Happy Holidays 2020
Welcome to 2021!
Where We’re At
Okay, yes. We gave into the trend and got matching onesie pajamas. I might have regretted it but then we played in the snow and took pictures and it was all immediately worth it. We tried to involve Brandy with a matching sweater but she’s unruly and has never been great at photoshoots.
We have taken the last few weeks off from working on the bus and it has been a much needed break. We haven’t been good about giving ourselves scheduled time off from constantly working on and planning for all things bus. This has inevitably left us both feeling burnt out and agreeing that we would take this holiday season to forget about the bus and try to simply enjoy each day.
What has been most hard about this build for us is that we are constantly working towards a life that we want to live on the road but this interim building stage is not that life. We can’t wait to finish the bus and reap the benefits of what we have worked so long and hard for. At the same time, we try to regularly remind ourselves that this is a stage to be enjoyed as well. It’s a stage that will never recur in the same way. We certainly don’t want to look back at it as a stressed out, anxious period that we couldn’t wait to be over. In the future, we’ll look back at these days and reminisce about all the challenges and subsequent triumphs. Most importantly, we’ll be proud of what we accomplished. We will remember how we worked together, supported each other, and overcame difficulties. We continue to try to appreciate this stage while being admittedly over-excited for the next.
Where We Hope to Be
We are excited for 2021 and can’t wait to make the most of it. Of course, the bus is nearing completion and 2021 is the year that we will be taking off on our epic adventure. This is unanimously the one thing that we are most looking forward to. We have many goals and intentions for our cross country trip but these goals are not new.
Like most New Year’s resolutions, our prioritized goal is to be healthier overall.
We want to:
- Exercise More
- We have not been working out regularly since we started working on the bus. We spend many of our days physically working and then when we’re done for the night, the last thing we feel like doing is any more physical exertion. Whether the majority of the work we did that day was physical or mental, working on the bus leaves us exhausted and craving relaxation. The only way for us to fix this is to schedule some time for working out and make it more of a priority, even if that means less work will get done. In the long term, it is more important for us to be healthy than it is for us to be just a little bit more productive. In fact, working out will cause us to feel physically better and offers the added benefits of higher energy levels which may even make us more productive. There is no down side!
- Eat Better
- Kara is a vegetarian and Travis is an.. omnivore? We eat a lot of vegetarian meals such as omelets, pizzas, burritos, quesadillas, lasagna, sandwiches, salads, nuts, and stuffed peppers. Our diet is vegetable rich with regular small portions of meat for Travis and B12 vitamins for Kara. Despite our diet being largely healthy, we eat the same meals every week and they always have the same ingredients. A healthy diet is a diverse diet so our goal for 2021 is to diversify these ingredients. We want to keep making basic meals like sandwiches and burritos but switch up the vegetables and spices that we put in them so that our body can reap the benefits of a more diverse gut flora.
- Kara also has the small side goal of learning how to make a good curry.
- Sleep Earlier
- This one is pretty self-explanatory. Sometimes we get caught staying up late at night and this only pushes our mornings further back if we want to get enough sleep. We both truly miss spending relaxed time together in the early morning and getting an early start, which is why we’re making some changes in 2021 to be more serious about getting to bed early.
These goals might sound simple and cliché but it takes serious discipline for anyone to make a change to what has become easy, routine behavior.
If you have a goal, small or large, that gives you hope towards living a more quality life, we wish you the best in achieving it.
Happy 2021!
