If you had asked me in August of 2018 what my plans were, I would have said, “find a job and see what happens.” Then I became a freelancer and decided to work on becoming nomadic by May of 2019. Skip forward a few months, and it’s April. Now, I have just under a month left in the USA. My tickets are booked, my husband and I have sold most of our stuff, and we’ve finalized all the details.
Usually, I’m someone that can write about anything with no issue. However, it’s hard to put how I feel right now into words. I think many that go into full-time travel could say the same thing about the first flight away from home. It’s a complicated feeling, truthfully a mixture of excitement, anxiety, fear, happiness, and nerves.
Each day is another “last”
Along with those feelings comes other realizations. Last weekend, we went on a date to a place called Skyline Park. It’s a boardwalk on top of Ponce City Market in Atlanta, Georgia. Once there, we realized it was likely our last time at Ponce City. Similarly, when we plan to go to an art festival this weekend, for the last time.
Some might say that we’re coming back, so it’s not the last time. That’s true, maybe. We plan, as of right now, to go back to ATL at the end of our two-year travel. However, there’s a certain sense of finality that comes with flying away from the only state you’ve ever called home after selling everything but four bags worth of clothes and electronics.
Live in the moment
It’s also led to a realization of how little we live in the moment. With social media and “stories,” one would think that living in the moment is easy. However, that’s not the case. As with many in my generation, I’ve found that we might post these things “in the moment” we’re thinking about what we need or want as well as what others think.
Living in the moment means not worrying about what others think or what’s happening next week. Getting closer to going on this long trip to the other side of the world made us realize that we need to do more than that. Living in the present can help us enjoy life both here and when we get over there.
The countdown
Carter and I are excited about this trip, sad to leave our home, and looking forward to our last few weeks here. We can’t wait to have the time of our lives. However, we don’t want to spend our time counting the days until we leave. Instead, we’ve taken time out of our moving to enjoy where we are now.
I look forward to sharing the details of our journey with the readers of Verge Magazine. We hope that we can learn something from the readers and maybe you can learn something from us too. Until then, don’t forget to stop, smell the roses, cloud watch, and live in the now.
