I don’t want to speak for anyone else here, but when I look back on the last three years of full timing, there have been distinct phases to this lifestyle for us.  We may be different from many people in that respect who have a hard line between their old life and their new life and just jump right in, but for me it definitely has been an evolutionary journey.  And since I like to look forward to a new year with a goal in mind, I thought I would take a moment and try to recap the journey so far.  I have written extensively about this in various posts throughout the year, but it never hurts to summarize things a bit, plus I have all kinds of free time right now since I am working sitting around doing nothing all night gate guarding.

It is worth noting that I believe Lee has undergone a progression as well, but because our circumstances and personalities are different it is not the same as mine.  I hope he decides to jump in here and share a little  (I may actually learn something) but he gets to decide how much he wants to share.  So this is my distinct journey and before I start I do think it’s worth saying that I seem to be a little unusual in this respect.  Most of the people we meet have been older and closer to retirement and they seem a bit perplexed by why I don’t just settle in.  My common response is I am only 50 (well actually 51 now but you know what I mean) and I have at least 15 years left before full retirement. So to me it’s very much a journey of personal growth and for me the only way to achieve that is through some reflection.

Year 1

Looking back, the first year was all about Overcoming Fear.  I was so out of my comfort zone that issues that seem relatively small now caused a significant emotional impact.  More than anything else Lee and I learning how to live together in a small space was challenging.  Add to that moving frequently, the basic mechanics of camping (we were relatively inexperienced),  staying with friends for weeks at a time, and figuring out how to maintain my professional career as we traveled, and it was a lot.  Consequently the first 6 months were a whirlwind of new experiences and at times I felt assaulted by all the new. Don’t get me wrong, there were some amazing moments in there, but it definitely took me that long to “settle in” and thank heavens I wrote this blog, because when I look back on that time it is all a bit of a blur.

I characterized that first year as having more personal change than I had ever experienced in my life, except for when I became a first time parent, and I still think that is absolutely true.  Some people thrive on change and enjoy the rush, but that’s rarely been me, and instead I often felt like I was flailing wildly in the deep end of the pool.  Finally things did settle down and I really started to feel the constraints of working a full time job within the lifestyle.  Lee left his job before we went on the road and since he settled into the lifestyle so quickly I thought the job might be the reason I was struggling so much.  As my friend Linda put it, I had a foot in both worlds, and  I found myself having a hard time emotionally committing myself to the life. To be 100% clear I know several people who have kept their jobs and acclimated just fine to the full-time lifestyle but for me it was a crutch, and was actually holding me back.

This became very clear when we spent some time in Glacier National Park with friends and I took 10 full days off, away from the stress and requirements of my job.  For the first time in years I was completely disconnected from my old life and the combination of good friends and gorgeous surroundings finally flipped a switch in me.  And to prove God has a plan, the day we left that park I received an email with an offer for a professional buyout.  There was no pressure behind the offer, I simply had enough years of service to receive it, but to me it seemed like a sign.  So after some thought I took the offer and within 6 weeks I was unemployed for the first time in my adult life.

It’s worth saying here that for anyone that is a ton of change in one year.   Let’s recap: Youngest daughter left the home (empty nest), sold our home, moved into an RV, and quit my job.  In all fairness most people (like Lee) experience all of that change all at one time, but I spread it out over that first year.  It might have been easier to do it all at once, I can’t really say, but I personally wouldn’t change anything because although it may have lengthened the transition time for me, it also allowed me to some extent to deal with each change as a separate thing, which I think was good for me in the long run.

Year 2

The second year was all about dealing with no longer being a professional, and Alaska.  The first was a very difficult transition for me.  My identity was very much wrapped up in what I did for a living and I truly mourned that loss.  Unlike people who go through this change in retirement, I knew I had many working years left so I needed to figure out what that looked like for me.  Alaska though was a great distraction.  Our trip to Alaska wasn’t just checking a box on a bucket list, it became a symbol of the new freedom we were experiencing in our life.  I never could have spent an entire summer there working my old job, and the experience of living there for several months really gave us an idea of what our future life could be.

None of this was a surprise for Lee, he had a clear vision of what he wanted his life to be like, but I truly lacked the imagination to understand the possibilities.  The sheer size and beauty of Alaska was beyond anything I had ever experienced, but the summer also included the realities of making money in a “low level” position.  Again, except for parenting, I don’t think I have ever experienced so many extreme highs and lows in such a short time period, but on balance we felt very lucky to be able to have the experience.

One thing I firmly realized that summer was our life was not going to be like many other full timers that we knew.  The phrase “that is not our reality” became a common one for me, as we watched (with some envy) many people who didn’t have to work spend the summer exploring. I think at that point Lee was still hanging on to the idea that we could “work a little, play a little” to maintain the lifestyle, but I knew from the numbers that it was more likely we would “work a bunch, play not so much”.  We had some conflict about that concept in Year 2, which was heightened by taking on two difficult jobs at the end of the year when we worked the sugar beet harvest and Christmas trees.  By the end of the year I was rethinking everything, but Lee was dug in on the idea that our financial situation was due to the special circumstances of Alaska, and things would level out and look more like other people we knew.

Year 3

Thankfully year three started out with gate guarding, which was a much better fit for both of us, and I made a mental commitment to try one year working Lee’s way. My only caveat was that I wanted to make sure we tried all the different major types of work, so I scheduled us for Amazon at the end of the year well in advance.  I gave quite a bit of thought to finding a consulting job, and even spent a significant amount of time looking for a position, but the timing never quite worked out and we ended up spending the entire year supporting ourselves solely with work kamping revenue.  Overall I felt that was a very good thing, and proved to me once and for all that the lifestyle was actually financially viable.  We both agreed that we didn’t have the money to deficit spend year after year, and year three was all about seeing what it actually looked like to earn as we went.

Ironically, I am pretty contrary that way, once I decided to just “go with it” in year three, things became much easier for me.  I largely stopped twisting myself in knots, well at least as much as I am capable of, and just went with it.  I was more surprised than anyone when it turned out we largely broke even.  Yes, we chose to spend money on some extra things, but as far as day to day living, we did pretty well.  Lee, on the other hand, I believe had a larger transition.  He realized that his work a little play a little life probably wasn’t going to happen and instead focused on finding ways to earn money that were the most palatable.

It also became crystal clear that we were very different when it comes to what matters in living this life.  Lee is one of those people that flipped the mental switch when he left his career, and as long as our bosses don’t micromanage him, he is generally fine with pretty much any kind of work.  I, on the other hand, really solidified the fact that I need a work purpose.  I discovered I don’t need to make a ton of money, but I do want to feel like the work I do has some sort of meaning.  Working for two large companies in year three, albeit in the lowest level positions, had a big impact on me, and helped me come to terms with what I wanted long term, and really start to explore how to make that happen.

More than any year prior it was about revenue and budgets, but what was interesting was even though we made less than we have made since we were “kids”, we actually felt more successful. And I finally felt comfortable.  By the end of the year I was owning who I was, and what I wanted, in a way that had been missing since we went on the road.   Since I didn’t have a clear vision of what this life looked like when I started, I fell victim to taking other people’s experiences and superimposing them on my own life.  Not surprisingly my life often fell short using that criteria, and it took until year three for me to truly define my goals based on my unique reality.  Letting go of the fantasy was a major breakthrough for both of us and the Amazon experience went a long way for both of us towards finally making that happen.

Year 4

So knowing all that, what does year 4 look like?  First and foremost we finally have a travel plan that involves jobs and a “route” that hopefully will work for both of us.  I stretched myself  and applied for a position where I can use more of my professional skills and feel very hopeful about what that looks like long-term.  We also are being completely realistic about what free time we will have, and this year is all about using part of that time to explore Utah between gigs.  In the past three years I judged my life based on how many firsts we experienced, and the beautiful pictures I took, but I have made my peace with the fact that the quality of our life is based on more than those two factors.  For those of you who jumped right in and got there quickly, you are probably nodding your head, smiling, and wondering what took me so long, and that’s completely fair.  I will say that if I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t choose to do it any differently.

For me it is definitely about the journey and not the destination, and one of the beautiful things about this lifestyle is we all travel differently.  Some of us take a little longer, but that’s totally OK, because we see extra things along the way.  And along those lines, my feelings about this blog definitely need to change in year four.  Over the last couple of years to some extent this blog has written me rather than the other way around.  Sometimes that is a good thing, because it forces me to get off the couch and go out and experience things, but overall I think it hasn’t been healthy to feel compelled to have experiences so I can have something to write about.

Interestingly, Lee went from finding the blog a bit of a nuisance to being concerned about what will become of it when I talk about my feelings regarding what and when I write going forward. He likes providing regular content and has promised to write more to help to help with the workload going forward.  I know you guys are probably excited about that, and I feel less pressure.  It’s a win-win.  Speaking of that, I did use the term workload on purpose.  When people ask how I manage to post so much, I always say I have treated it like a job, but as much as the blog has helped me over the last few years, sometimes that additional pressure hasn’t been good for me.

Talking about my feelings and the positive impact that has on people matters very much to me, and whenever someone reaches out and tells me I made a difference it truly makes it worth it.  But it is important to note that I am not making my living from this blog, and I need to get back to writing about what I want to talk about, rather than writing about what I feel I “owe” the readers.  Especially when I feel like I owe it on a schedule.  I think this has become especially clear to me over the last couple of months as I have experienced several negative comments. I’ve been pretty lucky in that this blog feels like a conversation, and I truly enjoy hearing from people, even when they are thoughtfully critical.  But I have zero interest in trolls.  Simply put, I’m not being paid  to take a bunch of shit from people, and since this blog isn’t paying my bills, I don’t have to.

Actually, I am trying to let go of feeling like I “owe” people in a larger context, and this blog is a good place to start.  I would like year four to be about living a life that makes me personally happy and fulfilled, and I really want to focus on that.  In the past,  I have spent an awful lot of time and energy worrying about other people’s well being instead of focusing on myself. It’s a difficult balance, because I do believe that a good person puts others in front of themselves, but I also realize that ultimately I only have one life to live and I should definitely make the most of it.  Hopefully I can maintain a balance this year by letting go of unproductive emotions and focusing on the positive ones.  That’s a tall order, I know, but definitely worth spending a year on. How that looks from a blog perspective I have no idea.  I guess we will all find out together.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is available in paperback on Amazon if you prefer.

Stacey sent a very thoughtful question and although I answered it in the comments, I think it deserves a longer answer, hence this post.  The question was “If you knew then what you know now,  would you still trade your former careers / work life including sticks and bricks living for your current lifestyle? I guess I’m wondering if work camping experiences are an acceptable trade off for living the full timing RV lifestyle instead of waiting to do it after retirement. I know that the preference is a uniquely individualized choice, but I’d like to hear your personal opinion now that you’ve done it for some time and experienced varied work camping jobs.”

The short answer is: Yes.  If you are a person who likes brevity you might want to stop right here, but there is of course a much longer answer.  First and foremost I am a person who believes in “the journey”.  Every decision I have made, every challenge I have experienced has led to who I am today.  Looking back on my life, the most interesting times were the most challenging and the times of personal growth usually came from something difficult or scary.  So I am not a person who carries around a lot of regret.  Most of my decisions, good and bad, I can live with because they were my decisions and I learned from them.

That being said, I don’t have to experience everything the hard way anymore.  I can learn from others and I am not averse to taking the easier path once in awhile.  I’m older and hopefully wiser now.  So if I knew would I do it?  It’s possible I wouldn’t have had the courage to do this if I knew exactly what I was getting into, but I hope I would have.  This lifestyle is the biggest risk I have ever taken in my life.  That statement should be put into context, because I have never been much of a risk taker, but for me it has challenged me in almost every way.  I don’t think that would have happened if I would have waited until retirement.  I know it wouldn’t have happened if I would have waited until I had tons of money in the bank.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the transition is tough for people regardless of your income level or savings account, but for me some of the biggest lessons I have learned have been around living without a safety net.  Many people have already learned that lesson.  They were fired, started their own business, dealt with a major illness, or got divorced.  I have never experienced any of these things and as thankful as I am for that, I also didn’t know that I would make it out the other side.  Not intellectually know, because of course I believed that, but know deep down in my gut I would be able to handle major changes. My life was relatively stable and sedentary and I was comfortable. I think it’s pretty clear I am not comfortable now, and haven’t been for the last 3 years.

But people rarely grow when they are comfortable.  Yes, they avoid the lows in life, but often they don’t experience the amazing highs either. Life was bland and vanilla and for many, many years I loved it that way.  Looking back on the last three years I see a series of images.  Things I absolutely know I never would have experienced, because going on vacation cannot buy them.  It’s just not the same.  Those moments have to be part of the equation and frankly I can’t imagine many things that would tempt me to give those up. You might think I could have experienced them if I would have waited, and maybe that is true.  Or maybe I could have experienced equal or better experiences just at an older age.  Possibly, but I have always been a bird-in-the-hand kind of person and to me it would have been riskier to wait until I retired.  Too many things could have happened in the 18 years between now and then.

Plus, my life as it existed was about to change anyway.  My youngest daughter was leaving the nest to go into the Air Force and Lee and I would have been in a big empty house that we didn’t like very much.  Yes, we could have downsized into something smaller, but in our case that change wouldn’t have been enough for us.  More importantly for me at least, my former company was about to be bought by a larger company.  I didn’t know it at the time I took the buy-out, but within 6 months of my leaving, Tyco would be bought by Johnson Controls.  My boss, who I really liked, took a totally different position and in order for me to stay with him I would have probably needed to relocate. If I would have stayed in the same position, I may have survived the cut, but it would have meant longer hours, more travel, and definitely more stress.  I survived two major mergers in my 15 years with Tyco and  I honestly don’t know if I had another one of those in me.  Even if I did manage to survive the deep personnel cuts that always come with a merger,  it’s brutal watching colleagues lose their jobs.  It’s very possible that if I have stayed I would have been looking for new employment anyway, but with the liability of Lee needing to stay in the area and a relatively high mortgage hanging over my head.  Knowing what I know now,  selling the house and becoming debt free was the smart move and I am pretty sure we would not have been able to do that if we had stayed in the area.  So the short answer is I don’t regret at all leaving our sticks and bricks lifestyle.

To answer the second part of the question as to whether the work kamping jobs are worth the full-time lifestyle, I would say the answer is largely no.  If we were supplementing other income and could work them, yes, probably.  If we were volunteering for fun, social interaction, and to help with costs, definitely.  But working the amount of hours we work and the types of jobs we have, absolutely no.  I’m not sure how Lee feels about that so he’ll need to jump in here.  We believed we would be able to work a little and play a little when we started doing these jobs, but its mostly been 10 months of work and 2 months of play, and that’s not a fair trade-off to me.  It would be if the jobs were easier and/or more interesting, but they aren’t, and unless we were willing to stick with the same jobs year after year and follow a set route I can’t see that changing.  That’s a great compromise for many people, by the way, and I respect it.  If you want better pay and more interesting work you can always spend your summers and/or winters in the same places and eventually you will get there.  Nothing wrong with that, but we get the big WOW moments from seeing new places and without that travel I still don’t think I would like it.  I think Lee would be fine with that though, but again he needs to jump in.

(I take a longer view, overall. I think it’s possible to have something resembling a route, and also have the freedom to get the WOW moments, but if I ever feel like I’m chasing something, then I know it’s a losing battle. I’d rather stalk it. I also think that while the WOW moments mostly come from being in new places, I think that we have nothing but time to see new places, and I’d rather get all the WOW I can in a place before I go searching for new WOW. I agree that at the moment, the “recipe” we have is not a good one, and I often wonder how many people start off and give up at this point, because it’s so far away from what they imagined. I’m pretty stubborn, though, and I am convinced that the right recipe is out there, and I constantly remind myself of how unhappy I was before.-Lee)

(Most of the time I feel like my worst day here is still better in the grand scheme than my best day before. The grass is greener syndrome is powerful, and I am avoiding it with everything I’ve got. I do think that if you break the year into two longer seasons of summer and winter and two shorter seasons of fall and spring, then it’s logical that part of the recipe might be that you find a recurring gig in either summer or winter, and intellectually I lean toward summer for that. That would have the added benefit of giving you an anchor point for medical/dental stuff. I know some people might recoil from the idea of spending years experimenting to find that perfect repeating summer gig, but for me it beats a life of grind every time.-Lee)

(Overall, I’m looking for a combination that allows some freedom to travel, but also gives me a little stability. Ideally, a combination of hammering the budget down to the point where we can use the two long seasons to make money, and make enough to play during the short seasons, or some combination. I agree that working 10 months, and taking 2 off is not a good deal, especially if some or most of those of those two months is dedicated to getting from one gig to another. Anything that gets us closer to a 50/50 split would make me happier. I’m also willing to have less in general to get there. For me the trick is to fine tune and tweak until we’ve squeezed as much as possible out of the time we have and the money we can get.  I’m the kind of guy that turns a dish soap container upside down and lets it sit for an hour to get all the soap out, but I think bending over to pick up a nickel is for suckers. I can do something else while gravity gets the soap out for me, but I’m never getting back the ten cents worth of time I spent picking up that nickel. For me, seconds add up faster than nickels.  – Lee)

What isn’t covered in your question is are there any other ways to make money?  The answer is demonstrably yes as we have met many people (mostly younger) doing all sorts of interesting things to cover their costs.  We haven’t even started exploring those options, because we were focused on the most common traditional work kamping jobs, but our focus going forward will be doing exactly that. I’ve never really had an entrepreneurial spirit and again I’m not much of a risk taker, but there are lots of mobile jobs that while out of my comfort zone are not a complete stretch for me.  We believe most work kamping jobs are designed for people who are trying to supplement existing income.  That makes sense because in the past the majority of the work kamping community was in exactly that position.  The demographic of full timers is changing, however, but the work kamping job market has been slow to change to accommodate those of us are financing our travels by working seasonal jobs. We do see some small changes in this area and I expect big changes in the next 10 years, but for right now few of these jobs have been a good fit for us.

What I have learned from trying them though is we can support ourselves that way if we need to.  It isn’t our preference, but it is workable.  (What we’re doing this summer is an excellent example of that. It pays $14.25 per hour and we each work about 35 hours per week, but between the type of work it is and the split shift schedule, it takes enough out of us that it feels a lot more like a sticks and bricks lifestyle. – Lee) This gives me the freedom to be choosier about what types of mobile professional jobs I take.  We aren’t desperate and we know there is work out there, so I can be sure I am not jumping from a less than ideal situation into a worse one.  One thing I absolutely have achieved is less stress.  These jobs may be unpleasant and they are not totally without some stress, but it doesn’t come close to what I was experiencing in my former profession.  My ideal job would be something of relatively short duration, in a nice place,  where I could use my skills and contribute to the betterment of society in some way.  I am fully aware that is a tall order, but at this point I don’t believe it is an impossible goal.

I’m not sure what Lee is going to choose to do. He has talked about trying to get a small business off the ground, but that will require some stretching on his part and a considerable amount of non-revenue generating time to get it started. We have some money in the bank, a really varied skill set, and relatively low monthly costs so whatever we decide to try I think we will be OK. We just need to stretch ourselves.

Which sort of brings me back full circle to my original point.  Once again our desire for this roving lifestyle will be the catalyst for change. We don’t know where that change will lead us, but as long as we love each other and take care of each other, things will be alright and probably we will end up in a better place than where we started.  We usually do.  That alone makes me grateful we started down this path.  Plus, as we are walking along the path,  the view is really amazing.  Seriously, you cannot put any sort of price tag on that.

Thanks for the question and giving us a chance to write about it.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full time RVers such as Happy Hours, Travel Days, and Pot Lucks   You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.