We did it! Our house was finally listed for sale on Friday, February 22, 2019. After a month of hard work, our home looks great and quite fit to be sold. (Although, truly the home stager and the photographer probably deserve most of the credit, heh).

I’m just going to take a moment and put this date into perspective. “Early February” was my initial departure goal for leaving San Diego to start our one-year sabbatical. Then it became “late February.” This is when we realized van-hunting was taking wayyyy longer than expected.

Now, we are definitely in “late February.” To date, we’ve barely begun building Alevander! It feels like we’re at step negative two right now. But, I know that’s not really the case. I know that by feeling this way, I’m discounting the HUGE milestone in our life of selling our first home. Even though it wasn’t part of the original plan, the only person who knows that and is holding me accountable to that, is me.

So, I’m not going to let the (mis)timing of our plans stress me out! We made the decision to sell our home. And then we made dang good – albeit time-consuming – effort to improve its value. We drilled, laminated, scrubbed and painted our way through. We did this all the while also packing and/or purging most of our belongings, hiring a real estate agent, and planning our van build.

Whew! Who said mini-retirements are only for the lazy?!  It was certainly not easy. I can look back at these two months now and truly believe those words above. But, there were several days where I was anxious, grumpy, tired, and disheartened. I would go to Jon with a list of concerns and complaints, insisting that our timing and goals be changed so we wouldn’t fail so miserably. I questioned what we were doing. I doubted that we’d be even remotely successful.

But, ever so constant, Jon kept trying to remind me of our “why,” emphasizing that the small details of how we get there doesn’t matter as much as that we’re going to get there, as long as we keep going. He offered a calm and high-level perspective whenever I had a panic attack from not meeting whatever arbitrary and imaginary ‘deadline’ I’d previously set.

Jon has been through a “wisdom-spurt” since the last year. Now, he’s so damn zen all the time. I’m looking forward to all this zen balancing me out for our van build, cause goodness knows I need it!

I hope you will continue with us on our new adventure!