Funny things, doors. Simple things. Powerful things. They either let you move forward or they don’t. I used to see doors slamming shut as negative. I’d happily go about making my plans, then wham, plans stopped cold. I hated that
sound, until I realized the best parts of my life have started with decisions made after that sound. That’s where the real magic begins, where the creative planning starts, the re-evaluation of one’s life, where adventure is rooted. Now I know with every slammed door, another is flung open. Always, and without exception. You just have to find where that sucker is.
Closed doors, open doors. Redirection has become a family specialty, comes from years of practice of watching what presents itself after doors slam shut. Recently the school we thought Cali was going to next year, we were told by the admissions person it was a done deal, became an undone deal. Doors closed. Immediately we started looking for the open doors. We are getting better not wasting time being mad or pity parties. Waste of energy. We spent that energy finding the open doors. Within an hour we had new plans for the year, exciting plans. The kind of plans you know
you’ll look back on at the end of your life and say, “I’m so glad we did that crazy….!”
Paul has wants to live in Paris, I want to experience Costa Rica or Panama. We looked into the younger two girls doing virtual school and travelling to wherever direction our interests blow. A true nomadic year. Few things are more exciting to me. We have a start country and absolutely nothing else. We will let the year unfold however it will. I get tingles of excitement just thinking about it.
With any trip of this size, there is a wee bit of legwork to be done. So far our list includes: find and rent a townhouse for Kier close to her university, downsize stuff, pack up and store the house, sell one car, get the older two girls setup at the new university, register the youngest for virtual school, decide if Madi will do her first year of university courses online and travel with us, get shots, documents for Cali to go to school wherever we land for language purposes, get the foster dog adopted, spend a week with each of my older parents in MO and PA to record more of their life stories, get annual check-ups done, dentist appts., buy contacts, get the dog’s annual shots, sort 30 boxes of books from Canada plus 20 other boxes of stuff, finish 32 parent volunteer hours that we put off, do Madi’s high school graduation. Well, it’s start.
There are things to do in the next month, but when a trip is the end goal, the list is easier to move through. Nomad year, here we come!