon deliveries, etc. Baking and our beautiful balcony kept me sane. COVID has been hard for everyone in different ways. But man, those views from our private balcony were outstanding!

Lesson 4: Moving more than every five weeks is exhausting!

I’ve learned that I am a nomad that likes to feel settled. I like routine. I like going to the gym (when there isn't a pandemic) and I like fully unpacking my suitcase. I really dislike living out of my suitcase—it's like my stuff needs a new place to live temporarily! 😊 I like getting familiar with the place I'm at and five weeks seems to be the minimum amount of time to leisurely do that. It gives us time to see all the things we want to see plus hang out with people we meet on the road or just relax with a good book. Surprisingly, travel days are my least favorite days. Lugging my stuff and my body from point A to point B is exhausting and usually results in long days. I've spent plenty of time in airports, planes, and with stinky people so I value putting distance between the times I have to pack up all my stuff to do it again and again.

Lesson 5: it's even more amazing than I thought it would be.

Whatever I thought things would be like traveling full-time, it's even better.

I do get lonely for my friends, especially when I'm in the mood for an adventure and Jim is exhausted from all the cruise-like excursions I've organized for us. (Jim now wakes up and asks where are we hiking today instead of are we hiking today 😁). I have found the nomad journey to be so freeing—and just what I feel like I needed to continue growing into who I want to be. I’ve also found that nothing exposes cracks in your relationship (no matter how good the relationship is) like traveling with your husband full-time. I get moody. He gets moody. The old outlets for our moodiness aren’t always accessible. Like calling up my best friend to grab a cup of coffee and vent just isn’t an option. Often calling up a friend at all isn’t an option with the time differences. It’s forced me to find other healthy outlets like yoga practice, or even simply talking about what it is that is bothering me.

What would I change?

I thought it would be freeing to sell everything and travel. It is. But it's not as freeing as I thought it would be. Travel logistics and not having a place to go if something (like a pandemic) happens, can be a pain in the butt. I thought we would have a little more spontaneity. A little more, oh hey look, our favorite band is playing in some random location let's go see them. We are booked out so far, it's hard to be spontaneous. We are hoping to “build in” some spontaneity in the coming year. Laugh if you must, but we are innately planners and know our limits. We will never be the “oh hey, let's jump on a plane and go to Serbia this weekend” kinda people. Mostly because we already have plans!