Where To Be?

(This was actually written several months ago now, while still in Thailand, but I didn't publish it til today......see next post with other new developments.......)

In reflecting on what I enjoy about being in Thailand, and how being here effects me in different ways, I'm aware that this lush, moist, yin, expansive, outward leaning life of the past 4 years may be diminishing in its constant appeal. It's not that I don't still love it, because I do. It's more that some of its qualities have begun to seem as though they need a different kind of dynamic balance. Maybe spending 6 or 9 months a year in Asia is more than I now want? Maybe not. My energy and focus have shifted toward what I am envisioning as our new way of life in the States, and I am a bit eager to jump into it and see if it will really work for us. The initial experiment will doubtless take a few months, and so we are talking about not returning to Asia in the Fall of 2019, but rather giving a proper trial to van RV living over a likely course of time.

I have been saying for these 4 years that I don't really want to be in the States at all, and that living – more or less full time – in Asia would suit me just fine. We have both been saying that we feel done with our house and land, and it is this feeling that has at least in significant part motivated our travels and explorations abroad. I'm now thinking that, while our mutual feeling has been accurate in terms of describing something about our future, a future away from Cerro Chato and away from 36 Grateful Way, it may be that it is necessary for me to have arrived at this internal point, and for Nancy to have previously reached her point of letting go, in order for us to finally be on target with selling our place. As Nancy has put it, we now have a clear direction, something concrete that we are moving toward. (I thought I had my direction, but Nancy has always put the breaks on that; well, at least “always” once Elijah was born).

In coming to terms with the necessity to be in the States part of the year at least, the camper van RV theme arose last summer in Santa Fe, when I understood that I needed to find a way to be in the States that would make sense for me, and for us. It was 3 years ago, after our first trip, that it dawned on me that we were, in fact, living as nomads. We were renting our house and so were effectively “homeless”; we moved around Santa Fe and around the country a lot, staying a while here and a while there; we left again to return to Asia, and then again back to the US. We had not set out to become nomads, and the idea was not at first appealing, but the truth of it became apparent and so there we were. Now, 3 years later, we are intending to embrace the nomadic, “houseless” life in America with a teeny tiny home on wheels. (Please don't mis-understand this as relentless moving around; the choice of moving or staying put is ours to make at all times).

I believe we are both excited about this new direction, and it does lend itself to a certain enthusiasm about being in America, which I clearly have needed if I were going to stay there for some months at a time. Where the road may lead we of course cannot say, but I think we have become at least somewhat comfortable with leaving things open, and the new adventure has a call that I can hardly resist.