Side One:
Well, we are moving anyway. Our children are grown, and the house is simply too big now. After years of building careers, raising a family, and staying rooted in one place, we realized something important: the mission we had been focused on for so long was complete.
Now we need a new goal to move toward. And any good mission begins with reconnaissance.
This journey may ultimately lead us to a new place to live and work, or it may lead us to discovering how to live and work everywhere — somewhere instead of one specific place. Right now, we do not know exactly where the road ends, only that it is time to start exploring it intentionally.
Intentional Simplicity
After ten years in one place and raising two children, we have accumulated a lot of stuff. Most people do over time.
But stuff requires maintenance. It takes time, money, cleaning, organizing, repairing, storing, upgrading, and managing. Eventually we started asking ourselves whether the amount of effort required to maintain all of it still matched the value it added to our lives.
Time and energy are limited resources, and we would rather spend more of both on experiences than possessions. The things that truly matter will matter enough to come with us. Everything else may simply have served its purpose for a season of life that is ending.
Empty Nest Adventure
The important things are easier to identify than we expected.
Each other. His running shoes. My knitting and crochet supplies. Familiar routines. Shared coffee in the morning. Long conversations during drives. The small things that make life feel like home no matter where we are parked.
For years, most of our focus was directed outward toward careers, schedules, responsibilities, and raising children. Now we have the opportunity to rediscover what life together looks like when it is no longer structured around everyone else’s needs first.
This is not about running away from our previous life. It is about intentionally choosing what comes next.
Mission-Based Transition
We have never been impulsive people.
When we were younger, even a weekend road trip involved a binder full of maps, printed reservations, planned stops, backup plans, and carefully researched activities. These days the binders have been replaced with shared spreadsheets, digital lists, saved maps, and synced documents, but the mindset remains the same.
We like understanding the terrain before stepping into it. We like knowing where we are going, what we are doing, and where we will probably eat along the way.
The same discipline, adaptability, logistics, and long-term planning that shaped our military and government careers are now helping us approach this transition realistically instead of romantically.
We are not trying to escape responsibility. If anything, we are trying to become more intentional about how we spend our time, money, energy, and attention.
This is not a sudden leap into the unknown. It is a slow, deliberate transition toward a life that feels lighter, more flexible, and more connected to what matters most.
Side Two:
Why nomad? That’s an interesting question with an and answer that’s about as clear as mud. I learned in school about nomads living today and about how hard their lives were, and you hear stories about gypsies and hear about all the less than savory aspects of that lifestyle. So why would anyone voluntarily want to live the nomadic life?
In the 21st century we go out of our way to ensure our security, whether it me financial or domestic. We get job that support the domicile we want to live in, all the bits and bobbles we “need” in our lives (i.e. streaming subscriptions to keep with our shows, gym memberships, eating out at fancy restaurants), and even some travel if the job is good enough. I have found through my many years of living in one spot, with my job and subscriptions and gym membership and a house that is was bigger than needed that I was left unfulfilled and generally unhappy.
I think back to those lessons in 10th grade World Cultures class about the nomads and with my years of living securely in one place yearning for the simplicity that those nomads must feel. They get tired of a spot that they are in? They move on. Some place they have wanted to go, or place they wanted to experience? Pack up and roll out. It seems like an ideal solution for someone that in feeling suffocated where he is at underneath all those things and not enough doing.
Now I don’t think I am making the mistake of romanticizing the freedom of nomad life. It is going to be hard at first. We are so accustomed to a certain standard of living that the shock of its perceived decline will be a lot…until be adapt, which we do remarkably well as a species. The shock of a confined space will be considerable, right up until we step foot outside that space to the outside! The lack of possessions, especially my books will be a shock at first, until I turn the kindle on and there are thousands of books at my fingertips.
And the running! Oh boy the running opportunities! As much as I love running the same old streets to get to the same old trails, the nomad life will let me step out the back or front or side door and take off into the desert, or the mountains for mile after mile. Breathing the fresh air of a new environment literally cannot be beat!
I fear that I am rambling now, so lets wrap this up and go for a run, dreaming about the wildflowers I’ll soon running through, and not dodging illegally parked cars and traffic cones!