Rewind about two years. I’m in a therapeutic sensory deprivation tank floating around in the darkness trying to figure out how to control my anxiety. I’d been experiencing acute severe anxiety and I couldn’t figure out why. Nothing much had changed in my life, but there was this intense feeling of claustrophobia, of needing to get out. My mind starts to relax and I have this small but clear vision of Chris and I living in a van traveling around, playing music, feeling free. It started as a tiny seed of an idea, one that lay dormant for about a year.
Last summer this seed somehow started to bloom and became a being, a reality for our future. It slowly started to take form, not really telling people at first then slowly we started to share our big news that we were (eek!) no not having a baby, as all other couples our age are doing, but are going to leave our lives in Portland, majorly downsize, buy a van, take our dog and hit the road making our way as traveling musicians.
I eventually had the idea to keep a blog to get back into writing and photography (something I’ve slowly abandoned amidst the hustle and bustle of life), to have a record of our experiences and to let our friends and family (especially our moms) know where exactly we are.
Our route is slowly coming together like a puzzle, a gig here, a workshop there. At first starting with only the bare bone corners, the middle is starting to come together. We plan to leave in May. More news to come as it unfolds. In the meantime I will continue reading Robert Wells’s book How to Live In a Car, Van or RV and get out of debt, Travel, & Find True Freedom.
