In our past 11 years of dating and marriage, if there is any year that truly deserves a thoughtful review and reflection, it is definitely 2019.

2019 was an incredible time of change, challenge, and adventure for our family of husband + wife + dog.

I’m writing this reflection while sitting at the beach in Playa Zipolite, one among many of the small beaches along the coast of southern Oaxaca. To be more accurate, I’m not sitting on the beach – I’m sitting on my bed in the van, which I built with my own hands, with the van’s rear doors open to face the ocean waves just a hundred feet away. My dog is lazily sleeping next to me, no idea that he is one of the luckiest dogs in the world.

From this place on the beach, our place in the world, I feel nothing but gratitude and peacefulness for everything that brought us here.

2019 Recap:

• January: I’m officially unemployed. I start prepping our house for sale: basic DIY house renovations, giving stuff away, packing stuff for the van or storage. We research buying and converting vans.
• February: Jon starts working on a contract, part-time basis. We move into my parent’s house. We buy a van! We start the van build, but struggle with rainy weather, limited space, and insufficient tools.
• March – May: We find MakerPlace. We spend 60 hours/week on the van build, from morning till night, for three months. We make friends with fellow van-converters, I learn carpentry, and Jon learns electrical stuff. Our house is sold and we put all that equity to work.
• June – September: Four months of vanlife in the U.S.! We hit the road on June 4^th and drove through parts of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and Oklahoma. We get used to vanlife, continuing our van build as much as we can in the hot weather. I start building DangGoodLife.com and Jon continues building his real estate empire.
• October – December: Three months of vanlife in Mexico! We entered through Texas and went through Zacatecas, the Sierra Gorda mountains, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca, and San Jose del Pacifico. Yesterday, on December 29, we finally arrived at the beach!

How “It” Happened

In December 2018, we decided to take a gap year. We realized that we’d been working and saving, saving and working, for enough. We realized that we could afford to hit ‘pause’ on the rat race, to challenge the notion that one year of out-of-the-box living would bankrupt us and bring shame upon our family (okay, maybe that was just my Asian upbringing).

It so happened that my last day of work at the firm in December was also the founding partner’s last day. He’d worked so hard to build his company, and was finally stepping down. We talked about his plans to retire on the beach in Mexico, and I told him, “maybe I’ll see you there!”

A few weeks into January 2019, I learned that he passed away in his home. He never made it back to the beaches of Mexico.

This, among other things, confirmed to us that taking this gap year was the best decision we could have made.

The Van Build / DIY Conversion

I didn’t even know “vanlife” was a thing in the beginning. I just thought it would be cool to travel in our own home, a half camping, half RVing kind of set up. I described my imaginings to several people, who all responded, “oh yea, vanlife.”

So, I learned, there was a name to it already! An industry even!

After lots of research, obsessively reading blogs and watching YouTube tutorials, we bought Alevander the Great, a 2015 Ford Transit 250 high roof extended cab windowless white cargo van. We stripped out his old furnishings (it was previously a locksmith’s home and office) and started measuring and designing our ideal set up. What we have today is different from what we planned, but that’s just how van builds go when you are amateurs!

Thank goodness we found MakerPlace, a workspace for artists of all kinds. Here we met designers and builders of furniture, art pieces, skateboards, cutting boards, jewelry, metalwork, and even a boat! We met many vanlifers and soon-to-be vanlifers, who came to be our friends and our teachers – they were our first glimpse of the vanlife community.

I remember learning about MakerPlace in 2017 and thinking, “Man, that’s so cool; but when would I ever need to use such a place?” So, spending 60 hours a week for 3 whole months at MakerPlace was, in a way, the first of many dreams that I got to live in 2019.

Jon soldering a cable for the electrical system. Lien with a nice layer of sawdust after using the rotary saw to inlay the sink.

For Jon, who had the toughest work as the electrician, the vanbuild may have been the worst experience of his life. We can laugh at it now, but it truly challenged our relationship and our sanities. The drive into and out of MakerPlace was different every day – we’d alternately feel stressed, tired, optimistic, pessimistic, cranky, ambitious, angry, excited, proud, and other emotions I can’t even place.

It was difficult, but essential, for us to support each other. Out of need and self-preservation, we learned to communicate better, to see the bigger picture instead of devolving into our normal marital quarrels. We are very different people, so I don’t say it lightly that all of this was a very humbling learning experience.

While Jon got into the nitty-gritty of wattage calculations, battery cells, polarity, cable gauges, inverter capacities, and amp hours, I took over the furnishings. I built a bench to house three batteries, a bench to house our compressor fridge, a combination bed/garage, a closet that I still can’t believe functions as one, cabinets, and a kitchen with inlaid steel-tub-turned-sink. Our furnishings are painted in colorful, beachy sunset hues of light blue, turquoise, and bright orange.

The thing about vans is that nothing is straight. While you can approach a van build methodically, re-measuring to the point of perfection, that’s unfortunately not my style. With Jon’s help, I’ve learned to accept that my work is far from perfect, and that’s okay. Alevander may not look like those Instagram vans, alternately sterile or rustic or super-adorbs, but he’s mine – my own, my precious. And I learned a lot of skills while building him out into a home.

Aside from our mental and emotional struggles, Jon dripped liquid leaded solder on his bare leg, and I nearly lost my index finger to a table saw. Luck was on our side for a major DIY win!

VanLife Travels in the U.S. and Mexico

Flash forward to hitting the road…

Our parents were less-than-enthused to see their children living in a manner that is nearly synonymous with homelessness. Our friends, on the other hand, graciously congratulated us and wished us well. Oh, how the generations differ!

Vanlife in the States was challenging because of the heat. It was our newbie mistake of traveling to hot, humid places in the summer. We were (subconsciously) postponing the “unknown” of vanlife in Mexico, trying to get the hang of our new life and our new home before taking the plunge across the border.

Now, after three months traveling through the highlands of Mexico, where every day is like spring in San Diego, we laugh and ask ourselves, “Why the heck didn’t we come to Mexico sooner?!”

Traveling overland through Mexico has been absolutely wonderful. We do cheat a bit because we stay in Airbnbs sometimes: a week in San Miguel de Allende for Día de los Muertos, two weeks in Mexico City, and a week in Oaxaca City; about a month of brick-and-mortar lodging out of our three months so far. The Airbnbs run about $20 a night, which I then use my credit card points to offset so that they’re free!

We’re always asked where we park when we vanlife, but the reality is that each destination is totally different. There are many factors: street sizes, parking availability, temperature, length of stay, traffic congestion, costs per night, etc. We’ve enjoyed Walmart parking lots, city streets, forest roads, and secluded mountaintops. We’ve paid for parking, night security, and access to showers and restrooms, anywhere from $2 – $10 USD/night.

Our expenses are so low here that we’ve become gluttonous on delicious street foods and snacks, even though we love to cook. We spend about $600 per month on food, $500 per month on gas, toll roads, van maintenance, lodging, and parking, and $300 per month on everything else. Suffice to say, our total travel and vanlife expenses in Mexico are much less than our housing costs alone when we lived in San Diego!

We’ve also made friends during our travels, who have each fulfilled our various needs for bromance, gal pals, couples’ dates, and even maternal figures. After being on the road for seven months, we are grateful for new friends and interesting conversations.

“Work Stuff”

But all is not traveling and sightseeing and eating; we are still working. Jon works on a contract basis as a financial planner while searching for potential real estate investments. I research and write blog posts about vanlife and overland travel in Mexico. Though DangGoodLife.com is more of a passion project at this stage; just starting the blog required lots of self-development (through books and podcasts) to gain the mental fortitude and necessary attitude.

It is often hard for us to step away from work. In the moments between fun and vanlife errands (cleaning the van, getting drinking water, gas for the vehicle, and groceries, dumping grey and black water tanks, etc.), we open our laptops sometimes multiple times a day.

But this is the balance we strove for in taking our gap year. We aren’t office jockeys, but we aren’t retirees either. I don’t know how we’d survive total freedom from our obligations and ambitions! We need something to strive for.

2019 Reflection

So, here’s where I’m supposed to reflect beyond the what and where of 2019, beyond the timelines and technical challenges and destinations of the year.

From our beachfront boondocking spot, thinking back on 2019, my strongest emotion is tremendous relief:

• Relief that all of the hard work, stress, and expense on the van was worth it,
• Relief that Alevander has remained strong, reliable, and sufficient for our needs (once we learned to follow the weather),
• Relief that we’ve been safe and happy on our travels,
• Relief that we don’t regret our decision to take a gap year or to go to Mexico (although if you ask Jon, he may regret ever agreeing to vanlife), and
• Relief that we got time to pursue and explore different types of passive income.

We also feel deep appreciation:

• Appreciation for our friends and family who have kept us grounded and connected to our lives back home,
• Appreciation for the FI (Financial Independence) community, who prompted us to re-think our financial situation and to take this gap year,
• Appreciation for the people we’ve met along our travels, who’ve patiently listen to our limited Spanish, who’ve directed us, who’ve made us feel welcome, who’ve told us to take care of ourselves, who’ve been interested in us extranjeros (foreigners), and
• Appreciation for each other and the various roles we’ve taken on to make it work: electrician, carpenter, metalworker, plumber, travel planner, breadwinner, driver, navigator, and lead Spanish-speaker.

2020 on the Horizon!

We aim to get back to San Diego by June 2020. Beyond that, nothing is set in stone. We have learned to be – and are grateful that we can afford to be – flexible.

What I do know is that Mexico and parts of Central America have so much more for us to explore. We have more van friends and travelers to meet, more foods to try, and more travel experiences to write about. (If you haven’t yet, please check out the travel articles on DangGoodLife.com. More are on the way!)

What I also know is that no matter what adventures 2020 will hold for us, we will conquer them together because we couldn’t have – wouldn’t have – had the capacity or desire to take this adventure without each other.

But, for now, June 2020 seems as distant to us as the sun in the sky. For now, we will focus on the day ahead – which includes making mole negro for a New Year’s Eve Vanlifer’s Potluck tonight! I couldn’t think of a better end to 2019 than to welcome 2020 surrounded by vanlifers from around the world, all gathered on this tiny, hippie nudist beach in Oaxaca, Mexico.