Jobless in San Deigo

The cat is out of the bag now. No more secrets. I officially quit my job. What a scary thing to do. That might top my list of things that make me nervous about this trip. Number two would be that I handed out the blog address to all of the people I work with so now they're seeing another side of me that I'm slightly uncomfortable with sharing. I should have thought that through. So for all of you work people reading, be kind. As you know, I'm not a writer, I'm project manager.

But woo hoo!!! I quit my job! Oh yeah, I said that already.

I've found that we've gone through several stages in our journey to "cast off the lines."  The first stage was the longest. Selling our house, setting the date, getting rid of some of our stuff, telling everyone we were ready to do it, and actually buying the boat.  This is where we started getting really excited.  People called us crazy and they doubted that we would actually do it (and at times, we did too).

I think the second stage started when we sold ALL of our stuff and moved onto the boat.  This is where we started to say "There's no turning back now."  This stage involved figuring out some logistics as well.  What curriculum will I use for homeschooling?  What mail forwarding service should we use?  Where do we want to establish "residency" (the gov't doesn't allow gypsies)?  How will we manage our finances?  We started some remodeling projects, made our big long lists of things to do and started thinking about our route.

We're now into our third stage...Andy has retired (well, almost), I've quit my job, we're down to one car, project lists are getting crossed off  both because they're complete and because we've decided they're not as important now as they were 2 months ago when it looked like we had a lot of time.  We're getting last rounds of shots.  Traveling back home to say good bye to people.  Now we're saying "There's REALLY no turning back now."

I'm anticipating one more phase.  It will be the last week or so before we leave.  We'll sell my car, go to the grocery store and buy everything we think we might need (knowing us we'll pack for a year), purchase last minute items and say goodbyes to all of our local friends and family.  Then we leave.  We've targeted April 18, assuming the weather is good to us.

In all my excitement it's  hard to be sad about leaving.  In my experience, with moving around with the Navy and dealing with Andy's deployments, I've found that it's easier to leave than to be left (I think I'm repeating myself here).  But I've also found that it hits me hard way after the fact.  So for all of my friends and family that are wondering if I'm ever going to show the proper amount of sadness, rest assured it will come.  Picture me teary eyed at the helm while on watch one night wishing I could shop with my mom, gossip with Hunter, or drink my favorite wine with Jennie.  I'll probably write some sappy blog entry that I will never publish because I won't want people to know that everything isn't blissfully wonderful.  I think that will probably happen...but until then, I'll carry on with my permanent smile and no care attitude while counting down the days until we leave (57 in case any of you were wondering).  Thanks for your understanding.