This is us: Our Haven Unleashed.
OUR SAFE HAVEN. OUR SAFETY NET. OUR HOME. OUR COMMUNITY. OUR FRIENDS. OUR FAMILY. OUR WORK. OUR STRUCTURE. OUR WAY OF LIFE, LEASHED TOGETHER BY A STRING OF MANY DIFFERENT COMPONENTS.
Having lived a good chapter of our young adult life being career driven, building a business to having employees, working long hours around the clock, stressed to the max, giving our attention to everyone and everything other than those that are most important. We were focused on growing a business, building a career, putting in the time and efforts into growing our foundation. Stay ahead of the snowball effect, they say. No one explains the tedious things that it affects by going full force and staying full force all the time! Our mental health was compromised, our physical health was not a priority or concern, and our family time was sacrificed more often than one should admit. The feeling of always picking up the pieces, or trying to just get it all done, in every bit of time we had. Always busy, always rushing, trying to balance it all. Everything surrounding us became a huge distraction of us just working all the time, at the beck and call for everyone else, other than ourselves, and what was most important. This ideology of perspective that success is all about how reputable your titles are, creating a life mimicking the advertised standard life of perfection, chasing that high dollar, all your materialistic things that fill your big, beautiful home, and the amount of money in your bank will bring you supposed happiness. But what is happiness? What is our happiness? How does one define success? Will we continue to strive for “the desire of more” to continue seeking that moment of solitaire and fulfillment, so that in that moment for a while, we feel happy? Is that right? Having all these things is the dream, right?! …Says who!? To each their own. Life is all about the journey, they say?! So work, work, work, create that success, but then what!? There are no right or wrong choices per se, but rather a cause and effect, consequences to the choices made, impacts of decisions made to those around us and to ourselves. On the surface, we can have all things, buy what you may that will create this define way of feeling good. Dedicate your time to work but spend time away from the family. The burning question for us, for our family life; we began asking ourselves,
“Why are we working so much? Am I happy or am I just content and moving with motion? Am I doing what I truly want to be doing or just doing what I think I am suppose to be doing? Am I working to just have all these things? Is this stuff enough… is it what makes us happy? Or is it just the instant gratification to why we have the things we have? Is working so much worth not being with my family as much?”
Maybe this is just part of growing up. Recognizing success isn’t just about the things, the big home, the materialistic life, or the quick and simple convenience of things for life. Maybe this is just part of this big, circle of life.
As we have been “growing up” we have been learning the “things” we worked so hard to get, are never enough. Success is so much more than the job and the things or the definition of long lasting. That bar for life continuously being set forth higher and higher. I am not referring this to as a negative thing at all. I feel like this certainly is a good characteristic in life to have, to keep striving for the best. Be the best. Do your best. Always be ahead of the game. Strive for the better. Get to the top. Be a top-level acting citizen. However, as for anything, there is a balance act to that. Having to constantly keep up to having the best of the best, being the best, doing your best with a smile on your face, wearing multiple hats is mentally a lot. Man, that’s a job in itself. Continuously chasing the better of the best, the bigger the better, and more the merrier. This eventually can get exhausting. The best analogy, I can think of: you have a beautiful home, but it eventually isn’t nice enough for you, you have the nice car, but it isn’t new enough, large enough, fast enough, pretty enough, and like your children, you have all the toys, but are now over it. Maybe your standards or situation have changed, sure, but maybe not. When you buy your children toys, anytime you’re out and about and it becomes a constant. Any time they walk into a store, there’s an expectation something will be purchased for them. Getting a new toy brings that instant gratification. But eventually that wears off, and when they go to the store again, well, they want a new toy. The children aren’t necessarily unappreciative or ungrateful for what they already have but just wanting something new, and they know they’ll most likely get it. We went through this during a phase with our kiddos. It was becoming an expectation rather than them being grateful or appreciative for what was given or for what they already have.
You get the point, I hope. You want to better yourself and your life. Yes! When is enough, enough, in the context of things? Over the past few years, our sense of perspective really started to shift. We were tired of having things that we barely used, barely drove, wasn’t necessarily a need, etc. We have found during this pivotal transition, the important things to us were not so important. Our successes that brought the materialistic things were not as important as the people we sacrificed time away from, to make having those things be possible.
We want time. Time to embrace with family and friends. We love to go on adventures and travel, but we didn’t do it as often. More than often, we allowed our work schedule to dictate when we could do those things. We have learned that the experiences with one another are worth more than anything we have purchased and our jobs that demanded way too much of our time. Spending our money and time on experiences of quality time together, and travel. We felt this nature of our souls just wanting more. More of being outside our norm. We wanted to stop going to the same places over and over again. Stop having the same experiences over and over. We feel like there is more to experience, and we want it! For us, in a short amount of time, here recently; we were hit with some humbling life experiences with people, time, health, and values. There is so much more to life than working for all these ‘things,’ doing the same thing on repeat, day after day, year after year.
This quote, we have seen is something Blake repeats often. We think of this often in regard to our life. The constant grind. The constant busy. The same grind, the same busy. The definition quote of insanity, per Albert Einstein. Not saying what we are doing is insane. However, by working more often, grinding around the clock, we are continuing the stress, which in turn creates the madness and here comes the frustrations.
““Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” ”
The quality of life has become so much more of our bigger picture than the bigger home, the materialistic things, working hours upon hours so in turn, we make the money so we can afford all the things. There are so many ways to view this; I understand and have sat on many different angle points on this. My husband and I have been guilty doing the chasing, wanting the better of the best, trying to showcase our self-worth, giving our children everything they want, trying to fit in, attempting to fit in, falling into our faults, worrying about what others think of us, trying to be the peace maker, grinding hard, doing it all, etc.… However, our ongoing perspective of life currently, for us; is time is not forgiving, time isn’t slowing down, our health may not be on our side later on and why live later?! When we have now. At the end of the day, we will not always have the time. Time is truly at our essence. And without time; well, we all know the answer to that equation.
We are embarking new adventures, refocusing, shifting our priorities, trying new things, simplifying our life, redefining our success that truly makes us happy, experience life in a way that is more intentional, more vibrant and fuller. Most importantly, spending this opportunity as parents to enjoy our children and their childhood. We are in our parent era, if you will. This is our time and only time with them, where we have 100% of their attention. The past year and half, we have made it a goal to really go out and travel, experience something more, altogether. Truly, we are feeling like we are getting to relive our childhood as well, with all these travels and experiences with the kiddos. To make a difference, to impact positively, to showcase all that we can to them and create experiences that not only are they able to endure and enjoy, but to also shape them as they go through their development. And for us, we needed a little break from our life!! Our focus is to be mentally and physically healthy, present and continue learning and growing in uncomfortable unknowns. Being a better person, a better parent and shifting focuses to what matters most in life is our goal to why we are doing this. We still want to work hard and will show up one hundred percent to all the things. Moving forward though, we are here to enjoy the journey. Right now, with our kiddos, we are here, stepping away from the normalcy of our hustle and bustle of life. For about two months. To enjoy ourselves, refocus, and rebalance our successes and priorities. To not focus on working to live but to live more. To live more intentionally for us and for our loved ones. One can work hard, find their identity, create structure and success for themselves and/or family. But remembering the journey of life isn’t about just those successes- but rather finding the greater good in themselves and with those around them and living a life of enjoyment and fulfillment. Not constantly trying to find instant gratification. To be impacted in a positive way and impact others positively. Living through the emotions and handling them in the utmost positive way. Most importantly, for us, spending this opportunity we have now with our children and not later. We have worked so hard, for so long, we burnt ourselves out from life and have questioned, what we are living for? Our answer to that. We are all living life right now, we just have to remember to enjoy it before it is too late.
We have one life to live. We are here now.
We are going to live it!
You now have a little glimpse of the backstory to our why. Our reason. We are a family of five, and as my 6 year old would say, “We love field trips!” Call this a crazy idea! We are going on an extended field trip! We are doing this with three youngsters, ages 8, 6 and now 3, in a 44ft motorhome. Pulling a 24ft enclosed car trailer with a small little diesel Jetta with all our bikes. We love to bike. We love to travel. We love doing new things. We are ready to go! We have no itinerary. No exact places of where we are headed or what we will be doing. We have no time constraints to dictate our schedule, other than when the kiddos go back to school. We have a bucket list of things the kids would like to do and places we would like to see, if time allows and the road leads us. Three busy littles, breaking away from our normal desires, needs, wants, leaving our safety net, our community, our home, our jobs and a life that was so busy all the time. No matter how many times we would “take it easy” we just found ourselves wrapped up in doing something, going somewhere, attending sporting events, family events, etc. It is safe to say we enjoy being busy. But this is our summer, as a family to do our kind of busy, bike, play and explore with no limitations or time constraints. Something we may never be able to get to do like this again. Maybe we will, I won’t put the cart in front of the horse; but you never know.
We hope to showcase our biking trail findings (yes, we recently found a love to biking as a family and has become an all-time family favorite, we seem to always be doing), hidden gems, ideas for the next vacation. If you are reading this and looking for places to go, things to do, maybe this will offer some insight. Maybe a little inspiration, for similar like-minded work-alcoholics/busy bodies. We are also showcasing, that it is never too late to live, giving the time and attention a top priority. You can aspire to be a work boss and do what you love or aspire to be AND you can also be spontaneous, put your true, real, meaningful priorities first. It’s absolutely possible, to work hard and play even harder. You don’t necessarily need to travel to the most popular, desirable places to experience more! We are here to prove it. We are dropping in some of the smallest of towns to some of the bigger cities. I cannot tell you where, because we literally will be going wherever our hearts, and the roads take us! This is us. We are your average family, who love the outdoors, love good quality time and have made our family and our health, the two most important things. We are worn out of continuous work and stresses that it brings. We want to hang out with our children all the time. Summer break is coming right up, why not an extended vacation?! This is our travel diary. It is going to be full of living life, adventuring out, finding that balance, biking in a lot of cool, unknown places, and enjoying our time with our children.
Unleashing from your norm at times is just as healthy as one views self-care! It is all intertwined. Enjoy your summer and hopefully give yourself a little break to enjoy the warmer months. Keep tuning in, as we will share all the things as we pursue this summer adventure across the US.
For now, thanks for stopping by and being intrigued enough to read this long-winded introductory post! Join along on this journey of ours.
A trip of spontaneity, and our “Planned, Unplanned Summer tour of 2024.”
