DECOMPRESSION!
11/13/2020 - Due to my new lifestyle, I'm writing my blogs offline and uploading when I can. This blog was written on Veterans Day, 2020 (November 11).
Today (11/11/20) was really my first day of retirement, and
my first day of VanLife. Over 18 months
ago, I started planning this phase of my life.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances at work at the end of 2017, I was
thrust into a workload that put some level of stress on me. I like to think I handle stress pretty well
but the workload I had during 2018 was pushing me – a lot.
I actually started looking for a new career. Twenty-one years with my company and I was
considering tossing it aside for a new career.
In July, 2018 I even had some in-depth conversations with a Ranger buddy
of mine. He’s a Wildlife Resource
Officer in NC. Sounds like a cool
job. Before I could jump into that, I
had to dig further into what my retirement picture looked like with the company
I’d spent so many years with. I
discovered that they had an option to retire at 55 with 10 or more years of
service.
THAT sounded very interesting so I started digging
further. I still had more than 2 years
before my 55th birthday and subsequently my eligible ‘early
retirement date’, so I started planning my retirement. Along the way, based on conversations with my
Sister who has been full time in her 38’ Class A RV since approximately
September, 2018, my own sense of adventure and after following a number of full
time VanLifers, I decided that VanLife was for me.
The selection of my van Galahad is a separate story which
perhaps I’ll write up someday. For this
blog, I want to focus on the start of VanLife with my van Galahad.
To launch this lifestyle, I decided that my house would have
to go. By the grace of God, I had a contract on my house with a closing date 1
week after my last day of work. On
November 2, 2020, I walked off my campus for the last time and on 9 November,
2020 I closed on the sale of my house.
It’s the six-plus weeks leading up to those events and how that affected
me in the days following that are striking.
In closing out a career of 23 years, I wanted to make sure I
did what I could to make the inevitable project hand-offs as smooth as
possible. I’d like to think I was able
to organize things pretty well but the people to whom I handed those things are
really the only ones with an accurate picture of that. That meant I was pressed to get as much done
for those hand-offs as possible. Add to
those an important report that needed to be completed, reviewed and published
and preparing the agenda for a worldwide tech club – which I would be animating
on my very last day of work – I was feeling a fair bit of stress for the
six-plus weeks leading up to my retirement date. I seldom slept more than about 4 hours with
all that I was thinking that needed to be completed.
Pile on top of that the very quick sale of my house. We listed it September 9th, 2020
and on the 10th, I had an offer.
Of course, it took a couple days to negotiate the final price, but that
was a quick offer. The contract proposed
a closing of Nov 12 which eventually got shifted to Nov 9. Now,
in a week I had my last day of work and the house closing.
I had actually started on clearing out my house about the
time I decided that VanLife was the target.
I sold my kayaks, I sold several bicycles, I sold three Volkswagen
projects (one 1980 Vanagan Westfalia that needed a complete refurbishment and
two 1970 Beetles – one complete car that wasn’t really that bad off, and a
parts car). I was glad I started when I
did, but there’s nothing like a deadline when it comes to getting things
done.
Thus, between those two things, that six-plus weeks was a
lot of short nights and me pushing myself to get the tasks completed to the
best of my ability. The amount of sleep
I got seemed to reduce as my 2 November retirement date approached. I thought I’d feel a bit of relief when I
walked off my campus for that last time.
Negative. The pressure to
downsize my life to fit in my van Galahad by November 9th was pretty
extreme. I must have taken 6 trailer
loads of stuff to Miracle Hill – a local charitable organization. I gave so much stuff away, it astounds me. Much to charity but some to friends who
indicated they could use it.
I had a lot of stuff – even after selling what I thought was
a fair amount of stuff, there was still so much to go through! I’ll spare you the details but suffice to
say, all of it took time and the clock was ticking.
When the 9th came, I was very close. I got really lucky thanks to my colleague who
purchased my utility trailer. He allowed
me to use it until that very last day when he came to pick it up. He was a big help that morning – hauling some
stuff away that needed to go to the dump, and other stuff that needed to go to
Goodwill.
Between making a trip to my storage unit, lunch with a
friend and having to make a run back to the house for some things I forgot – I
barely made it to the closing on time.
Throughout the closing, I was waiting for something to go wrong – even
after all the papers had been signed and I was free to go, I still didn’t feel
that rush from completing a task.
For the rest of that day, and all of the 10th, I
felt like I was still in the grinder – rushing around to get all my tasks completed. Now, those tasks included a final meetup with
several good friends, but I was rushing in between those meet-ups. I tried to stay in the moment while talking
with my friends, but the clock was always ticking in the background.
It kept ticking for the rest of that day as I tried to run
around town picking up some last minute supplies – vitamins for Gunner, Propane
for my stove, dropping off stuff to another friend, etc. I finally got back to my campsite near
8pm. Following dinner and an attempt at
relaxation, I finally went to bed about 930.
It was when I awoke at 537am on Veterans Day that I began to
realize that it was all done and I was now free to live. JUST LIVE!
I could ignore the calendar, stop rushing around and get on with my
life.
5:37am might seem early to many, but my body is accustomed
to getting up at 4, and in that last six-plus weeks, often 3am or earlier. That I actually slept for 8 hours felt
AMAZING!! To top that off, I did a little trail run around Lake Placid at Paris
Mountain State Park. My last run at the
park for a while and it really felt great!
It was what a former coach called a “Peace Run” – just being in the
moment and enjoying the run.
The effects that the sleep and the trail run had on my body
and mental state was actually physically noticeable. I felt better this morning than I’ve felt in
a while. There was still a matter of
mental decompression – good news, I had been feeling that a little after the
house closing but it really hit home today.
As I packed up my camp, I was thinking about getting up to
Massachusetts quickly, spending a few days, then rushing across the country to
meet up with some people for an overlanding trip. Because of the rain which I knew was on the
way, I opted not to set up my complete camp.
That meant I’d have to go to a local diner for breakfast.
As I was eating breakfast, the mental decompression
continued. I decided that my new VanLife
would NOT include any interstate highways.
In and of itself, that forces a slowing down of the timeline to get from
point to point. As I departed
Greenville, my target for heading north was the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I’ll save the details of the today’s drive for another blog,
but I’m writing this from a National Forest dispersed campsite somewhere not
terribly far from the community of Linville, NC. I didn’t even drive far enough to burn a full
tank of gas – if it takes me a week to get to my brother’s house – so be
it. Decompression complete.
