Cross Road and Game Day decisions

Well friends and family, I am not exactly sure how we here we are in April already (time really does fly when you are having fun) I mention this and share this post as we have finally arrived at our critical, game day decision timeframe in terms of how the second half of our trip will evolve.

A little backstory time, shall we?

Just prior to tossing our docklines and leaving, we had planned for an 8 month trip, taking us south from our home port in Southern California and into Mexico, followed by Central America as far as we could/wanted to go, maybe we would do the Canal and onto the East Coast...or maybe we wouldn't. We discussed that in April, we would re-visit the plan then and make a final decision as what direction we would go for the rest of the season (and based on our weather window still available.) Despite having plans to not work during this time, we did have some key decisions that needed to make along the way as to what our life would look like on the back end of the trip. We left shore with a few balls in the air work-wise, and plans for these did evolve as we traveled, as we somewhat expected. As John Lennon aptly put it:

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans"

I so desperately wish we were at retirement age and/or not needing to be bothered with these somewhat important things such as work, but alas, we are not independently wealthy, money in fact doesn't grow on trees (unless you are a farmer, which neither of us are planning as a future career) so, we would need to think ahead as to our future work/life plans.

That is unless of course any of your lovely readers have some $$ burning a hole in your pocket and want to angel invest in us traveling forever. I am also seriously considering responding to a few of these overly generous Nigerian princes that have been emailing me wanting to share their bounty of wealth. I'll keep you updated on that, and do reach out if either of the above applies to you. Paypal account is ready to take orders :)

Ah, dreams....

Before we left, we discussed that this trip would be a sort-of litmus test to see if this is something we really liked and wanted to do full time/all hands in. With this in mind, when we began the daunting process of getting ourselves ready for the trip, and whittling down of all our stuff as we moved out of our condo and onto our boat full time, we kept just enough furniture/stuff to furnish a one bedroom. A little safety net , that should we get into it and decide it's not for us, we hadn't abandon everything from our previous land life. To this day, it still amazes me how much "crap" we acquired; how hard it was to part with some things, despite just sitting in boxes for years, some of which were forgotten as even existing amongst our "stuff" AND then how easily you can "edit" your life down to a small storage unit, expertly fit together like a Tetris master.

(My thoughts on our "stuff" exactly mirror George Carlin's standup routine on this. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I'll save you the google search:

This is comedy GOLD, my friends! God, I miss this man and his hilarious wisdom/braindroppings.

Anyway, dealing with all our "stuff" and editing down to essentials was both an extremely liberating experience and terrifying all at the same time (I constantly was muttering under my breath, "What in the HELL are we doing?!" and having mild panic attacks on the daily.) In the end and as we locked up and drove away from our edited, previous life for the last time, I truly wondered what would become of our stuff. Would we be coming back to move it out into another land home, or to sell it all off and jump 100% into the cruising life?

I will caveat all this with saying there was nothing, and I mean nothing wrong with our previous lifestyle. In fact, we had a beautiful, wonderful life, prior to embarking on this journey, incredibly fulfilling and surrounded by amazing friends and family both near and far. I am astounded at how many of our nearest and dearest wholeheartedly embraced our idea to take off into the sunset (or maybe you all are way, waaaay too polite to have voiced concern otherwise OR you are all just as nuts as we are! Likely the latter and why we love you all)

When your cup runneth over....well, don't stop there - get a bigger cup!

So we embarked on this trip in late January with just our adventures in mind and a dream to see how far we wanted to go with it. As I said, we aren't independently wealthy, no trust funds to support an indefinite lifestyle of leisure. We worked our butts off to make this trip happen and are freaking beyond excited that it actually IS our reality right now.

So anyway, here we are! And with a HELL YES and all hands, toes and ponytails (or in Jay's case, his headphones) in; we fully enjoy this lifestyle and absolutely love it! We have decided to post up where we currently are in Zihuatanejo as its a key location that allows us flexibility in where we will go next.

So with a few key elements workwise we are awaiting outcome on, we are going to enjoy our time here and then make our decision come week's end.

So to end this post like any good [standard] storybook/lame reality TV show cliffhanger, stay tuned for what's next on our journey....