The Adventure Begins
We packed everything into a storage locker and headed to Vancouver Island.
And the adventure begins!
Seven days ago, I woke up (after a spotty night of sleep) and thought, This is it. This is the last morning I wake up in our home.
The week leading up to this moment has felt crushing at times with sadness, anxiety, stress and overwhelm.
Will everything fit into the storage locker?
What if I forget something?
How am I going to get everything done today?
But there was also excitement.
We picked up our moving truck at 8am and had everything loaded by 1:30pm.
It’s a weird feeling saying goodbye to your house.
It feels like you’re saying goodbye to your memories.
As I walked through our empty home one last time, I had a comforting thought.
Without our family and our stuff in it, it’s just a house with four walls.
More like a container that held our memories, but today, I’m choosing to take all that with me.
Goodbye, house.
The Life Sized Game of Tetris
The fun began when we arrived at our storage locker just after 2pm.
This was the real test - would everything fit into a 10’x12’ space?
With the help of family, we began pouring our life into this small box, stacking each item one at a time, making the best use of our tiny space that would hold all of our material possessions.
The next 3 hours were filled with laughter and strategizing as we piled lopsided mattresses onto stacks of furniture that continued to slide off.
Having to touch and handle everything we own made me realize how much of it I was never attached to in the first place.
We probably could have moved with 50% less, but that’s a lesson I’ll have to bookmark for the future.
By 5:30pm, the locker was full to the door with just enough room to stand.
We rolled down the door, clicked the lock into place and went to my parents’ house to hug our kids, eat dinner and fall fast asleep.
(Funny story - I had recurring nightmares that night that I had packed something in the back of the locker and I couldn’t reach it!)
The First Leg of Our Journey
After 2 nights at my parents house, we departed for Vancouver Island.
It was a 6 hour trip that included a 90 minute ferry ride and a stop at Costco that had us questioning if all our groceries could even fit our overstuffed car. (They did.)
We arrived at our AirBNB by 3:30pm, unpacked and headed right to the beach, a 3 minute walk from our new home.
This place is rather secluded, but has a magic all of its own.
There are crickets that sing 24/7.
Beautiful rocky beaches with tiny crabs everywhere.
Views of islands, expansive ocean and forest green mountains that surround us at every turn - the quintessential Pacific Northwest experience.
It’s quiet here, the perfect place to recenter after a summer of packing, planning, organizing and decluttering.
I’ve watched the stress melt away on my daily Oura Ring stats.
I’m reminded that our kids belong in nature. We belong in nature.
Running in the sprinklers, toes squishing in the sand, sun on our skin, all to the soundtrack of ocean waves and chirping insects.
The perfect place to slow down.
To reflect.
To figure out where we go next.
So, What is Next?
We’ve got the next 6-8 months planned, but after that, it’s an open road.
We will be spending October-December back in Vancouver.
In January, we leave for the Dominican Republic and we are spending 3 months slowly traveling across the entire north coast of the country until we hit the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea.
We’ll come home to Vancouver for a few months and then we’re leaving it open.
We’ve talked about driving to Alberta to see the gorgeous blue lakes and experience the rockies.
Or we might fly to Quebec City and live there for a month.
End of Summer into Fall is tentatively in Europe.
But regardless of where we land, here are a few things I know for sure.
Each place we go offers a new opportunity to explore. Flynn and I have begun pitching local businesses a quick video in exchange for day passes to their facilities. We booked our first one this week!
We will continue to build our portfolios and scale our monthly investment income. Last month we earned $7,084 in income from our traditional portfolio and $3,119 from our Crypto DeFi portfolio, with a goal to get to $12,000 per month.
I will adapt. Being someone that thrives on routine and continuity, this adventure is going to ask of me to grow and expand. I won’t be the same person in a year from now and I’m ready to live this adventure and raise our kids as kids of the world.
This is just the beginning.
We are ready for take off.
Tanessa
P.S. - Want to follow along in real time on Instagram stories? Join my community @tanessashears and connect with me there.